mawmaw's moments

the best thing

2009-05-21T00:58:00.000-07:00

The 5 year old went on her end of the year field trip yesterday on a big bus with a bathroom on it, to a fantastic pizza place an hour and half away. They had go carts. where she won a first place ribbon for driving, miniature golf, all kinds of games, a roller coaster, a huge buffet, a variety of places to eat, she ate in the movie theater and watched Old Yeller. I asked her what was the best part of the whole day. She said that her mom was there. Mom. What a concept. Too bad she's not around enough for the child to be able to enjoy the big fun days for what they are.

the flip

2009-05-16T05:39:00.000-07:00

Last week, Mother's day, the 5 year old's Mother was no where to be found. She had left upset with the boy friend because she wasn't going to be able to see one of her kids, or so she says. Her mother saw the child for at least 3 hours later in the day. So she leaves her other two kids to themselves without so much as a call. She doesn't call all week. We assume she is with the boy friend at his current out of town job. She calls Friday night like nothing has occurred. I question her, she says let me talk to the 5 year old and then I will talk to you. She talks to her daughter, and is asked, when are you coming to see me, where have you been? I miss you. She tells her that she will be here to go with her to the out of town field trip next week. We'll see. She gives the phone back to me. She tells me that she has been very busy trying to get a place to live, working on the internet while out of town. I asked her if she wasn't working any more. She said she wasn't going to work this summer but was going to keep the boy friend's child and HER KIDS this summer. I wonder how she thinks that will happen. She goes on to say what a horrible Mother's Day she had and how she had to get away. That she lost it. That she just could not take not seeing her child on mother's day. having to ask to see her children when she has done everything she was supposed to do for the past 18 months and is still no better off that she was when she started out. I told her that she had to get some counseling and that she could get it at the VOA for free or for very cheap with her diagnosis. She says she has an appointment there on Tuesday. We'll see. She has no idea how what she does and how she lives looks from the outside looking in. She is so scattered and inconsistent. Up and down. Here and gone. I don't care if she keeps her boy friends child, but she is not keeping the 5 year old at their house. She has to have supervision at her mothers overnight from now on. No sneaking in night a her friends like she has done.

no mother's day

2009-05-13T11:33:00.000-07:00

On Mother's Day, even a 5 year old expects to see her estranged mother, wants to give her a card and a present and prance around and say "I picked it out." But, alas, the mother is so wrapped up in herself that she denied the child the opportunity to do any of those things for her. Her LOSS. I hope she feels it some day. The child was able to see her other grandmother and grandfather, her (half) sister and (half) brother and have a great time playing for a couple of hours. When the absent mother did call and spoke to the brother, she did not speak to the 5 year old or to the sister. Seems this whole abscenteeism started because she said the 3rd grandmother told her she would not be able to see her son on Mother's Day. She got upset and had the boy friend come and pick her up and they went out of town to see his mother. A few hours later, the 3rd grandmother called to say that the boy could come and visit. His grandmother said of course he can come. So when we got there to visit, all three kids were together on half siblings day instead of mother's day. There is also the issue that has come out through discussion with the 5 year old's other grandmother that her mother got upset when I let the 5 year old spend the night with my neice and nephew. When the arrangements were initally made, I did not realize it was Mother's Day weekend, but it did not matter since she would be available for visiting at the same time as if we had been to church. I can not count on absent mother to be in the right place on the weekend to visit with her daughter. So I did what I thought was best for the child.Which of course didn't go over well with her mother because she was not in the center of attention. The child did not understand why her mother wasn't home and when I told her she was with her boyfriend she told me "Mama would rather be with him than me". Sad, but true. I had explained how her mother and daddy are alot alike in that they are selfish and want to do for themselves first. She is learning too many life lessons too soon.

absent mother

2009-04-25T17:10:00.000-07:00

This absent mother business is so tiresome. She has been so busy she just has not had time to call to check on her daughter. I wish she would just give it up sometimes. What would be happening if she was working everyday and coming home to take care of the youngest one by herself? Would she get her fed and bathed on time? Or would she be moaning and groaining about trying to do things "by herself" like she used to do? I wonder. She happened to mention that she was back at her mother's. Seems that the boyfriend has gotten work in Alabama so she can't stay at his mother's house while he is gone. She can not settle down. She was beside herself yesterday evening telling me she was trying to get in a house and having to help the boyfriend with a ride because his truck broke down on the way back from Alabama. She is so wrapped up in her own drama that she just lets this one ride. There was so much going on during the phone call she couldn't keep up with what she was telling me. She always says she will call back and then she doesn't. She blows some smoke about all the exciting things she will do with her daughter the next time they are together, and she falls for it. But later she will tell me something like "If she comes to get me, cause Mama lies".

adventures

2009-04-19T04:47:00.000-07:00

The girl has has some adventures during the school holiday. The most exciting one was going to a horse farm to help PawPaw shovel manure into the truck. Of course she also got to hold baby kittens and ride on a beautiful big horse and go around the barrels. She was in hog heaven. They were at the home of a co worker of PawPaw's and he was getting material to improve his garden. It worked out great for all involved. Another thing they have done is go to the eye doctor. One of the rooms they were in has an entire wall of mirror. She was able to perform quite well in that room. She has learned to put eye drops in. She will make a good doctor or nurse when she is older. They have dug in the back yard and put up little flags to mark off the garden area. They have found worms and rollie pollies. She has learned to turn a flip on the trampoline without having her head touch the mat. She taught me how to use one of the games in her video system and when I wasn't very good at it to start with she patted me and told me I would get better with practice.

Just checking

2009-03-29T16:35:00.000-07:00

Mr grand daughter is with her mother this afternoon. She was supposed to be picked up at 11. It happened at 2. Mama "overslept" She had a date last night. Any way, after the girl and been with her mother for a couple of hours she called my cell phone just to check on me. I think it is a survival tactic on her part, just to make sure we are still here, even if things are going ok where she is. We chatted a while, she told me what was going on and what she had been doing, what she had for lunch and so forth, then had me talk to her mama for a minute. Mama said she would call me back, That won't happen most likely. They will just show up later on. Mama is sort of avoiding being alone with me or on the phone with me because she knows I am not done asking her some questions...ok, giving her the third degree...is another way of putting it. She has been ignoring her kids and her parents for several days now... and from the conversation we had she has had time to do other things so she has had time to call and at least just check on them, but has elected not to do so for what ever reason. Now today, something has made her call her family and she has found out that her father is having some kind of surgery tomorrow. She was rather put out that she didn't know about it until today. I said maybe you should call more often.. . Off she went, to her grandmothers, so again, i didn't get to talk to her. She needs something she is not getting and I don't know how to guide her, or if she would accept the guidance. She won't be still long enough to really listen to a conversation.

growing up

2009-03-24T04:30:00.000-07:00

My grand daughter has taken to going to her room by herself for periods of time. She watches tv, torments the cat, plays with her dog or does what she does. Some times she comes out to see what we are doing or to ask me to come see something. She also storms to her room if she gets mad at us. She has tried sleeping in her own bed a few times, but she comes back to us for the sleeping part. She will probably continue that for a while and transition to her own bed in time. She is growing up she told me so. She likes to watch what we watch on tv, not just kid shows.

Her mother called for the first time in two weeks. Said she had been working nights. She talked to Chloe, I don't know what was said, I was at a meeting and CHloe didn't have anything to say about the call. I will try to check out the situation today.

new shoes

2009-03-17T03:14:00.000-07:00

WHile getting ready for school yesterday, we went through 3 pair of shoes before my grand daughter selected a pair that fit. The first two pair were ones I brought to her. She said they were too tight. A growing girl. Why do I keep the shoes that are too tight, you ask? That is a good question. I have got to get a good will box going. THey are perfectly good shoes she was wearing 5 minutes ago. Well, to satisfy this problem, the girl and her pawpaw went to Target to look for some shoes that fit. They came home with 3 pair. One is pink and sparkly and will be worn this morning - and every morning he thinks. Another is a pair of actual sneakers and the third is similar to the pink pair, low cut Mary Jane style leathers in white with straps. All are cute and Pawpaw did a great job as usual. She also wanted to get some beach shoes, but he was able to steer her away from them for the time being. We are planning a trip to the beach but we have a little time to get her shoes together prior to that. Then I got a pair of crocs in the mail from an eBay purchase, yep, whitish beach shoes. Cool, but I got beach shoes and she didn't. So we explained that these were the only ones they had and I had big feet and shoes were hard for me to find, etc etc. She was satisfied with that answer. We should be ok for shoes now.

a child's perspective

2009-03-16T04:23:00.001-07:00

My grand daughter who is 5 has a half sister who is 2, but of course, it is her sister. She told me "I bet (sister) is missing me". I said I bet you could be missing her too, Why don't we call (other Maw Maw) and see what they are doing. So we called and arranged a visit. It went well. She really didn't want to leave when it was time to go, which is new. WHile we were there, she asked about her mother. I reminded her that her mother told me that she was not feeling well and was at her girlfriend's house. As it turns out, other MawMaw hasn't seen or heard from her since Wednesday and this was Sunday. This in and out is not going to work. She is going to have to make a choice of how she is going to live. I think she needs to go back to rehab or into some other kind of counseling. Anyway, the explanation of her being sick and at the friend;s house seemed to satisfy her, that was the end of the conversation. Later on after supper we were taping up a box that is going to her dad who is incarcerated for drug related thefts. She wants to know again how long he would be gone again? weeks? months? and I said lots of months. She said Years? and I said "Yes baby, two years" She said, "Gosh what did he take that was so important that he has to be there two years?" I told her I didn't know (which is technically true) She wanted to know why he stole things and I explained that people stole stuff and sold it so they could get money to buy drugs. She said "I knew he did drugs because of all those cigarettes and pipes on the carport and he drinks beer too." I said yes you are right. I was making the address label and she made one too. On hers she "wrote" a note that said"Tell the judge you are sorry and you want to come home."

good check up

2009-03-15T04:03:00.000-07:00

My son is in prison for at least 20 months for drug related thefts. You can't buy drugs without money. You can't work if you're messed up on drugs, so you steal stuff to get your drugs. Easy enough till you get caught. Anyway. He also has cancer. I know, it sounds terrible, but it is in remission after 3 surgeries and 3 rounds of chemo. He goes for check ups now. The nursing staff in the faciltiy where he is arranges his follow up visits now. He isn't told when he is going ahead of time for security reasons, Rules are rules. So I have had to let go of being the care giver and making sure I got him to his appointments and paid attention to what was said because he wouldn/t necessairily remember, depending on his frame of mind the next week or next month when he needed to remember something. The good news is that he got a good check up both with Urology and Cancer clinics. He will go back again for another visit but he will not be told when that is, again for security reasons. Assuming he makes it through May without a recurrence, he will then only have to go every other month to the cancer clinic. Yea!!

Friday with friends

2009-03-14T05:06:00.000-07:00

She had a ball Friday night. Periodically the church has a get togerher of the the Sunday schoolers and their friends. This one was in the gym and you were to bring your wheels, skates, skooters, what ever. They had a great time. My friend and her grand daughter were there and they played together the whole time. Then we went back to their house for an hour of more playing. WHile there she got a magazine all about the Jonas Brothers. O my gosh, sister, was she excited. She was perfectly happy the whole evening. Her mom came and watched her with us. Sometimes she would call out to her mom to watch her and sometimes she would call out to me. She was supposed to go with her mother after the gym, but mom said she had to go work. It appeared to be true, she does work part time in the evening doing stock work. So now mom is supposed to come get her this morning for the rest of the weekend. I hope that works out for her. I hate it when she gets hurt by someone not doing what they say they are going to do..

aging parents

2009-03-10T19:48:00.000-07:00

The time has come for me to help care for my mother. She was sick for three days in the hospital and is now not able to be by herself. she is staying at my sister's house. My sister and her husband are retired, so are the most logical choice for a place for mama to be at the present time. My husband and I are still working and we are raising our 5 year old grand daughter. We plan to get a room ready for mama for the week ends to give my sister a break. My mama has lost a good bit of her short term memory or logic or something. She had been acutely ill with an altered mental status that they are still not sure of the cause. She is better each day, but not back to baseline. and I think she is realizing it now. I hope she does not deteriorate any more than this and just ups and dies one night in her sleep. Which is what she would prefer too. She is almost 90, only 6 weeks or so to go. I hope she makes it.

irresponsible woman

2009-03-10T04:09:00.000-07:00

the grand daughter's mother is irresponsible. I want to choke her today. this is two days in a row without the back pack which has the all important school folder in it. This has caused great concern for the child. There will be no more going with mom during the school week. Too much drama. Her homework was not done, She was upset and crying and her mother brought her home instead of working it out and finishing out the evening how it was planned. I have explained to the grand daughter that if she makes plans to go with the mother to other mawmaw's she is supposed to stay there. She said I want to come home when Mama is mean to me. I asked her if mama was being mean to her tonight and she said she didn't want to live with me anymore because I didn't want her. I of course said that was not true, That I would always want her and that she lived here. She could not live with her mama right now because mama was trying to figure out what to do. That sometimes she had a place to live and sometimes she did not. Right now mama lives with other mawmaw and so she can go stay with her on the weekends. She says she wants her mama all the time. I told her she could not have her mama all the time. It wasn't going to work out like that. After a little while of her being mad and crying, she settled down and we were able to go t sleep. She is expecting to see her back pack at the door when she gets up and of course it is not here. Here homework will not be done for the first time this year. I will send the teacher the free homework page so she won';t get in trouble for not having it.

a happy kid

2009-03-08T16:56:00.000-07:00

My grand daughter was a happy kid when she came home from visiting with her mother at the zoo. She says that her mother is going to pick her up after gymnastics tomorrow and that she is going to spend the night with her mama at other mawmaw's house. She had a great time. Some times when she gets home she could care less but today must have been a really good day. She is watching Harry Potter alternately with me or with PawPaw. Depends on who she is piled up with at the moment. It is good to see her happy. She is happy a lot lately. Not as fussy as she had been. Maybe it's because her daddy is not here now. When he was here, sometimes he would totally ignore her and us, and sometimes he would pay attention to her, so she has more of a routine now.

going downhill

2009-03-08T03:55:00.000-07:00

My mother is going down hill. Fast. She gave us a fright last week. Went bonkers. absolutely. And then three doctors could not figure out why. That's what we do in our family. Have syndromes or illnesses without a cause or that are rare. She is much better now, but we can not leave her alone. THANK GOD my sister and her husband are retired and are willing to look after her on a daily basis, other wise she would have to go into a nursing home as we do not have the cash for a sitter. Mama does not want to go into a nursing home - who would, I guess- but that time may still come. She has gotten better everyday since she was taken ill but is still not back to baseline, and may not get back to baseline. She is 89 after all. And this illness took a toll on her. She is quite tired, but doesn't seem to realize it, as in just woke up from a nap and is ready to take another one. And her memory, once tenuous is now shot for the most part. Some things she is sharp as tack about, and others are out the window. And she is hard headed as ever, so that is going to make convincing her of something a hard job - but every now and then, she just says OK when you start to explain how something happened. It may not be worth her time to argue with us. She is absolutely certain she will be able to attend to her one event of the week, a senior outing at the Church of God on Wednesday. no matter what, she is going. So that is good, she has a goal and is correct on when and where it is, etc So even if it is downhill, she is in control of a tiny portion of it and can still enjoy that part of her life.

The girls mother has surfaced

2009-02-27T20:03:00.000-08:00

The girl's mother has surfaced again. Seems she has been at her mothers since Wednesday. I said," too bad you haven't called". She said " I haven't felt well, I have been sleeping a lot. Can I call you back, I'm right at the end of a movie" That is always a clue that A) she is not going to call back and B) she does not want to talk about the topic at hand. So of course she did not call back. WHen I told the girl her mom had been at other mawmaws for a few days, she said "Like she's gonna stay there, why didn't she come and get me?" Of course, I had no answer for her, just that her mama wanted her to go with her to family ball games and probably spend the night at other mawmaw's tomorrow. She said she would go. But she would not commit to spending the night. I told her she did not have to spend the night if she didn't want to. She said she was too sleepy to talk to her mama when asked. I hope it goes well. I will have to tell her mother that this popping in and out is not good.

You never know

2009-02-24T04:27:00.000-08:00

We had our quilt guild meeting last night. A lady that I hold in high esteem was in attendance. She is quite elderly, sharp, funny compassionate, straight forward, and a strong Christian. She had a son in law who died of testicular cancer, so she is keen on asking me how my son is doing. When she gave me a hug out in the store and asked me I was able to tell her he is in remission, but that he was sentenced today to 5 years in prison. She said "Honey, we had someone in our family that happened to and although it was terrible at the time, he has turned out to be such a better man now. Don't give up." I felt much better hearing that coming from her. I know she meant it from the bottom of her heart and that even if it hadn't worked out well for her family member she would have told me so. AND she would have understood what we are going through. She said her mother used to say that there is no point in making someone feel worse about something that is making them feel terrible already. Her mother must have been something to behold too. I don't know how I will ever get my thanks across to her. She told me to write to him every week and it didn't matter if you said the same thing over and over, just get a letter to him to keep him informed and to let him know you still care. Encourage him to see the doctor and the psychiatrist and get on the right set of medicines so that he can think clearly and make something of himself while he has the time. She said to try to get others to write to him too, but that could be a more difficult thing to accomplish.

5 years

2009-02-13T19:40:00.000-08:00

How do you separate yourself from someone for 5 years? My son is facing 5 years in prison. He goes to court on Feb 23 for probation violation and possession of drugs and paraphenalia. He has finally gotten to the point of no return, at least in my opinion. He Probation Officer does not want him to get an easy term even though this is his first violation. She wants the judge to revoke his probation and give him his full sentence because he has been uncooperative in his probation. This is how he rolls. He thinks he won't get caught, or that he isn't doing anything "wrong". He's only sorry when he gets caught. And amazingly he had just begun or appeared to have begun to make some changes in his life when it all went up in smoke. Not that this is bad enough, but he also has cancer, testicular cancer, he has had it since May of 08 and is currently in remission, goes to the doctor once a month and I do wonder if he will continue to go once this comes down. He plans to go this month, but I wonder if he will continue to do so if he becomes so depressed over the sentence. He has severe depression, bipolar disorder and has antisocial and or borderline personality disorders. For the past several years I have thought he would not live to see his 25th birthday, but he has made it. This is at least the 2nd if not 3rd birthday he has celebrated in jail. He has had serious problems since he was 13, but his troubles life goes back farther than that. Just not as bad. He now has a 5 year old daughter. Neither he nor the child's mother has custody of the child. We, her paternal grandparents have custody. She knows that her daddy is in jail and that he stole something. She does not seem distraught about it. She seems resigned to it. She has been able to figure out before now that he was unreliable and unpredictable. We have explained to her that he is not like other dads and that he does love her in his way. Not the same way that we love her. and that we will be here for her no matter what. We do not plan on taking her to visit him should he be gone for the duration of the sentence. We suppose we will let her write to him if she wants, or talk to him on the phone if she wants, but not make her do it. We have a niece and nephew in law who we intend to involve more in her life as time goes on too. Some normal people.

truth and consequences

2009-02-06T04:47:00.000-08:00

We are a couple of truth tellers. We don't lie. We don't cheat on our taxes. We don't watch pirated videos. We were church goers and could be again. We try to live right and do right. We will praise our granddaughter for good, or remarkable things done. We will make a punishment appropriate for a 5 year old if she does something that needs punishment. Most of the time that would be time out with discussion., no TV, take away some fun item, etc. On a rare occassion she might get a swat on the butt or legs if she goes out of control. The point being that good behavior is expected and appreciated and bad behavior is punished.

We have turned our son in for theft in the past (long story if you aren't familiar). We expect a person to have a punishment that fits the "crime". Our son is on probation for 5 years for a number of charges including theft from us. We have never expected him to make it the full five years of his probation without getting in trouble again, violating probation it is called. He has a probation officer who appears to take his problems of mental illness and cancer into consideration, but still expects him to adhere to the rules and be a good citizen while on probation. A few days ago, he violated his probation. As far as we know he did not commit any crimes against another person, just against himself, such as drinking, being in the company of another felon, possession of paraphenalia and drugs, which of course he doesn't see as much of a problem at all. After all, he is a grown man and he can drink if he wants to, hang out with his friends and that stuff is old and not even his, he isn't using. He is getting ready for his girlfriend to come home so they can have a life together. He has even been looking for a job at a place or two. So he is in hopes that he will only be given the usual 90 day first time violators sentence when he goes to court.

WHen our grand daughter was much younger we told her that her Daddy was away at work when he was in jail. We felt she was just too young for it. She is not too young now. I fretted over how she would react, not wanting to give her adult worries about something that she could do nothing about. PawPaw and my two strongest confidants at work were all in agreement to tell her and not to lie to her, especially given the chance that someone else would let it slip out or purposely tell her to be mean. So we told her. She took it well it the way it was done, calmly and simply. She wanted to know how long he would be gone. I told her probably till the summer. She processed this for a few seconds then asked if she could go off to play with the dog, feeding him yogurt actually. A little later she came to me weeping for her mother, missing her. I asked if was because of her dad, she said no I just want my mama. She has not done that in weeks. I was unable to contact her mother since her phone is not working. It took a little time and cuddling to get over the hump but in a little while, she was back to her normal self. We all seem to be surviving. Our hope is that this is the last time we go through this, It could happen.

catching up

2009-01-03T20:14:00.000-08:00

The girl's mother must not remember that she is supposed to only have her during supervised visitation at her parents home. It seems that she had to leave her mother's home yesterday because the girl was getting on other mawmaw's nerves. She says the girl was screaming about not getting to spend time with her mother by herself. That seems odd, I hope I can get more info on this. She took her to Julie's parents' condo. She called me and told me about it today. I did not tell her she had made a mistake. I will tell her Sunday that the rule is visitation with supervision. Maybe this is the time to tell her the rumors are out about her using again. She has been pointing the finger at the girl's father lately, which is something she does when she is at fault.

Speaking of the girls' father, he has a new girl friend. Of course, the girl;s mother doesn't think it is a good idea for him to be with this woman. She always says that. She called her up and started telling her about how he is with women etc and she told her that the only thing they would need to discuss would be anything that involved the two of them and the girl. Good for her. No argument, just the facts. and putting the girl first. Smart woman. She got my vote.

The girl's father has been in remission for some time, with a scare in November. He goes back to the Oncologist Jan 6 for a routine check up. Hopefully it will be all clear again. He broke his hand in an accident and then really messed it up in a fall in the shower. He had tried to keep the break from us because he had been in the accident on Christmas Eve and he didn't want us to know about the details and mess up our Christmas. He has avoided surgery, but will have a cast on for a while.

pawpaw's head

2008-10-21T15:51:00.000-07:00

What is the matter with Pawpaw's head? He is having some kind of weird spells. two times now in about two weeks. He gets a weird dizzy or full feeling and becomes clumsy. Similar to before he had his Chiari surgery. Thought that was going to take care of the problem. Why does it come and go? The Internist doesn't know and is going to send him to a Neurologist. The MRI doesn't show a stroke or a brain tumor, so thank God for that, The carotid sono and the echo were ok too. So now we look for Zebras. We don't have time for this kind of foolishness so they better come up with something fixable. We have stuff to do that does not include being any sicker than we already are for goodness sake.

I feel much better today

2008-10-18T18:27:00.000-07:00

I think my medicine needs adjusting. I self adjusted some of them and I feel much better today. I was more active than usual and am not exhausted like I thought I would be. We took the girl to a school fair. She had a ball. Pony rides. super slides. big swings. ball toss, hockey puck. We had hamburgers there and came home and took quite a nap. I didn't do much laundry but when we got up we "washed" my car, more or less. It was enough for her to say she had washed it. She was satisfied that it was very pretty now. Then Zuni cat had the nerve to track it up. She fussed at him. Then wanted to climb up on the car to wipe off the tracks. What a girl. We took her over to her mama/mawmaw's later. She seemed ok to be there/

I am in a turmoil

2008-10-15T18:58:00.000-07:00

I am in a turmoil. My anxiety is being directed as anger at my son. I want to shake him until his teeth rattle in the insane notion that it will actually help the situation. In a reasonable moment, I know this willnot work. At the same time, I am not reasonable. I am nuts. I seem to have forgotten all I have learned about taking care of myself, my spouse and my grandchild and letting my son roll his own hoop. The problem is that it is very hard for me to let go of trying to find some way of helping him. It is terrible to see your child suffer. He knows everything so there is nothing we can do or say that will make an impact and he continues to go down this spiraling hole that just gets worse. When I have it shoved in my face that he will never be ok, it just makes me sick. I get upset and wonder how come there is not something out there to make it better so that he can have some kind of normal life.His daughter is going to think this is how fathers act unitl she is old enough to see other people's fathers don't act this way. Then he acts like an ass and it infuriates me. His actions are dictating how I feel, which is craziness. I have had enough counseling to write a book and I turn right around and fall into the same trap again. I have to find a way to move beyond this and focus on my granddaugher and myself and the rest of my family. They don't know what to do about any of it. There is nothing they can do or say that will make this any better. I wonder if getting closer to Christmas has me on edge right now. I expect that my son will not make it through the end of the year without getting is probation revoked and being sent to prison for his 5 year sentence. His daughter would be 10 years old when he got out. FIVE YEARS without seeing him, because I do not plan on taking her where evere he is housed. She will have to be told that he is in jail because she is smart enough to know that he wouldn't just "go away" without some explanation. She will have to be told he did something bad enough that he had to go jail because he would not follow the rules made by the judge. So she will have to deal with that in some manner at the same time that she deals with her unstable mother and the fact that she is living with her grandparents. Kids already ask her why she lives with us. I hate this.

a crisis once removed

2008-10-11T08:10:00.000-07:00

This crisis affects us but did not happen in our house, thank you very much. My "grand baby mama" has her own set of problems that she has been working on for the last 10 months. Recently she has been having no luck getting a job. I feel certain that her background check is the problem and she is not forthcoming with an explanation right off the bat. Anyway, she has been living with her family for some months now and things SEEMED to be going ok from the outside anyway. She would occassionaly say something derogatory about her mother's alleged drinking habits. But she is also eager to point fingers at someone else especially when she is doing something herself that she wants to remain hidden. Grand Baby Mama was supposed to pick her daughter up Friday afternoon and keep her at the other MawMaw's house for the weekend as has been happening for quite some time. Well it seems that a verbal altercation escalated into Grand Baby Mama getting thrown out of the house. Now she has no place to live, no place to bring Grand Baby for visits, because they are supervised only, and doesn't know how she is going to explain any of this to Brand Baby. Friday she and my son took Grand Daughter to the Parish Fair together and that turned out all right. Grand Daughter had a great time and she got to spend time with both of them. She loves them so much and doesn't realize how much better things could be thank goodness. Grand Baby Mama spent the night with a girl friend and came to pick up Grand Daughter for a Birthday Party this morning at the Gymnastics place. She will have a great time. Grand Baby Mama doesn't know yet how to go about getting back in the house with her parents. They need some counseling big time.

a new cat

2008-09-20T18:29:00.000-07:00

The grand daughter has been wanting a baby kitten for months now. We are not getting another animal in this house, please,no not here. But the other grandmother suddenly has a gray tabby kitten at her house. Ownership is shared by the grand daughter and her uncle, who is only 11 or so. She is in heaven. She could not wait to go see her mother, right, the cat Friday evening. We told her to be sure and say hello before she went to see the cat. She said OK. but she had to be reminded. SHe was like a tornado trying to tell people hello while getting to the door without her 1 year old (half) sister following her out the door. Her PawPaw went out with her and that was all she needed to be as happy as a clam. The one year old was out too ...CAT!! EAT!! she was "chasing" the cat holding the food bowl and saying CAT EAT...too cute. The grand daughter would come in periodically to be sure each person had seen the cat and she came to tell us good bye when we left. She was grinning like crazy. She was soooo happy. Thank you other grand mother. You have made her day.

a new cat

2008-09-20T18:28:00.001-07:00

crying for mawmaw at bedtime

2008-09-18T05:22:00.000-07:00

I got a call last night at 8:25. Mr grand daughter was at other grandmother's with her mother so that she could go to the dentist this morning at 8:30. MOther is not working so it stands to reason that she would be the most appropriate person to take her to the dentist. Any way, at 8:25, I get a call. The girl is in tears. She is missing me. We talk for some time. It turns out that she is sleepy and no one will go lay down with her in the bed. Beasts!! It only takes about 10 to 15 minutes to get her to sleep on a problem night. We turn the lights out at 8:30 and she goes to sleep. But you have to lay down with her, because she is scared to go by herself. How easy is that??. Just go do it for GOd's sake. I have told her mother to keep her schedule. Now this was a school night and she was letting her lay on the couch. JusT go lay down for a few minutes. Jeez. She even sniffled during the time she was telling me about they fact that there is a new kitten at the house. She was afraid it would run away b ecause it is going to live outside and it only has a towel to live on, no box. I told her that cats will come back to where they are fed and not to worry about it. That darn cat better be there this morning when she gets up.

where does the time go?

2008-09-10T04:22:00.000-07:00

OK, maybe I am taking in too much caffeine in the evening. I do drink green tea for supper and with my night meds. I don't want to think this is too much caffeine. I don't want to not drink it.I like it, it is refreshing. I could drink water and am going to have to try it to see if it makes a difference. I see my clock way too often during the night. Now last night or this morning in particular at 3am, the girl had an itchy spot that needed attention. That brought attention to other itchy spots, then to her dreams, then to something she was laughing at....oh no, don't really wake up.... go back to sleep baby, lay down, baby. Thank you lord, she did lay down and go back to real sleep, So did we after a fashion. Then in an instant it was time for the alarm to go off. I swear I had just closed my eyes and now they are open again. I am not getting enough REM sleep, or something. I should have had 2 good hours of comfy snoozing. I don't feel like I did. I just feel awake enough to look at the net and mail etc. WHy does the clock speed up when you are sleeping. What evil mastermind has done this to me/us? It can't just be that my son is ill and is going through a counter-adjustment period, my 5 year old grand daughter who lives with us is precocious and requires quite a bit of interaction time, my spouse and I are getting older, me faster than him evidently, and both have jobs to attend to, we are still waiting to finish remodeling our kitchen, we need to have a major garage sale and are collecting items for that with no real place to put the items until the day of the sale, we just got over several days of no power thanks to downed trees from Hurricane Gustav,,, let's see, is that all?

Decisions

2008-08-19T15:28:00.000-07:00

I took my 24 year old son to the hospital today, 2 hours away,,,and left him there. This was not easy for me to do. THis is his third and hopefully last chemo treatment. His father has been with him during his previous two treatments, but school has started and his dad is in a new teaching position this year and should not miss school so early in the year. My son has said that he would rather have me at home with his 5 year old daughter and that staying up there the whole time would be too hard on me. I am not in the best of health, blah blah. I have to agree with him on both counts. But it does not help my feelings of just leaving him there. He is a grown man, yes. I am a control freak, yes. I want to help and fix everything, yes. So leaving him there without doing anything makes me want to pull my hair out. Not that I could do much other than go get him interesting things to eat.

Birthday time

2008-08-04T19:20:00.000-07:00

School is about to start, but in the mean time it's birthday time. My granddaughter will be 5. Amazing, 5 years old. I don't see how she can grow up so fast. She is too sweet and innocent to keep growing up. No telling what lies ahead of her that I won't be able to ward off or protect her from. I hope she will always believe that she can come to us with anything.

We are having a gymnastics party. She loves to go to this place and play like a wild woman until time to have cake, then she tolerates the lighting of the candles and passing around the cake and ice cream. She can tolerate a few gifts being opened, espeically if hers is first, which she generally asks the birthday child to open first. Then she has had enough of the official party and wants to go back to the playing part. She is exhausted when it is over and pleased as punch.

Can't wait for her to have her own party there. She is so excited. We have an Aerial pinata and we will have an Aerial cake. What could be better.

chemo is yucky

2008-07-19T18:35:00.000-07:00

OK, I always knew it was true, but I can not tell you for sure that chemo is yucky. The effects I mean. My son, 24, is soooo friggin tired he doesn't even want to watch TV, This from a TV addict. He is also nauseated in the early morning. He looks like a raccoon, meaning that he has these big dark circles under his eyes. and he sighs. He stays covered up with a soft cotton sheet most of the time that he is in the recliner. He sometimes trades the recliner for his bed. He doesn't even want his dog in his lap. I hope he can make it through the rest of the treatments without giving up.

chemo starts next week

2008-07-05T10:44:00.000-07:00

OK I am stressed about this chemo. I am torn between being there helping him get through what ever happens and being here working and taking care of the girl. I only have a few paid days stored up at the moment and I need to hold on to them in case I need them for the next time he gets the 5 days of chemo or something else. My husband's work will start again soon after the second 5 days of chemo so he will be pretty much out of the rotation. Our son is stressed about the chemo too. How it will affect him and so forth. What's going to happen etc. And he has not been taking his antidepressants, so he is digging himself a hole that will hard to get out of. I am having a hard time focusing on this one day at a time. I am obsessing.

waiting for healing

2008-06-17T05:08:00.000-07:00

I am taking time at the computer instead of getting ready for work. I am home alone which is unusual. The girl is with her mama and the other maw maw until this afternoon and my son is in an out of town hospital. His dad is with him right now. We have been taking turns staying with him during his recuperation. He has had a huge surgery, the second and I hope last one necessary for testicular cancer. He was just diagnosed and had his first surgery on May 1st. From that surgery we found some spread into the blood vessels of the testicle and that the cancer was an aggressive nasty sort. THe plan then was to take out the lymph nodes in the trunk of the body to look for spread. That is no easy task and he is now recovering from that surgery. Because men have an extra rib on the right side, the doctors can not always get as high up in the body as they want on that side, to get all the nodes from around the kidney, so they end up having to remove that rib to complete the work. So he has this long incision that goes from the pubis up to the sternum and takes a right turn and goes over the rib cage toward the back. Ouch. The muscles that are cut through are the ones that are used when you breath and when you move the trunk. So he is having a murderous time getting the pain under control. The wound is healing well. He is moving around well. He has even had a shower with his Dad's help. It is terrible to see him in pain like that. But we encourage him to move about, to relax, to take the pain meds (no problem there) on time - the best nurse he had kept the meds coming every two hours to keep the pain down to a manageable level. The pathology report has come back, not as bad as it could be, only one positive node out of at least 20 that were taken, I am not sure of the number taken. So he will have chemo. He has already seen the oncologist and the treatments will be scheduled pretty soon, he has to heal from this surgery, then get started. He is the King of Second Chances and this is a highly treatable and curable cancer so this is just part of the plan to get to that cure. Keep your fingers crossed.

packing a wound, not packing heat

2008-05-24T19:52:00.000-07:00

For the non-medical or squeamish person, this may become icky. It is not my intention to gross you out.I'm just talking about what's going on. My son who is 24 was recently diagnosed with testicular cancer. He had surgery on May 1st through the groin. The incision was about 6 inches long, on the right side. About 10 days later one of the dogs jumped up on him, and I think that caused an internal bruising or bleeding to start. Four days after that, he complained to me about how much pain he was having, and being skeptical I wanted to take a look. What I saw was a hard red area surrounding the incision to the degree that I felt the only thing to do was to apply heat to get something to drain out. I told him if it wasn't better by Monday we would call the doctor, but I felt we would be calling before then. Within a few hours the wound was draining copious amounts of thick and thin old bloody drainage. We called the urology resident on call and within 30 minutes we were on our way back to the hospital. He was seen in the emergency room where the resident opened the wound and drained the corruption out, then packed the wound with wet dressings. They admitted him and started IV antibiotics and pain medicine. He was there 4 days. Then he came home. Now I am changing the dressing and packing the wound each morning. It it terribly painful for him to go through. I am a nurse so it is not physically hard for me to do the job. It is difficult to perform the duty while making him moan and cry. He wants me to go as fast as possible. I don't want to go too fast so that I get the wound nicely filled with the wet gauze. But if I go too slow it is like I am torturing him. So each time we go through it, it is a hair-raising ordeal for us both. The wound is healing but not as fast as it needs to to keep his next surgery on schedule. The head of the program called him this week to check on him and to see when he was coming back for a check up and to tell him they might have to postpone his surgery a week to let the wound heal more. You don't want him to have surgery with an active infection or an open wound but you don't want to give the aggressive tumor another week to crop up somewhere new while we are waiting. So we try not to worry too much and keep on going day to day.

a bump in the road

2008-05-20T19:52:00.000-07:00

The boy and his dad have just returned from another hospital stay at LSU Shreveport. Seems the boy got a localized hematoma / infection that caused his incision to open and begin pouring old icky blood out. We trucked on up to LSU after speaking to the urology resident on call. What a nice guy. He waited for us to get there and got to work on him then. He spent 3 nights there. It looks a lot better, Now mama the nurse gets to do dressing changes every morning till be go back next week. Hopefully he will be healed enough to go ahead with the next surgery during the first week of June. Sheesh.

absent other grandmother

2008-05-17T07:32:00.000-07:00

Something is going on with other grandmother. On mother's day weekend I am told she chose to be away from her home when grandbaby's mama had the kids at her house. Mine is supposed to be there with supervised visitation. Other grandfather was there, in and out. So I guess that counts. Now this weekend, first the mama was just coming on Sunday and was just coming to our house in preparation for the girl's pre-k graduation. Last night she calls to say she is coming in at noon today and wants to pick the girl up. I say ok. She talks to the girl all about it, makes her happy, gets her excited, then tells me other grandmother won't be there again and other grandfather will be out of town with a ball tournament. I told her we would talk about it later.
That I didn't understand why her mother would do that when she knows it's supposed to be supervised visitation only. If I say no, I look like the bad guy to the girl, not letting her stay with her mother since her mother already told her she was coming,etc. That is not right, I feel like they are playing me. If I say yes, then I am going against what the lawyer and the psychologist have said. This is the second time it has happened. I think I will tell her it can't happen again or there will be no more visits until the issue can be straightened out. At the same time, I need them to help out with child care during the girl's dad's surgery and hospital time that is fast approaching. I wonder what other grandmother thinks she is doing? getting a well deserved break from extra duties or making her daughter take care of her own kids for a change, or what. WHAT.

my husband lost his job

2008-05-15T19:16:00.000-07:00

My husband was told today that he will not have a job at his current school in the fall. Seems his school will have 6 teachers too many in the fall with the projected enrollment. He is a magnet teacher and this is the last year of the magnet grant. He does not teach a core subject. So he got cut. Great. He is in his last year of drop. One year to go to real retirement. It is possible that only a desperate principal will want to hire him because he will only be at the new school one year. On the other hand, it is possible that someone who knows him will jump at the chance to have him on staff. I hope the latter is true. He is a good teacher, and a good person to have on staff. He says he was not surprised that it happened. He says his principal said he would rather have walked on broken glass than to have told him the news. So now he has to start talking to principals to see if there are any openings at their schools at the same time that he packs up his belongings and down loads everything off his school take home computer onto a hard drive, and helps his son get ready for surgery and gets ready for a garage sale. The motto at his current school is Impossible is Nothing. I guess they are right.

supervised visitation

2008-05-13T02:40:00.000-07:00

Why would a mother, who knows that her daughter must have supervised visitation to see her children, elect to go away for the weekend that the daughter is coming to town, which happens to be mother's day weekend. Does she need a weekend away with her sisters so badly that she leaves her spouse, who is not a bad guy at all with the responsibility of supervising the visitation? Or Does she now think that her daughter is doing so well in recovery that she no longer needs the supervision required by the custodial (grand)parents? Makes you want to go hmmmmm.

Good News Bad News

2008-05-08T19:58:00.000-07:00

My husband and I accompanied our 24 year old son to his post operative visit to hear the report and treatment plan. It was not exactly what we expected. It seems that his testicular cancer is aggressive and needs further treatment. He needs further surgery, and major surgery at that. The pathology report from that surgery will determine if chemotherapy is necessary. There is some good news. The tumor is not mixed, which can complicate treatment. It is a single tumor, just a nasty one. The pathology from the first surgery showed containment within the testicle and micro-invasion in the blood vessels leading from the testicle. There is no evidence of tumor any where else in the body. WHen Lance Armstrong was diagnosed he had it in his brain and lung and liver. So believe me it could be worse. We are ok, just scared for our son and what he is facing and what he is going through. He has had a hell of life with mental health problems and alcohol and drug abuse out the whazoo. He has just recently gotten a little better outlook and cleaned up. God Bless him. We love him.

The past predicts the future

2008-05-03T17:54:00.000-07:00

The girl's momma has a bad habit and history if you will of picking boy friends that are losers. I can not say what number she is on since the breakup of my son and her. Some of them have been very short, others have been longer. She has currently been involved with a young man for ?a few weeks? Nice polite courteous when we met him. Open about his past when I discussed it with him just recently. The past is not good at all, Just out of prison in Feb for drug related gun and robbery charge after serving 5 years. He says he wants to turn his life around. Has a new job to start on Monday. HOWEVER, I tried to tell her that it was too soon to get involved with someone since she was still in recovery and that if her facility had encouraged the relationship, I thought they were off base. He did advise her not to move into the rent subsidized apartment she had found, and did find her a nice little house to rent in a neighborhood, but he also was invited in, as to live there. Way too soon in the relationship, but true to form. He was helping with finances and did not have a vehicle so it was helping on both sides.
ADDENDUM: It seems that boy friend came home high - she said on weed- but it didn't matter what it was, that he wasn't coming in and she wasn't having anything more to do with him, that she could not put him or his actions ahead of her recovery and her children. It seems he left and got drunk and went to a friend or relative's house (I can't keep up) and "messed with" a 12 year old girl. I don't know how much messing with was done, but he is now in jail. His grandmother came to B's house and supposedly told her that if she had let him come home, he wouldn't have gotten in trouble, so of course the whole family is screwed up.
The point being that it is too soon for her to make these kind of decisions and she is making the wrong decisions when it comes to men, and she brings them into her house to live too soon. This is not good for her and certainly not good for her children. Now the next time she sees her daughter, she will have to come up with some excuse as to why he is gone.

The big C

2008-04-30T20:30:00.000-07:00

Just when you think it's safe to take a breath, the big C comes into the picture. Yes, Cancer has reared it's ugly head in our home. Not for long though for tomorrow it will be removed from our son via a testicle. Yes as in Lance Armstrong. Let's hope our ultimate outcome is as remarkable as his. It seems that about 5 weeks ago our son found some lumps and after being strongly encouraged to go to the doctor - you can not tie them up and drag them in by a rope unless they are trying to kill somebody - he went to the doctor who said - yep you got a problem. It is either a cyst, a tumor or cancer, I think it is cancer, you need to have this test and come back in two days for discussion. There were "technical difficulties" with him getting his paperwork together but he eventually got the test done yesterday. He was then taken to see a doctor who said, we don't have anyone here who can talk to you about this. It is not a cyst, it is a tumor or cancer. You have an appointment tomorrow at LSU Shreveport Urology clinic at 8:30 am. Be there.

He and his father left this morning a little before 6 am and were there on time, thank you very much. His dad called me about 11:30 or so - yes I was a nervous wreck awaiting the call - and by that time they had seen a very nice young physician who had examined him, had the sonogram repeated,had a ton of blood drawn, explained the situation, scheduled surgery and laid it out. Yes it is cancer. Yes people are afraid of the C word, but you can get over this. The surgery is a small deal, the illness is not. This is serious, but the tumor appears to be contained to the testicle and if it proves to be so, you may be able to get by with just some radiation treatments. We won't know the whole story until we get the pathology reports back and all the cancer markers and the cat scan that will be done after surgery tomorrow. Yes tomorrow. We need to get this out. Relatively simple procedure, spend the night in the hospital, probably go home the next day after the cat scan. If he doesn't get the cat scan done while in the hospital, there is a 30 day wait for a cat scan - don't think I won't be calling the governor's office about funding tomorrow.

So I will stay here and keep the girl on her routine schedule as much as possible and the guys will go off on this hair raising and scary return to the adventure into Cancerville. I will wait anxiously with my cell phone in my pocket and appear to be working while in actually living and breathing in some other dimension of earth time and space continuum. More later.

a new school

2008-04-27T10:24:00.000-07:00

The girl has been accepted into the academic magnet school at the kindergarten level. We are so pleased. This is where her Pawpaw wanter her to be as first choice. It is not far from our house too. Which will make evening events easier for us. The school requires parental involvement and requires the student and parent to sign a contract of participation. Gee, no pressure. I think she can do the work and will behave, but this probably is designed for the older child....
Any way we are happy that this has worked out. A big hurdle has been crossed.
Now to find a day care that drops off and picks up. I am told there are several, I have one in mind that her daddy went to many years ago. Funny how things come around.
THe girl will be "graduating" from pre K pretty soon. Yes, it will be cute, No it doesn't mean anything, Maybe increase her self esteem and feeling of accomplishment. Somedays she hates school, mostly because of interpersonal relationships. She loves her teacher. So we will see what happens at "big school".

Let it be

2008-04-09T15:47:00.000-07:00

Let it be is my husband's new mantra. He tells it to me quite often. He is trying to keep me from going over the edge. I am working on not going over the edge. I am better now than I was on Monday. So that is good. But I'm not letting it all be. I am letting the other grandmother be. She made me mad and hurt my feelings by mail on Sautrday, but I don't think she could help it and in the long run she may not really have meant it like she said it. She may actually need me at some point. She is also going over the edge. So I should not do anything to make it worse, and I did just that although it was unintentional. AND anything she says or does can not hold a candle to the newest wrinkle in the sheet. I am not able to let be the fact that my son is digging yet a bigger hole for himself to be buried in. There is nothing I can do about it. That is part of my anxiety. We pressed charges against him last year for forgery and theft. He finally went to court over those and some other charges Monday. He was sentenced to not less than 10 years and not more than 70 years at hard labor in the state penitentary, sentence delayed while he is in two years of drug court. So he has two years to follow rules and be clean and work when he hasn't been able to do it for 10 years. One day at a time is not possible for me at this moment. I am trying, but I am way ahead of myself. and I am "what if" ing like crazy. Each day is a little better though. I am able to concentrate a little better at work and am able to talk about. My son is calmer than I have ever seen him. He seems to think he can do it. For his sake and his daughter's sake, and for his dad and me, I hope he can.

angry or hurt or both

2008-04-05T17:10:00.000-07:00

I sent my grandbaby mama a letter outlining why I didn't want her to keep the child overnight by herself yet. She is in recovery and is living in a 3/4 house. She is doing well, but I have some concerns. I sent a copy of the letter to her parents. The point of the copy was to keep the open communication and good relation ship going that we have all around. Well call me a fool. I got a letter from the other grandmother who must have been angry when she wrote. She focused on my double standards and all the failure I have had with my son, the grandbaby daddy. She pointed out some positive things about her daughter that I had not mentioned in the letter. She ended the letter by telling me not to communicate with her unless it concerned the best interest of the grandbaby.

This has really caught me off guard. I thought we were both working toward the same goal of getting her daughter back on track and each of us taking care of a respective grandchild. I thought we got along well and were open and honest with each other. This is another area of stress that will now affect the child unless I am very careful. Another thing to manage.

I didn't talk to the other grandmother much about my son because the child was usually there and I have to be careful what is said. She thinks both her parents are at school to learn how to be better parents. She is only 4 years old and has seen plenty in those years.

Many times when I would bring up a problem to the grandbaby's mama she would lash out at me about my son. To me this is a way of saying, don't complain about me, look at your son. The two issues are separate. The two people are separate. They do affect the child, but they are separate. My son is no angel, we have had tremendous trouble with him, we have tried many solutions and currently have charges pressed against him. We have chosen to leave him incarcerated until his court date. We asked the judge to mandate drug and mental health treatment no matter what his sentence would be. It does cause extra problems because he lives here. Our latest plan was that he would not come back because he would go to treatment and a half way house. But it appears the judge wants him in drug court. To make that have a chance to work, He has no place to go but here and has made a commitment to us to try to work the program. We can only hope that he will. It is not the best situation, but we will have to make it work.

It's not like we have ignored the whole situation since we found out the baby was on the way. We have made plans from the beginning to be there in case there were problems. And there have been problems over and over. On both sides. That's why we have custody. Not my son and us, Just us. I want to say that it appears as though they have ignored the signs until it was too late, blamed our son, belived her, etc. It was only recently that they asked for his help in finding out some things and seemed to have a new view of him. And does she think we don't know we have failure here? Gee, thanks for pointing it out so plainly. I'll surely remember your concern.

sharing the child

2008-03-22T20:16:00.001-07:00

I do not have a problem sharing the child's time with the other grandmother and her family. They enjoy having her there and she likes to go, especially if her mother is there. She seems quite happy to visit with her mother lately. I will be interested in seeing how she reacts when this weekend is over. It is special in two ways. It is Easter, so there will be festivities that way and it is her other paw paw's birthday, so something will be going on that way too. When she is there, she has her half sister who is one +. amd wants to do everything she does, there is her uncle who is her mother's brother. He is 11 or so. He is an athelete. Playing baseball and football. There is her grandmother and grandfather. There may be great grandmothers and even a great great grandmother if she feels like coming. There are great aunts too. So there can be lots of people around. And there is her mother. She seems to not be nervous now around her mother or when her mother calls. She doesn't refuse to talk or get shy on the phone. She hasn't mentioned punching the glass in a while. So we will see what she says and what she does after we get her tomorrow evening. One thing though, she won't get to see her half brother. I don't know when she saw him last. His grandmother doesn't allow him to visit the other grandparents at this time whether his mother is there or not. I think they will have to petition the court for visitation.

Palm Sunday Weekend

2008-03-16T20:04:00.000-07:00

I spent part of the Saturday of Palm Sunday Weekend waiting and I do mean waiting for 3 and 1/2 hours to visit with my son for 20 minutes at his incarceration point. There were several problems there on Saturday which pushed visitation to the limit. There being no communication between the guard and the waiting visitors, there is no way to no what is going on. There should be a 20 minute visit for 5 residents, a change out of visitors and residents and another set go in for 30 minutes. B ut it was not happening that way this day. Good Grief. When I finally got my turn, my son said they had problems all day including a mix up where someone thought they were getting to see their mom, got to the visitation area, then was told he had lost his privilege to visit, which caused an uproar that ending in a tazing. That of course took time and guards away from the visiting routine and helped get things behind. He also said there were two fights that broke out since visiting started. What a way to live day by day.
He says he is ready to be out and to do good. I hope to God he has it in him to do it. That is his only hope. He can not do it on his own. He thinks he will be sentenced to drug court this coming week. His dad is to call the judge again on Monday to see what he may have decided. He has been there 4 weeks. It is a small and quite over crowded area. There is a new warden since there is a new sheriff. I don't know if the changes she has made are good or not. My son doesn't think so. Things are more restricted, which adds to the stress. He has come through this better than I thought. He says he doesn't want to go back. Perhaps he can remember what it is like and make decisions that will keep him clean and straight and away from there. He knows we will not tolerate the other behavior and he has no place to go but home and we feel we must help him if the judge sentences him to drug court. Other wise he will have no way to participate and will fail right off the bat. It may be codependent but he needs the chance to succeed or fail.

Palm Sunday was spent with mostly church related activity. My granddaughter who is four and a half sang with the other kids in church "Ride on King Jesus, No one can a hinder me" She did pretty well. Of course I had to process with her carrying her baby doll and stand with her down front so she would stay, but who cares. I want her to learn to be comfortable doing things in the church. She is more used to the contemporary service in the fellowship hall than the Sanctuary. Her mother was there with her (half) sister to watch her sing. Then we went to the after church picnic and egg hunt at Buhlow rec area. My Granddaughter had a grand time, swinging, playing in gravel, playing with people's dogs, doing the egg hunt, seeing the Easter Bunny and being with her mother. She got the most eggs in her group, Her huge basket was briming over and there were still plenty of eggs to find. Her little sister even picked some up and seemed to have fun doing it. We had to cut out early because it was major nap time by then. After that we went to the other grandmothers house for a good while, then she and I had to leave the group first. That did not make her happy at all. She was able to get over it and stop crying by the time we were well on our way to the grocery store to pick up some essentials. She did tell me she was ok but she was still sad and mad. By the time we got home she was ok. She rode her bike and visited a little with some kids down the block, ate a good supper and finally went to sleep.

Her pawpaw has come back to the land of the living after suffering through a terrible stomach virus that grabbed him Friday evening just before sundown with aches and chills and then the trots. If he had not improved by today I was going to take him in, but he has made enough recovery to be able to each some chicken soup and is walking around some. Thank God. I need him up and around and well. THis sick business is for the birds. He missed the Neville Brothers for gosh sakes. He will not be going to work tomorrow. He needs a least another day to get his legs back under him.

Pressure all around

2008-03-09T19:13:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the girl spent part of the day with her mother at other grandmothers house. They seemed to have an ok time. This morning she told me that she had a dream that she put her arm through a glass window. That is something she saw her mother do on Halloween. She told me not to worry, that it was just a story dream, like the story box in Pinky Dinky Doo. That she couldn't be hurt by it. I told her mother and her grandmother so that they would be aware. She went back to other Maw Maw's today to play with her cousins from Austin. Her mom was there too for a few hours. When her mom came by to give us the car seat I told her I thought she was pressurred or rushed. She said that she felt that she was under constant pressure because she has so much to do all the time. I asked her to ask her counselor what will happen when she gets out and has free time and is tempted to use. She seems to be doing ok, but again every moment is full.

a visit from mama

2008-03-03T04:22:00.000-08:00

I had trepidation about how the weekend would go. It went fine. Thank God. The girl did fine. Her baby sister however was jealous of her being around and competeing for attention and consistently threw fits and even bonked her on the head once. They all went to the zoo including the other mawmaw. The girl enjoyed it especially the alligators and the alligator snapping turtles. Her mother did tell me that the girl did have two wetting accidents, one where she wet the bed. I tried to explain that she is under stress and is conflicted, probably dreaming some things too and that we would be working on them as soon as possible. SHe spent Friday and Saturday nights at other mawmaw's. Sunday moring after church she was ready for me to come get her. We were taking the trampoline down from the old house and taking it to our house so after we got it loaded into the truck I went over. We had a good visit. Her mama seemed ok. Not so nervous or high strung. The mawmaw said that she did much better this time. Didn't get hyper and was in bed by 8:15!. Chasing 2 kids and going to the zoo had to take it's toll. It is hard for me to not go to sleep when I lay down with the girl. The plan is for her to come to our house next Saturday for part of the day. I think that is a good idea. She can interact with her while I get some work done around here.

A visit to son

2008-03-01T12:41:00.000-08:00

Hubby had to go out of town to a workshop. Granddaughter was visiting her mother at other mawmaw's. I was able to go to the visiting time for our son. I was at the parking area when I realized I had to go back for the back of sweats I had left at the house. Thank goodness I was no later that I was. I was the 3rd to last person to register for a morning visit and I was there about 8:30. I got in at 10. I passed the time by reading a John Grisham novel. There are all types of people there in the crowded waiting area. Mostly women. Mostly black. Lots of people were turned away today, told to come back for the noon visiting time. When I finally got in, he was looking ill. Had a cough, sounded congested and sinusy. He had been to medic call and was taking something for sinus but you evidently have to be pretty ill to actually go to the doctor. I suggested he ask for medic call again. He thanked me for the sweats. They keep t pretty cold in there all the time. He is easily chilled & doesn't like it cold. So I know he doesn't feel well. It causes me quite a bit of anxiety to think that he will need care that he is not going to get, especially regarding his mental health. He says people have been waiting 4 months to go to the doctor. Yes, I know that if he had been compliant with his regimen he might not be in this mess but that is a moot point. He wanted to know if we knew anything about how long he might be in or anything about drug court yet. I told him that the judge told his dad he would tell us something within a week, so we should know something soon. He was despondent about not knowing what would happen next and about how bad things were in there. He said there were a bunch of bad gansters in there who were jumping on people for little reason. One person had been cut up recently. He doesn't think he can stay out of trouble until April. He wishes he could just get his sentence if he's not going to get drug court. I told him the Judge talked more about drug court than anything else and that he talked about rolling all the charges into one court date. There is no bible study going on, just a lot of hating. THere are not many white people at all, which is not something he has said much before. Someone he knows pretty well has just come in so maybe that will help. He is very depressed, looked like he would cry. Looked desperate. I hated seeing him like that. It caused me quite a bit of anxiety and sadness and worry. I tried to tell him only he could change his life to stay out of the situation in the future and only he could change how it was affecting him now. He said he new it but that it didn't look good right now that it was hard. I can only imagine.

waiting on the judge

2008-02-25T03:44:00.000-08:00

He finally got through to the judge Friday to ask for drug treatment for our son. The judge questioned if inpatient treatment was the best option since he had just had it a year ago. (durn) and thought drug court might work out better. In that case, he could continue to see his outpatient mental health provider. So I don't know if that means the judge will mandate mental health or not. He did say that having a court date already in April will speed things up. So perhpas he will stay in jail til then. He does need punishment for what he has done. If they really look at his arrest record, he can be considered a habitual offender and be given longer sentencfes, but there is no space in jail for that. The court system is bogged down with offenders and I would say that they do try to help people. I guess we need to get back with the detective or the DA or perhaps the court appointed attorney to be able to actually find out the plan.

I can't seem him going clean enough to do drug court unless he is in jail awhile. He has been a daily weed user and has quit before but always goes back. Drug court can be for as long as two years. That could give him a chance to get better, if he stays on his meds and develops some goals. He has got to change his people places and things to move on. And he has to go to some meetings and get a real sponsor or volunteer at a drug center or something.

IT'S ALWAYS WORSE THAN YOU THINK

2008-02-19T18:07:00.000-08:00

We have been waiting for the inevitable arrest for a few days. Our son's boss called his Dad to say that he had been picked up at 3:30 at work by the detective. This much we expected. From his actions over the last few days we knew something else was going on besides what we were aware of but we did not expect him to tell us up front when he called to talk to his dad about 6pm. He had been in interrogation all that time. Seems there is lots more going on. And for the first time that I am aware of, he has provided info about some activity and people involved, including himself. You think you know how bad something is and you brace yourself against that. Then you get hit with something worse. You do indeed wonder how bad can something get? Each time you think they have gotten to the rock bottom and you find out the next time there is a deeper bottom than before. He showed remorse about his daughter, not anger about getting caught. That is new. The detective called to tell his Dad to call the Judge in the morning because he wants help with the drugs. This may be true after his actions over the weekend. We will see what the Judge thinks. I can tell you that drugs are bad, bad, bad. Combined with mental illness they are the ruination of this young man's life so far. We are told not to give up hope. I wonder how realistic that is?

Something happened.

2008-02-16T21:11:00.000-08:00

Something has happened that has caused our son to do some soul searching. This happens about once or twice a year when a serious incident occurs. We do not know what has happened and we may not ever know the whole story. It has to do with something that happened while he was with some people this afternoon or early evening. He called his dad about 7:30 to come and pick him up from a local grocery store. The grand daughter and I had just left to attend a play with some friends, thank goodness.

When his dad got there, our son was upset and agitated, crying, sobbing actually. Incoherent at times. Certainly he had been drinking but said he had not been doing anything else. He said that he has come to realize that he doesn't have any real frineds. He had to get away from some people today that were doing what ever so that he would not be part of it because he has his own court issues coming up and he doesn't need anything else. There has to be more to it that he is not telling of course, but it must have been pretty bad for him to be this upset.

He lept out of the truck at a stop sign at one point and started running down the road. His dad got him back in side and eventually home and into the shower. He said he was sorry for all the crap he has pulled and that he really must be crazy to haave done some of this stuff. etc. He asked his dad to pray with h im. I have seen him like this and it is gut wrenching. You wonder what will happen next. His dad got him settled down and asleep before we got home.

We will see what tomorrow brings.

Charlie Brown

2008-02-16T20:59:00.000-08:00

The girl and I went to see the local college's production of You're a Good Man Charlie Brown tonight. We met up with a co worker and her family. The girl did really well considering that we were leaving home at a time when we would normally be getting her bath and winding down for the evening. We sat in the balcony so we had great seats. The view was good, the sound was good. She seemed to enjoy it. There were some moments when she laughed out loud and some moments when she asked me what was going on. But all in all she had a good time. Her favorite was Snoopy. The guy did a good job and had quite a good voice to boot.

She took her baby with her. Wrapped in a pink flannel blanket. She looked precious. Off white panty hose, white tennies, pink cotton tiered dress, hair in two high pony tails with some hanging down too. and lets not forget her multicolored polkadot osh kosh rain jacket. She held that baby almost the whole night. Until Intermission when we left her carefully on the chair when we went to get a snack and go to the bathroom. After Intermission, she held the baby again, but was much more elongated in my lap. The shoes had to come off. She made it through the end of the show and home without a mishap. She thought we had parked too far away from the door of the theatre. But we survived. When we got home she told PawPaw about the show while he helped her change and put herself and the baby in the bed. She was alseep in no time, with no crying or carrying on. Sometimes when she is overly tired she turns into a whiny beast. Not tonight.

nervous on the phone

2008-02-15T18:09:00.000-08:00

My grand baby's mama called yesterday. The child didn't want to talk to her mama. Later I asked her why not. She couldn't say. I asked her if she sometimes got nervous when her mama called. She nodded her head. I asked her if she thought something might happen. She said yes. I said like maybe she would put her hand through a glass window? She said yeah. I told her she was not going to do that again, but I could understand why she would be worrying about it. I told her she did not have to talk to her mama if she didn't want to, but when she did want to talk to her we could call her on the phone. This child is 4 years old and it makes her nervous to talk to her mother on the phone!!!!

confronting the beast

2008-02-14T17:46:00.000-08:00

I want to confront the beast. What I mean is that I want to attend a meeting of some sort where the grand baby's mama will be in session so that I can bring up some of the things that have happened to her daughter due to her actions. I want to see her react. I guess I need to approach her counselor to see if they even do it that way. If there has been a family day I am unaware of it. I am not her family, but certainly represent an important part of her family. I have vengence in my heart for her. That is really not a good thing - to want her to suffer - rather than to want her to succeed. I do believe that she will have to suffer before she can succeed, but my focus seems to be on the lack of suffering she seems to have done rather than on the extensive work she will have to do to be able to succeed at this recovery.

imagination

2008-02-12T04:07:00.001-08:00

A 4 year old uses her imagination to experiment with roles of people in power, teacher, mama, mawmaw, pawpaw, police, friend, whoever they conceive as being important or in power. The grand daughter loves to do this. One of the most common scenarios is ok mawmaw how bout you be the little sister, I be the big sister (age varies from 10 to 16 to 21). Our mama is dead. Why I say? She was sick and now she is dead. I am in charge now. I am the boss of you. OK. Get ready You are going to school. I don't want you to leave me at school. I want to go with you. No. Your job is to go to school to learn. My job is to go to work to earn money to buy you stuff. I will be back later. Now get in the car. I can drive. You have to ride in the back seat.

I was telling this to my counselor. He thought it was very interesting that the mother was dead. Dead and gone. and she was in charge now. The old stuff is gone. THe new stuff is here. And the new mama has a job and takes care of the baby. That's what mama's do, not hang around the house with their boy friend. HOORAY. She is telling me she knows the right thing to do. Even if she is miss bossy about it. The latest website I was looking at says kids her age love to be boss and take over authority, test limits, etc. She certainly is on task about that.

A day with mama

2008-02-11T03:28:00.000-08:00

The girl spent a day with her mama on Saturday.There was a traumatic departure and she wanted to come home for a while, Then she decided she would stay and watch TV a while. Her other mawmaw said she had a restless night. On Sunday morning when she got up she told other mawmaw to call me. So of course she did call and we went over about an hour later or so later. We stayed a little while, 30 minutes, to transition, and visit with them. Other mawmaw told me the mother's long term plan is to finish her 6 months a the 3/4 house then start votech school in Avoyelles Parish. They have a certificate for drug counseling and she is thinking of taking those classes. The mama is good with people and this could be a good way to stay in recovery too. I vish her the best and we will see. That's a long time from now. This is month one after treatment and being in the house.

When I asked the girl in front of her other grandparents how her mama was she told me "She put her arm thru the glass". We all said, no she didn't in one way or another. She is fixated on that moment. Later she told me they went for a walk together. I asked if mama asked about daddy and she said no. Other Grandmother told me that the mother said she had forgotten how much work it was to take care of children and something about being to selfish and self centered before. and that she still wakes up that way and has to work on it every day. She had to walk home from work the other day and that just about did her in. Her counselor told her that she needed to suck it up and humble herself and get on with life. That she had ruined a job where she could have had anything she wanted or needed and that was in the past and this was how it is now. Her counselor is pretty tough, and that's just what she needs. Someone who can match or beat her in toughness and calling it like it is.

2008-02-09T18:36:00.000-08:00

The mother got a one day pass from the 3/4 house today. She and her mother picked up the grand daughter on their way back to town. The girl was anxiously awaiting the arrival. We even had to call them to see how much longer they would be. SHe was grining from ear to ear when she saw her mama. I wanted to talk to her mama alone but I guess I will have to drive to the 3/4 house alone to do it, or maybe do it by mail. I called about 7 and talked to the other maw maw and she said things were going fine. She was expecting a melt down when the mother had to leave. but other than that the girl had said several times that she was spending the night there. THey were planning on taking her to church in the morning. She did say that the mother said she had forgotten how much work it was to take care of kids. Imagine that. Her mother said how do you thing Susan and I feel about that? Of course I don't know the rest of the story. About 7:30 the mother called wanting to know what I wanted to do, that the girl wanted to come home to us because her mother was leaving. The girl was clinging to her mother and whining. I said, well you just don't want to see her cry. If you leave her here she will cry too. Ask your mother what she thinks. Her mother, the other mawmaw said she thought it would be okay after the mother left and they settled her down. I haven't heard back from them so I assume it turned out all right.

It's always something

2008-02-08T03:48:00.000-08:00

I have been saying for some time that I want to bring my grand daughter to spend the night at my neice's house. She is young, has a nice husband, a great house, a tolerant cat, and if anything should "happen" to pawpaw and me, they are who we choose to raise her. We must start making it second nature for her to stay overnight with them so as she gets older she will want to go ther. Well, don't let fate make your decisions!!. We have been a little tight on money since before Christmas, then we had two checks forged and caught the act but not after it caused overdrafts and those costs were not refunded.blah blah. So the utility bill was due. Pawpaw was going to pay it during his free time at school. Something happened at school and he didn't get to go. He went after school and guess what. They don't take credit cards at the payment office. They will in a couple of months. So we didn't have heat or lights in February. So I called the neice * ahem as she says, after first calling my mother who I know has extra space, but it got way too complicated too fast. So I called the neice. She said sure, come on. THey were so accomodating. When I picked up the girl I told her we were having a sleep over at the neice's house. She said, "WIth my friends from school?" I said no just me and you and paw paw. She decided that wasn't a real sleep over but it would be okay. We got there with our pizza and overnight stuff and had quite a good evening. I don't think we caused too much disturbance. There were no tears so that was good. She had to be told a couple of times to not do something, but that happens at home too. We had a comfortable room with a star light and a lava lamp, what could be better since the girl is really lava girl and people don't know it because we keep it quiet. She slept well and in the morning she wanted to know where the nephew in law was. He had gone up the driveway to have coffee with his mom. She said Why. I said "He goes to check on his mom and day every morning". She said. "Will he come back?" I told her sure. That seemed to satisfy her. I sat her on the counter for her to ear her oatmeal and drink a little coffee milk. Then she told me she was going to live at Tracy's house. So we had to discuss that. She is ready for a new house and she likes that one.

wheels of justice

2008-02-07T18:42:00.000-08:00

The wheels of justice move slowly. It is estimated to take two weeks from the time a judgement is decreed until it makes the rounds of the two lawyers offices and back to the judge's office for final signature. Come on people! I am waiting for this paper. And when it is ready I will have to pay for each copy I get. As soon as the copies are ready we can begin the process of adding our grand daughter onto our insurances. Then I can get her some counseling to see how things are from an experienced educated third party. This person should be able to tell us if we are handling things correctly and if she is ok, please God, let her be ok.

a call at bedtime

2008-02-04T20:00:00.000-08:00

I just about had my grand daughter down for the night when her mother called. My grand daughter spoke briefly to her mother, then got so hyper she was jumping on the bed, talking loudly, interrupting the conversation on the phone, tumbling around. I had to hang up to get her to settle down. Then she started crying for her mama. That kills me. She has not cried for her mother in months. She only cried for her tonight because of the time her mother called, right at bed time. Her mother will be at the ohter grand mother's home this Saturday to visit. So my grand daughter can go there and visit with her mother, sister, grandmother, grand father and uncle. I won't know for a while if she will spend the night or if I will need to go back and get her. Her mother will not be spending the night. She can leave the 3/4 house for visiting but not be away for the night yet. THis will be a well supervised visit. Her mother is not driving, no license, no insurance, so she can't take her any where.

to visit or not

2008-02-03T12:34:00.000-08:00

Here is another week end. Should we take the girl to visit her mother or not? This is the first week end in the 3/4 house. THere was not mention from the other grandmother that they planned to go visit yesterday. I assumed they weren't going today because of the big Mardi Gras Parade and Super Bowl Game. That would prevent her dad from going but not her mom from bringing the youngest daughter. My husband said that we might consider taking the girl every other weekend but that we were not obligated to do even that. That the other grand parents should be considering taking her to visit. So we didn't go yesterday. We had a very busy day attending the long and tiring children's Mardi Gras Parade, loading up on beads and candy and twinkies, then resting, then like a crazy person, going with her to Walmart to go some shopping while pawpaw finished his nap. She did fine in Walmart, it was the ten million other people in there that got on my nerves and in my way. She loves to ride that pink horse in the lobby. She kissed it goodbye when we left. Then we came home and fixed supper and then it was bath time and bed time, so there was no time yesterday. Her Mama must have used up all her minutes for the week already because we have not heard from her either to know how she is doing or what her schedule is. I do not want to withhold the child from her mother nor do I want the appearance of doing that. At the same time, I need some kind of reassurance that this business of seeing her more often is not causing the problems at school and I won't know that untill some time from now when we have gotten a counseling appointment and been in it for a while. So I guess I am not taking her today.

a note from the teacher

2008-02-01T19:50:00.000-08:00

Yesterday the grand child came home with quite a note from the teacher. It was not telling us what a joy she is to have in the classroom. Well, we had a sit down. Gentle, non threatening and clearly persistent with the decision that if she did not get a smiley face today, her PawPaw would go to school with her Monday and bring his wooden spoon to spank her hand if she couldn't behave. Now the grand child is sure that grown ups can not stay at school and she is going to ask Ms. Any about that to be sure. On the other had if she did get a smiley face today we would have a sit down supper inside McDonald's with the big indoor play area. WELLLLL, she got her smiley face. I was so happy. She said " and I didn't get in any trouble and I didn't get my name on the board and I took a nap". What progress. We still have to get to the bottom of why she is acting out. We will start counseling as soon as I can find a person who sees kids this young who is on our insurance list. Plan to make those calls Monday. It will take a little while to get our paperwork from the court, but it will also take a little while for an appointment.

attorney visit

2008-01-31T04:18:00.000-08:00

It pays to have attorneys who know their stuff. Ours are confident that things will go well Monday afternoon and we will be awarded sole custody of our grand daughter. This is something of universal proportion for us. I can not express the magnitude of this event. This is a person's life here. Actually many person's lives here. We are not fighting with any of the person's involved so we are in hopes that things continue to go along smoothly for all involved. I do expect the mother to be hurt, but I can not help that. She needs to go through this to perhaps see what impact her actions have had on her children and others. I don't know if she can process it or not. WHen you are in this situation, I think you have to be in denial even when you are in treatment. I wonder if you can really get down deep inside and take responsibility for what you have done. It is a big step and I would say not everyone takes it.

There are actually two children involved in this case Monday. Her two older children are on the same docket. Both will be "permantently" sort of removed from her custody. In Louisiana the mother never looses her right to ask for custody of her children. Our attorneys have added into our plea that the mother complete the yet uncompleted recommendations the judge wrote last year before she can ask for custody again. Our attorneys do not feel she will be able to comply with those recommendations if her history is any indication of her ability. We will see as time goes on. If any thing she needs to start with her youngest child who currently is cared for by her mother and see how that goes once she is on her own, which is going to take at least six months if she finishes the 3/4 house successfully.

Our attorneys certainly seem to be ready to rock and roll. They have a file about 4 inches thick, neatly separated into sections dealing with medical, legal, etc. They have excellent witnesses in my husband and my self if questions need to be asked. They have supbpeonaed the recent arresting officers to be on hand for the hearing along with their written records. They are aware that the other attorney has no plausible excuses, that his client is in drug treatment to be out of jail, that a court date for drug related charges is out there,

surprise tears

2008-01-30T04:22:00.000-08:00

I was at one of my doctor's offices. A nice man. I like him. He always asks how things are going. He has known me since he came to this town. He is reserved, a man of few words. Of course he asked me how things were going. I told him that we were going to court next week and presumably would be getting permanent custody of our grand daughter. He asked if it would be my husband and myself or us and our son. I explained that it would just be us, that two years ago our son agreed that he was not capable of taking on that kind of responsibility. As I talked to him about it I began to cry. Now let me say that I am not a person who cries easily. Not that I don't feel pain or feel like crying at times. I just rarely cry for what ever reason. Well, yesterday was not the case. Not blubbering snot, but real tears requiring tissues for sure, which he gave me. He stopped his busy day to stay with me. He talked to me about the whole thing. He said that we had surely done all that we could have done; that we had shown love and compassion; what would his life had been like if we had not adopted him; that we were surely doing the right thing by taking care of his child and so forth. He even quoted sone Hindu scripture about obligation to duty with no right to results. I am tearing up while I am writing this. I think I might need an extra visit to my counselor. I don't know why I am crying at this juncture and not so many other times along the way. Getting sole custody should be a victory yet there are other factors that are bothering me. How sad for a child to go through what ever she went through to get to this point and how sad for her to have to learn along the way of her life what her parents are really like. She told me the other day that her daddy doesn't really know how to be a daddy. She's 4 years old and she has the insight of a wise old woman. I want her to hate drugs and not her parents. I want her to understand mental illness and tolerate her parents. I do not want her hurt by them and have no way of protecting her from that. At the same time I am powerless to help her dad out of any of his muck and mire. If only he could see his way back to his mental health providers for a little peace and normalcy.

Progress?

2008-01-27T16:56:00.000-08:00

For someone who is all about herself, the girl's mama is certainly able to talk about others easier than she can talk about herself. I don't know how many of her "classmates" she talked about today rather than talk about any of her own successes. She seems antsy. Pressured. The place she is residing does not believe in mood altering medication. I believe in mood altering medication. I do not believe she will do well in the long run without mood altering medication. She is currently under intense scruitiny. She will be under slightly less scruitiny in the 3/4 house. She will be working 5 hours a day at the do-nut shop and working at the center in the evenings. So she will still be "on" a lot of the time. Either working with new clients or showing her sponsor and house mom that she is doing ok. Her mother is keen on her having her kids come and visit. I am not keen on this at all just yet. She is not ready for this. I want to attend a family day or some kind of session with her first. I want to see her in a meeting.

The girl was happy to see her mama and while we were there, her other mawmaw and pawpaw came in so she had the best of both worlds. She ended up going home with them so we are having a quiet moment here. She did not cry and carry on when it was time to go.

a court date

2008-01-25T19:43:00.000-08:00

Well, we have a court date. It is in just 2 weeks. The ironic thing is that it is my son's birthday. What are the odds of something like that happening? We go to court to plea for judgement to have sole custody of our grand daughter on her father's birthday. i wonder how the whole thing will affect him. Will he be happy that "we" have her. That is a collective "we" that he actually thinks he is a part of. What really goes on in his head is hard to figure out. Will it hurt him - in that he thinks he is losing her? I don't think so. I also wonder how it will affect me. I hope I am not too stressed while we are in the court room going through the procedure. I am assuming that we will get sole custody. It is a happy and a sad thing at the same time. It is a huge responsibility. and "it" will not be over then. There will be a different slant on things. I do not want to abuse the power it gives us. I want to be able to continue to do the right thing, what ever that might be. We will not use her as a pawn in a game. We will do what we think or are advised is the best thing for her above all. Her safety and well being are our major concenrs. I want her to look back on her childhood without feeling we deprived her of her mother or her mother's family, or her father for that matter. She will learn things over time that will cause her pain. I want to ease that pain if at all possible. She doesn't have to know details until she is older. She needs to be able to process what she knows without internalizing guilt or feeling responsible as children will sometimes do. I am getting off on a tangent. The good news is we have a court date.

The other grandmother is going to tell the mother about the plea for sole custody this weekend. I felt that the other grandmother was unhappy with that plea. But she did not come out and say it. She usually does not mince words when she has something to say. So I don't know if she is hurt by the situation or angry at the prospect or what. We have not fought wit them and I do not want to start now.

Another week

2008-01-24T17:16:00.000-08:00

Another week is coming to a close. The time flies by. I am lounging in the bed watching the girl dance and do flips on the same bed. She is doing her exercises and so forth. We are watching Jump In on Disney and supposed to be settling down to get ready for bed. Her PawPaw has just come in from school . He had a ball game to attend for duty tonight. We went to my niece's house prior to coming home. Had a good visit.

A visit to mama's "school"

2008-01-22T03:27:00.000-08:00

My son and I took "the girl" to see her mama Sunday at her "school" where she is learning how to be a better mama. The fact that my son even wanted to go irked me at first. Then I decided he had a right also. They will forever be linked because of their daughter and because of the very strong and chaotic relationship they have had over the years. And it is their lives not mine that are being directly affected. People do get back together sometimes and if that happens, it needs to be the best situation possible. At this point it is not a good idea, but that has not held them back before!.

"The girl" had a good visit. There was a freak snow fall the other day and there was a three teir snow man remaining in the back yard. She played with that thing for a long time, shaving it, decorating it, kissing it, eating some snow, etc. Her shoes looked like soggy mud before she was through but they can be washed. There was another young child there too so she played with her a little. And she interacted with her mama a good bit. There did not seem to be anxiety on anyone's part. I do wonder what she thought about having her mama and daddy together for a visit, although where she is concerned they have been civil and or cordial when she has been around lately. Not always, but certainly lately.

There were these stress balls that were faces of emotion from happy to sad with tears and different degrees of angry. Chloe picked out the one with tears because she is sad when she misses her mama. We talked about that a little, then she was on to something else. WHen it was time to go, she cried a little and we had to make her let go of her mama but it wasn't hysterical like the previous time was described. WHen we got in the car she said she had done a fake cry because she didn't have any tears and she was no longer crying etc. and seemed ok with going home. Of course she had her daddy right there in the back seat with her and she sang along to her CD and ate some chips etc. on the way home.

By the time we got home she was on to other things like the dogs and cat and he babies. I am glad I took her, she seems less stressed somehow and I got to see her mama for myself. More on that later.

snow in Louisiana

2008-01-19T06:42:00.000-08:00

My sister called at 7:30 this morning. Not an unusual thing necessarily, but today it was to tell me that it was snowing. My grand daughter has been wanting to see real snow for months now. She sees it on TV and since it is usually 70 sultry degrees here untill the first ice storm, the chances of her seeing snow here are pretty slim. Well at 7:40 she and her Pawpaw were on the driveway in pj's and jackets trying to catch snowflakes on their tongues and arms. It was in their hair and on their clothes briefly. It wasn't sticking on anything but the metal of the vehicles because its only about 32 degrees or so and it has been raining. The ground is wet so it all melts as it hits. BUt they were out there in the snow. and then they filled the bird feeder because the birds where like "what happened here, where is our food, it's cold out here" and when they filled it we watched from inside and they just had a field day, bunches of cardinals, red winged blackbirds, doves, some kind of redish bunting. They were some happy campers then.

Michaels craft store kids club has a craft today of making a snow scene magnet, so we will go do that for sure now. Then we have a birthday party at the gymnastics place. Busy day for a busy girl. Probably no more snow though.

Countdown begins

2008-01-15T19:23:00.000-08:00

Today we got a letter in the mail from our attorney. He is petitioning for a court date to resolve our temporary domicillary
parent status. The temporary status was supposed to be 82 days long. It has almost been one year now. The baby mama has done nothing in response to requests from the court for such things as a psychologic evaluation by the court selected psychologist. She has had one done by her personal mental health team and doesn't have the foresight to tell her attorney it has been done and to submit the findings to the court. Our attorney is asking that they find baby mama in contempt of court for not following mandates; for us to have sole custody with supervised visitation at our discretion; and for other child to have addition of father's last name to the birth certificate. I have no way of predicting how she will react to any of the three issues. She has been saying over and over that she will be "getting her kids back any time". The attorney is asking for an expedited hearing so that we can get a judgement and add her to our insurance coverage. I guess we will see how slowly or not the wheels of justice turn.

THis is serious business. This is a major event in all of our lives that will have lasting effect even if baby mama ever gets it together enough to petition the court for joing custody again. It is a sad state of affairs when innocent children are taken in for protection or cast off because of selfishness, drug abuse and mental health issues. There is no answer to the "why" or "how could she" that comes up. We felt from the beginning that we needed at least joint custody because of the unstable nature of our son, the baby daddy. We have been working on this legally for over two years. Now it comes down to days or weeks.

look to the future

2008-01-10T04:43:00.000-08:00

The earth keeps turning, the sun comes up. The future is right around the corner.

There is no guarantee that any of us will be here to see the future. We tend to ignore
that fact since it is unpleasant, kicking the bucket, leaving loved ones behind, etc.

So plans must be made. We are making some concrete plans and have made a major
step. Our neice, who we love dearly, who is smart, who has a nice husband and a good
marraige, who is sane, who is sensible, who is caring, is our choice to raise (along with her
husband of course) - to raise our grandchild should "something" happen to the two of us.

That is quite a responsiblity to plop on someone. A child's life. not to mention the drama
that goes along with why she even got to us in the first place.

True to form, our neice and her husband will gladly step up to the plate if the need arises.
We will continue to include them in her life so that we can build that relationship. We have
wanted them in her life anyway, and find ways and times to get them all together. Now we
will be more diligent in that effort.

We want her to see that there are other ways to live other that the way both her parents live.
Partners in and out, non-productive, etc. As she gets older, she will learn a lot more, maybe
figuring it out on her own, and in won't be pretty.

We want her to be posiviely influenced by other young people.
It can't be good to have 55+ raising
a 4 year old. We think we are young, but guess what? We are not.

parental rights

2008-01-08T20:20:00.000-08:00

We are in the midst of a custody drama. Our particular aim has always been to protect our grand child and to allow us to have a voice in her life. We were not planning to snatch her away from her mother.We have temporary custody since March 07. It has gone on and on because the mama has messed up and messed around and been uncooperative and noncompliant. At this point in time, our attorney says we are going to get full custody any day. This is quite a dramatic statement. I thought it would be joint custody with the child's mother, but lately she has been acting very unstable and has recently got arrested and is currently in drug treatment headed for a half way house out of town. There are 3 children involved, each is a half sibling to the others. Same mother, different fathers. Each father has his set of problems. Our son has agreed to "give up" his right to custody so that we could petition the court for the same. He is not resticted from his child other than he is not going to take care of her by himself. He is too impulsive and unstable. He realizes he cannot raise her. The older child is with his paternal aunt who has a spouse and another child, so he is in a family. His paternal grandmother actually has the same temporary custody we have. She is fighting with the maternal grandparents and the mama. They can not get along. Perhaps too much water under the bridge and too much need for power or control of the situation. We all need to be able to make decisions that are best for the children as a group. I don't think this is going to happen. The youngest child is with the maternal grandparents and is well cared for. Their goal is to protect her and their middle school age son and keep their lives going in as normal a fashion as possible.

Parents try to do what they think is right. The problem can be that the parents are not thinking clearly. Whether you are working on your adult child with dual diagnosis who is off his meds and sinking into deep depression or trying to raise your grandchild in the best environment you can muster, there are still t hings that can cloud your vision. It takes experience and practice to look beyond what you think is happening or not happening, to move past denial, work through grief and get on with life. You have to put away the denial and take action when you'd rather be sleeping at a cool hotel by the beach. If that means turning your child in to the police, forcing them into treament or taking them to the social secutiry office to apply for mental health disability, you have to do something to keep things moving.

These particular parents involved in this case are all at very differnt levels of coping and adjusting. We all have been going through some problems with our kids for a time, some of us longer than others, some worse than others. I would say each set thinks they are doing the right thing and can clearly see that the others are doing some things that they do not recommend or agree with. Two sets are fighting each other off and on. There is animosity that goes too deep to be calmed right now. That is a problem that will continue to harm the overall well being of one of the kids. Don't put your needs above that of a child. Hash it out with a mediator or in the court room or something.

Been there

2008-01-04T15:48:00.000-08:00

My grandbaby's other grandmother accompanied her daughter to a drug treatment center yesterday. I don't think they have done this since she has been an adult. When she was a teen she had treatment but the problem was not of this magnatude. Ms. B and her husband, the paternal grandmother and an aunt all went. It had to be gut wrenching. That whole orange jump suit and shackles scene is heart breaking even when you believe that the person deserves to be there. There is always the question of whether or not you are doing the right thing. My counselor tells me that there is no right thing, just things. You have no way of knowing if you did the "right" thing, but there is some satisfaction that you have done "some"thing. The people who are watching the drug abuser ruin her life and the lives of her children and family are in pain that is difficult to describe. It takes a while for these people to learn that they can not change the abuser. No matter what they do, say, think, feel, etc. Only the abuser can make changes. And the changes are difficult to make and even more difficult to maintain. The chances of relapse are very great. Success has to be measured in days rather than in weeks or months. Little steps are giant steps. Time slows down. Outsiders have no idea what is going on and do not understand your predicament.

Drama rolls on

2008-01-01T18:49:00.000-08:00

The grand baby's mama got caught with a friend at her home after a complaint of too much traffic and noise brought the village police chief to her door. The friend evidently had crystal meth on himself along with paraphenalia in plain site. She was charged with intent to distribute after a text came to her phone while the police were there. The texter wanted to know if she had the stuff and the officer texted back, yes come and get it. The texter and her companion showed up and were also arrested.

Of course the grand baby's mama says she was not involved. Blah Blah Blah. Her parents have given her the option or remaining incarcerated until a court date comes up, or she can go to rehab and a half way house. After complaning that she didn't do anything wrong and it wasn't her fault, she was given one hour to make up her mind. She chose rehab and half way. Imagine that. Her parents have to transport her to the treatment center. That should be such a great day for them. She is such a witch sometimes and pulls every punch she can to cause guilt etc. She lies like a rug. She told me a couple of weeks ago that rehab would not do her any good that she has heard it all before. We shall see.

Interestingly enough, the grand baby's daddy, my son, is also facing some issues. Tomorrow he has a court date for an old drug charge. No problem, probably get drug court and perhaps a fine, However he has an outstanding warrant for contempt of court because he did not go to another court date for a traffic ticket. So when he goes tomorrow he should be arrested for contempt. He will have to stay in jail. We will not bond him out. He is not taking his medicine and as this date has gotten closer, he has been drinking more and more. We watch him continue to ruin his life.

So again, here is this precious child with two major losers for parents. Drugs, Alcohol and Mental Illness do not mix. How will she manage as she gets older and figures this out? We will do what ever we need to do assure that her life is as good as it can be. We will calmly lie to her about her parents where abouts. Because I can assure you that she will ask. ' Now where is my ----?"
And I will say If it's her dad, He is far away working again. Yes this will be the second time she has heard this story. And if it is her mom, I think I will say She is out of town learning how to be a better mom. That is what her other grandmother wants to say, at least at our last discussion.

Holiday happenings

2007-12-27T03:53:00.000-08:00

Well, this was probably the best Christmas in the last 4. We did not have any personal drama to mar the festiviites. Our granddaughter was with us for Christimas morning for the first time. She had a great time seeing what Santa brought and
opening gifts, then we went to my mom's and after lunch did it all over again. She loved passing out the gifts and "helping" us open our, and of course opening hers. One of her favorites is a furry pink pig that is "real: you squeeze his back and he oinks and stretches and grunts etc. He will act intermittently for a little while after he is squeezed which adds to his real ness. His name is Pookey. He has been wrapped up in a blanket and carted all over. He has a tiny baby bottle for when he is hungry. She also got a Dora talking kitchen which she loves. We have cooked and eaten all sorts of things. It is her new house. Some of her babies are there too. I put one of her small chairs in front of it and I am going to find something to use for a table other that the floor. She stayed in her pj's the whole day. She was happy, got hyper when she missed her nap. Eventually settled down and slept like a log.

holiday plans

2007-12-18T19:50:00.000-08:00

The best laid plans often go awry. I had so many ideas to do with my granddaugher this December. I did get to make some cookies with her and we made some ornaments for the tree. but that has been it. My reindeer pieces remain in the bag from the store. The pretzels for dipping have not yet been bought. She drew 2 Christmas cards for me tonight. They'll never get finished. Maybe she's too young for me to plan so much stuff. Maybe I am too old. or too tired.

She currently is asleep in her own bed.First time in many moons. Many moons. This is weird not having her sucked up against me in our double bed. I need her to sleep in her own bed. She needs to sleep in her own bed. But,,,what does this mean, that she is growing up, that I am allowing her to break away and have some independence...that she will be a tiny bit less co dependent...egad woman, what are you thingking.

Branching out

2007-12-16T20:59:00.000-08:00

We have had a first. For the first time since obtaining custody of our grand daughter, we arranged for a "sitter" and went out. Now, it was not just any sitter mind you. It was the best one around, a dear relative of mine who is young and energetic. When she was a youngster, this relative was with us often. Or at least I remember it as often. I hope it was often. They were significant moments for me. She is now grown, married, a professional. She tugs at my heart. I am totally comfortable with her and any decision she might make. I keep saying I am going to make time for more of a relationship between her and my grand daughter. If I don't hurry up, my grand daughter will be the one who is grown, marriied and a professional. TIme flies by at an alarming rate and as you get older it just goes faster.

Today the grand daughter went to the other MawMaw's and the plan was for her to spend the night unless she just could not stand the idea of not being here. This is a big step for the child as she went through a stage where she went no where else but with us or her mother. We did not hear from them so we assume that all went well. Her other MawMaw is trying very hard to include her in their lives, not that we don't try also. There are only so many hours in a day and days in a week. Other MawMaw has an 11 year old son who is active in sports, a husband who runs a successful business, a daughter who is nutso, a mother and father, a grandmother who is Alzheimering in a nice nursing home, a great aunt who just died last week, their two homes with many years of accumulated stuff to empty and close, and a one year old grand daughter who is the half-sister to ours.

It was a big step for us too. We don't mind her going there at all. Because of her fear of being left, we have stayed while she visited many times. This time the plan was a drop off and go. It worked fine. We stopped at the store on the way home, I took a nap, fixed lunch and made coffee afterward, then worked in the girl's room until I couldn't stand it any more. I almost cleared off her bed. Hey, it's been a while and she is going to start sleeping in her own bed in her room next to ours, not with us.

parade antics

2007-12-10T19:05:00.000-08:00

WHen you take a 4 year old to a parade, what do you get? At first a scared, shy little person who is afraid that the motorcycles will make a loud pop and make you jump. Then you get a brave little girl who is right up there with her 11 year old uncle hollering and jumping for stuff. Then you get a groovin chickie who has purple beads wrapped around both wrists (handcuff style, if you will) who is hollering, Hey I'm over here, throw me some candy" and dancing like I don't know what to the drummers in the marching bands and any body's float music. She turned into Hanna Montana and was making sure everybody knew it up on the back of other PawPaw'sw truck. She was not ready to go home when it was over. But she didnot fuss or cry, she was a happy camper till bedtime. meaning she went to sleep without any fuss. She had a ball.

The woman is nuts

2007-12-10T18:40:00.000-08:00

My Gran'baby MaMa is nuts. Just in case you didn't know. After the church party last night, while we were taking Gran'baby out to her mom's for a little one on one, I thought it was odd that when we got there, her car was no where to be seen. I said, What are you doing, hiding from soneone? She said no. I said "Is it easier to get in the house from the back door?" She said, "I don't have a key to the front door". HMMM odd.

Today, I actually needed her to keep the Gran'baby this evening while I went to the office supper so that PawPaw wouldn't have to do it by himself. till I got back. When I called the MaMa to verify the arrangement she said"Did you talk to my parents last night/" I said what do you mean. She said "I'll call you back". Of course she did not call me back.

Later, I called the MaMa's mama, Ms. B. Well, I did not realize they had tried to call me. I didn't check the answering machine and my cell phone had died. I got an earful today. Ms. B has had all she can deal with and says she will no longer participate in any supervised visitation, and no unsupervised visitation will take place. Period. Until the Mama can show that she is participating in the aftercare plan that has been set up for her for almost one year.

She said it was ugly all day, but it got very ugly after we left with the Granbaby to go to the church party. Ms. B said that the Mama was an A-hole to them all day. When we were there I noticed that the Mama was a little on edge. There was a little bit going on with her three kids, Ms. B's other child, her uncle, her mom and dad and the two of us, the TV, a present for the baby, competition between the two girls, our hyper Granbaby getting ready for the party, etc. We left at ten till 5, by 6:15 there was screaming, broken baby food jar in the driveway, a phsyical altercation between the Mama and her dad, accusations, a crying 7 year old hiding behind a door saying "Why does my Mama have to act like this?"

She left the baby behind when the other PawPaw said give me her stuff. And she took off. Later the other PawPaw brought her the rest of her stuff from the store building and got the babys things. They tried to call us to alert us that things were not good.

She acted "normal" like nothing was wrong. Was all about the Granbaby etc. Today when I tried to talk to her about it, she said as ususal, that her phone was going out. At ten til 5 she was "on her way to pick up the Granbaby from Day school" At ten til 6, Ms. B called to say that no one had picked her up. at 5 til 6 the Mama picked her up and proceeded to call me and tell me that she was sick and that she didn't have any medicine for her and she was going to come pick ours up. At 8:30 she still had not come, so I called to see what was up. A friend was coming to pick it up and bring it to her. I don't know whether to believe her or not that the child is ill. She says she will take her to the doctor tomorrow. We will see.

She just told me the other day that the judge sentenced her to anger managment classes after the Halloween incident. She still hasn't done the drug treatment and counseling she was supposed to do after the hospital. Now here we are with another incident that she is blaming someone else for. This has to be the last straw, but there has to be a way to protect the Granbaby from any more hurt at the same time. She will be the one who cries for her mama.

I need to talk to my lawyer. I need more money. This needs to go to court for something official before something else happens.

life changing moments

2007-11-30T04:25:00.000-08:00

It appears that our attorney is moving forward with the custody issue without a response from the mama. How can she dare to face the judge without having made some strides? Now what does that mean exactly? Does that mean that the mama is unable to step forward and make changes in her life that would enable her to have her children in her home. Or does that mean she is unwilling to do so. Is it a combination? She has had almost one entire year - ok 10 months - to make some measurable chanages in her life and she has not done it. Why? Why? Why? Is she so self consumed that she can't bring herself to sacrifice for her kids? Does she think the kids will be better off where they are and just can't bring herself to say so? What do you tell a child when she asks Why? without hurting her terribly? She will learn some sad truths soon enough in her life with her situation with her mother and her father. I have told the child that her mama is sick and can't really take care of her everyday anymore. She understands what it's like to be sick but she is also aware that people get better when they are sick. She does.

Months ago our attorney told us that the mama would continue to mess things up and to be patient. We would not have to do anything "to" her, that she would do it herself. It turns out that he was right. How sad. I have been anxoius about having this temporary custody thing over with, to have it settled and wanted some action. But as it gets closer it bothers me that the child will have to puzzle this out over her little life. One of her new school mates asked me yesterday if I was the girl's mama. I told her no, that I was her MawMaw and asked her if she had a MawMaw,etc. All of her other mates know me very well and some will run up to me to get a hug when I go to pick her up.

This brings up old feelings of what we were to do and say about adoption when we got our son at age 3 days and how being adopted has affected his entire life. A book I read said that adopted kids have a longing for their birth parents even if they don't know that they are adopted. It is not recognized as a longing unless the person is told of the adoption, so they don't even know what's bothering them. Then there is the old painful truth that there are so many people out there who can't have children naturally and who are hurt even more by these people who don't seem to want the kids they have.

Our girl will know full well that she started out in one place and ended up in another. We work diligently to let her know whe is loved and valued. She has another set of loving grandparents who are loosely invovled in her life since they are raising their own young son and now our girl's half sister who is about to have her first birthday. They love her dearly and want her around them, too. The girl is not too keen on staying there without her mama. Then she will have this mama "out there" who seems to me to be less and less involved. She already calls less and less about her. At the same time she is moving into a large mobile home so each child will have their own room. Hello?

The girl is back.

2007-11-24T19:06:00.000-08:00

The girl has been gone since Wednesday, spending time with her other grandmother and family, including her mama, and siblings and cousins. Hubby said earlier today that he thinks they will be calling to let her come back soon. I said, What, they still have the weekend.... well while we were at the grocery, we got a call from her mama. I thought she was calling to ask if she could take her home with her to stay tonight just the two of them. No, that's not what she wanted. She wanted to bring her to me shortly. I told her we would come get her, she said no she would bring her and she did. We had been home maybe 10 minutes when they arrived. She seemed happy to see us and very happy to see the dogs. She dicided she would stay!. It didn't take her long to get back in stride here. And she was asleep by 8:30. No nap, and played hard. Her mama had said that she - the mama - was on overdrive. When she got here she told me that her mom, not the girl, had been sending her over the edge. I asked her if she was seeing the doctor, etc. She said yes. She and Dylan seemed to get along fine until she asked Dylan if he was making any money and if so why he wasn't giving us any or buying anything for Chloe. That set him on edge and I had to tell them twice to stop the bickering. She didn't stay long after that, but seemed comfortable here. Weird. Unstable and weird.

Thanksgiving

2007-11-23T03:27:00.000-08:00

OK, I'm in line at Picadilly waiting impatiently for these two people in front of me to get their food. I could not believe how many dishes they ended up with on their trays. THey wanted this and that and a lot of it. Ouuuu that looks good, I'm getting that. Here you take this one, I'll get the next one. The lady got the very last piece of Turkey in the pan. Now it was formed Turkey breast, but it was Turkey and of course, my son, who was dissing the fact earlier that this would not be real Thanksgiviing food, was next in line for Turkey... and he couldn't have any. It was what he had been waiting for all day (what??) So he opted for Mahi Mahi stuffed with lump crab meat, a treat if ever I saw one. He got dressing and gravy on the side and I don't know what all else. I got a broccoli salad, unusual for me. then a dark chicken quarter, baked. some dressing and dark gravy, some macaroni and cheese a roll and then some bread pudding. I had a jillion plates too!! I'm just like those two in front of me, just more refined!! By the time we finally got to sit down, the first three at our table had already finished eating. That gave them plenty of time for visiting. Mama couldn't keep up with the conversations at the far end of the table. Too much space between her and the other end. THe conversation went pretty well, no blood shed, so that was good. Our son, my spouse and self, my neice and nephew in law - I have to give him more of a family connection that just saying her husband, he's a nice guy, my sister and brother in law, and mama. All the local family together. My brother called earlier in the day to say hi. He was with his son and daughter in law in the Carolina's. Seemed fine there. Our grand daughter with with the other maw maw and extended family, including her mother, at least that was the plan. Will find out more about that later. THere are two yound girl cousins just a little older than the girl, visiting from out of town. She was in hog heaven on Wednesday, I could hear her squealing in the back ground. We finally got up from the table and made our way outside. My son was trying to help his Grandma with her mobility and walker, He did fine, til she had enough of his help. He took it in stride. Just shook his head. Then we were off to home. Our son soon took off with a friend for a coupld of hours. Was not inebriated when he got back. Interesting. He also did not get upset when the girl he thought he would see could not be reached by phone. He said he was content without a girl right now. We'll see. But the good news is that he wasn't on a rant or ina dark mood about not being able to see her. Thank you God.

this house is much quieter today

2007-11-21T16:24:00.000-08:00

This house is much quieter today than yesterday. The girl is not here. She is with her other mawmaw playing with her two young girl cousins. I could hear the squeals over the phone earlier today. I miss her, but at the same time, it is good for her to be gone for a little while. You don't realize how tired you are till you have a little time to rest. My hubby and I actually went out to get a hamburger this evening. No rush to get done by a certain time to get home for the bath and medicine and tv time and playing and reading and getting ready for bed and rocking and hugging and and and....

changes

2007-11-20T20:16:00.000-08:00

My grand daughter is 4 years old. She learned to tie her shoe laces yesterday, thanks to Paw Paw. Today she taught Carson, her sometimes boyfriend at preK. She wants to be a teacher or a nurse. She is bossy, always wants to be the leader when we are walking anywhere and has gained one pound in the last month. She has a great sense of humor and was cracking up today over something we all did after supper. I can't even remember what it was that got her going. Tomorrow she will go home from preK with her other grandmother, Maw Maw Becky and her (half) sister. I am going to pack a suitcase that says "going to Grandma's"
on the outside so her essentials will all be in one place when she leaves here. Her two cousins are coming in from Austin and she is so excited to see them again. She will spend the Holiday with that side of the family. No problem here, She needs to be with them too. Her mother will be in and out of Becky's house. Hopefully C will be satisfied with that coming and going and not get caught up in wanting to go with her. We love to have her here, but it won't hurt to have her gone for a few days. I might actually get something started and or finished. Hey, it could happen.

stitches

2007-11-19T20:50:00.001-08:00

Do not think you can outsmart a butcher knife!! The appropriate way to hold this certain kind of knife sharpener is laying the long handle part on a counter top with the x shaped sharpener part extending over the counter into the air. Your left had goes on the handle, holding it firmly against the counter top. This also works to keep your hand away from the business end of the knife. WHile appling pressure with the left hand to the sharpener handle, grasp the dull and rusty knife in the right hand and gently place the blade into the cross of the x. PUll the knife down and away from the sharpener (and your body). Seems easy enough. It doesn't take many stikes of the blade to sharpen the blade rather nicely. So what you don't do is hold the handle in your left hand and not pay close enough attention to the fact that you may be going a little too fast... yikes what's this? I heard "Dang (not really) I need stitches!! Honey!!" Now his boy scout training did come in handy when he immediately applied pressure to the gaping wound on his thumb. Only let go long enough for me to get a peek and to apply a multi-folder pristine white Brawny paper towel to absorb any blood that continued to seep even with pressure applied. It didn't take us long to gather up the cell phone and the purse and the car keys. Let the grand daughter see the blood - her idea- and off we went to the ED. Luckily, there was not a huge throng of people waiting to be seen and we did not have to wait but a few minutes before being called back. Once the doc established the fact that stitches were in deed needed, we waited a short time for the suture tray and then we were off to the races. He only needed 4 nice big stitiches and there was only a little oozing afterwards. Of course, your thumb is only about 6 or 8 stitches across, so he got plenty for a small space. I can take the stitches out in 7 to 10 days. Be happy to, makes me feel like a nurse again.

CHristmas is coming

2007-11-19T07:10:00.000-08:00

My granddaughter and I are making Christmas ornaments out of craft (popsicle) sticks. We are glueing them into shapes of stars and snow flakes. She is 4. She loves to glue, but would rather glue paper that sticks. Sticks have to be painted, and paper is already colored, you see. She likes to paint. We are using gold, silver and white. I bought the wrong white, though. It makes a frosty appearance on something else, doesn't cover completely, so we have to get some more. After the paint dries, we put on glue and add sprinkles of silver beads or gold sequins. She is going to give these away through out the Holiday season.

She is looking forward to her two cousins coming in from Austin. Alex and Savannah will entertain her tremendously at her other maw maw's house. I am sure she will spend the night there even if her mother elects not to. Her mom doesn't handle commotion too well these days.

We are starting to look for our Christmas books and videos. Yay. She loves CHristmas and wants everything she sees. She got mad because PawPaw would not buy a big stuffed horse she could ride on for only one dollar at Sams CLub. Hmmm, what got into him I wonder.

family matters

2007-04-22T21:42:00.000-07:00

There are 4 living generations in my family. There's my mom, who just turned 88, "Grandma" to The Girl, there's me, getting very close to being 58, "MawMaw" to The Girl, There's my son, 23, "Daddy" to The Girl, and then there's The Girl. We have a small extended family. "Grandmaw" has been a widow for 23 years. My Dad died when my son was 4 months old. Her family is in England and she is the last survivor of her siblings. She has 3 children, my brother , my sister and myself. My brother, in RIchmond VIrgina, who just turned 60, is a widower for some 5 years or so now. He has two step sons, one in Wyoming or Montana area, and one in the Carolinas. My sister lives locally. She must be going to be 54 on her upcoming birthday next month and has recently married. Her marraige has taken up much of her time (imagine that) so I don't talk to her as much as I did before The Texan came into the picture. She has one daughter, my favorite ( ok only) neice. She has been married over a year now to a nice guy who I like. Then there's me, just about to turn 58 in June. I am married to a good guy. He tolerates and tries to help me struggle through my emotional craziness. We have one son, The Girl's Daddy. He is 23 and is in turmoil recovery.( It's a long story.) Then there is The GIrl, 3 & 1/2 going on about 14. She is IT. She is the queen of going through phazes. Shy, loud, mischevious, pouty, with a lisp. She likes to "read" to me, paint, cut, dance, harass the cat and walk the dog. She has started to grow some and is getting taller. Most of size three clothes still fit, but the pants might be too short. The size 4's will be long enough but won't stay up over that skinny waist and hips. She is a dancer... just wait for the recital. But she dances at home too, and sings all the time. We love to have her with us. She keeps us on our toes, but I am tired when she goes home or to day school.

These 4 generations came together to celebrate two birthdays this weekend. Grandmaw turned 88 and My husband will be 56 Friday, one week later. We had a nice visit at my favorite neice's and nephew in law's. THanks to them, we had a nice place for people to gather to celebrate the family event. Everyone seemed in a tolerable mood. Our son attended, and looked like he did ok, considering the turmoil he has been through in the last year, but super turmoil in the last 4 months. If he was nervous about being there, it didn't show and everyone was pleasant to him. The birthday people seemed to enjoy themselves. We had cake and ice cream, so how could it be bad, really? I love slightly melted chocolate ice cream. I could easily have eaten the entire box had I not been focused on getting The Girl and me home in time to have some semblence of a nap.

You don't really get to choose your family until you get ready to get married, so in reality you are stuck with the family you are born into. Good or Bad, Rich or Poor, Funny or Lame, they are who they are. and Family Matters.

I do not take miracles lightly

2007-04-15T18:18:00.000-07:00

I do not take miracles lightly. I do not see many of them....and I am skeptical at best till I can re-evaluate the event at a later time. However, I am seeing a miraculous change in my son. It is real enough to be scary. He is a changed person. Even the fellow members of his group are coming up to us at visits and telling us what a fine son we have and what a change they have seen. He was made group leader of his small group last week, and then the lead counselor put him in the hot seat at large group meeting and made him dorm leader. One of his group members told us today how well he was doing with the leadership roles. Our son did tell us today that when he was made dorm leader the whole dorm was on restriction due to some fighting and other acting out. The next day, the dorm was off restriction. I asked him what he did to make things change. He said I went to the people expressing problems and told them we needed to work things out to get the dorm back on track. We took his daughter, The Girl to see him again today. She wore his butt out. She ran all over the place and we heard "Come on Daddy" about 4 times at least. They had a great visit again. We stayed back as much as possible to let them have time together. One or the other of them would come back to us as the afternoon went on. She was ok to leave once we convinced her daddy had to go back to work. and off we went.

Easter

2007-04-14T05:46:00.000-07:00

I have not been able to access this site for a few days. Easter was a good day for us. We unexpectedly had The Girl join us for lunch, since her mom was "having a bad day". We went to my favorite neice's house with all of our immediate family..neice, her spouse, sister, her spouse, mother, self, my spouse and the girl. We had a good lunch...I wanted to take a nap afterward.. instead we went to visit our son, with the girl. We were keeping our fingers crossed that the visit would go well. We could not have been happier with how it turned out. She clung to him when they met up, gave him the biggest hug!! Big smiles all around. We spent the afternoon outside. Pawpaw and I mostly sat back and let the two of them interact. She wore her daddy out with her comings and goings, climbing, basketball, talking, etc. We had brought him a lunch plate and she helped him eat it. She brought him some eggs we had dyed the previous day. She was pouty when it was time to go, so we smoothed that over, stayed alittle while longer and told her we would come back the next Sunday. That seemed to satisfy her. We eventually took a nap and slept too long, so that I thought we would never get to a real bedtime. Thank goodness the next day was not a school or work day for us. We had a pajama day til way late in the day.

eggs, I can't play with you

2007-04-08T06:48:00.000-07:00

The girl, who is smart beyond her years and has a vivid imagination, was very busy dying Easter Eggs at my favorite neice's house. We had 36 to dye. She was busily putting eggs in the see through cups we were using, testing them for color perfection and taking them out of the dye bath and setting them on the boxes with the holder holes punched out. She told them "Now eggs, I can't play with you right now, I have a lot of work to do. I have to color all these eggs today." Of course, I thought it was cute and so funny. She really comes up with some interesting stuff. I would like to know what goes on in her brain.

This 2 hour session we had with boiling cooling and dying, painting and stickering eggs took the place of her nap, which she paid for later by becoming wound up pretty tight, when she should have been settling down some. I should have thought to give her a little Benadryl before we went back to her mama's house....It would have slowed her down some and made her sleepy at a reasonable time. No telling what time she went to bed, since we left at 8pm and her mama was talking about making Easter cookies still.

She will lose her nap today too, unless she takes a rest after we get back from visiting her dad. Hopefully she will want to go with me when we leave her greatgrandmother's house after lunch.

egg hunting & the real Easter bunny

2007-04-05T03:55:00.001-07:00

There were two egg hunts planned. One at the hospital annual Easter bash and one at church after a potluck lunch. The girl did not remember going to the egg hunt in Pineville last year. It was crowded and I don't know if that made a difference or not, but as we stood in line getting ready for her age group to start, she wanted me to pick her up. No problem. However when it was time to go with all the other kids and parents, she did not let go. She clung to me like a new monkey on its mama. After kneeling down 4 times to pick up eggs, trying to get her to participate, I had to quit. I couldn't do it any more. She did not want to get down and even said she wanted to go to my house and take a nap. That was my clue to get going. We did watch the real easter bunny sitting for pictures with some kids, but she would have none of that. It started to rain, so we hit the shuttle bus and went home. She did like riding the shuttle bus.
The next day was Sunday. She went to church and did just fine in her Sunday School classroom. Then we went to big chruch with a friend and she did ok there too. Then off to lunch and with her friend close by she ok too. Then we went to her age group hunt. She was Queen of the May, baby. She had a ball. Then when her friend's age group was done we went to check on the bunny. She said " I think that is a man with a bunny head on." I told her if thought she was right, and she waved at h im. Then we took his picture, and eventually took her friends picture with the bunny and then herself as well. Whew. All is right with the world.

my son is changing

2007-03-29T20:07:00.000-07:00

I talked to my son by phone tonight. He called from the drug treatment facility he has now been in for a week. He sounds good, actually too good to be true. I am encouraged and wary at the same time. This is the first time I have ever heard him say that when he looks in the mirror he likes what he sees and that he does not have to prove that he is the hardest man walking. Amazing. Let it continue for a long time to come. He has done some hard thinking and praying and expresses a desire to continue to change his life.

brain trouble

2007-03-26T20:28:00.000-07:00

I accompanied my spouse to the Neurosurgeon today. Yikes. The Doctor was informative and impressed with the significance of the problem. When he put the MRI up in comparison to a normal brain and skull structure, it was quite obvious how much of the brain has been pressed downward on to the spine. He feels that all the symptoms described are coming from the malformation. There is not any hydrocephalus, which is a very good thing, and there is not any cyst formation in the spinal cord, which is also a very good thing. So things could be worse. And his problems are not life threatening at this time. The decision to operate lies with my husband. How much problem can he deal with before he decides to have it fixed. If not operated on now, the problem will progress, but to what extent is hard to say. What we don't want is any big surprises. My husband does not want to have a surgery slip up on him in the middle of the school year. If he is going to have it, he wants it during the summer months. So , which summer? The one coming up, to get it over with and to put a stop to this stumbling and dizziness and bothersome numbness of the hands and arms, or one in the future.We will need one summer in the next few years to take the girl to Disney WOrld. He needs to be able to enjoy that trip with her. I believe after some thinking today, he is opting for this summer. But he has time to think about it some more. He had a terrible headache today after unloading the truck for the upteenth time in the past week. He is concerned that he might fall with our grand daughter in his arms. Our son may have problems coping with this type of situation - that is , brain surgery and all that goes with it. And he may not be able to be in attendance for the procedure due to his current circumstances. Sooooo. we ponder. An interesting fact is how much of the skull is actually removed to give the squeezed part of the brain a chance to be released from the entrapment. You won't be able to tell from the outside because the area in question is up under the back of the head in a place that is covered with muscle. They also have to open the scar tissue that has formed to let the brain move back to a more normal position. They patch the open place with part of a pig heart. This little piggy will definitely go to market.

points to ponder

2007-03-21T17:47:00.000-07:00

My son was moved from the parish jail, where he has been for 2 months, to a drug and alcohol treatment center, one week earlier than expected.He called me at work to ask for some supplies from home. He told about 3 times that he loved me and that he wanted me to kiss his daughter for him. When his Dad went to bring him some essentials, they let them talk for a few minutes. Our son told his Dad it was a BLESSING that he was there in the treatment center. He had been to bible study, had been praying for things to happen, the barber came by so he got a haircut which had made him happy in itself. Then the next morning they told him to get his things together because he was moving on. He was so happy. He said that when he got to Red River, he stood outside in the sun and just let the wind blow on his face. He told us that he was going to make the best of being there, not like he did before when he signed himself out. He said some of the people who are there are angry and don't want to be there. He says they don't know what they are doing. He told his Dad he has set a goal to find a way to pay for his daughter to go to college. Amazing what some time alone can do. It may all fall apart again, but right now there is hope.

beware the upgrade

2007-03-14T19:57:00.001-07:00

you people out there who think up these upgrades for programs must be very smart. I don't know how you can quickly make changes by toodleing a few keystrokes and dragging and dropping stuff and viola, something old is new again. HOWEVER, I do not like the changes that have been made to this blog site with the upgrade you kept insisting that I take part in. I do not want to have to log in to two different programs everytime I want to look at or edit by blog space. Get Real. THis is supposed to be for my convenience and entertainment. I find it distracting and I am going to find a way around it with the help of my genius neice. so there.

hint of trouble

2007-03-07T20:33:00.000-08:00

The first hint of trouble with the SD showed up today. She is not taking her medicine correctly and it shows. She is anxious, obsessed with the issue of a change in medication, expressing concern about what to do with the kids when she takes the new medicine for the first time. On a good note, when I called her mom to inquire if she had seen the same thing, she had. AND the SD had called her uncle who thank you lord is a psychaitrist, and he told her she must start the new medicine and start with a low dose and work her up if necessary. The girl is with us and the baby is with the SD's mother, so the heat is off the SD for the moment. I want her to have a second chance and really to do well, and this is only 6 days home and there's a problem already. It shows that her stability is very fragile and alerts me to be even more watchful. Yikes.

turn of events

2007-03-06T19:13:00.000-08:00

A weird thing happened today. Our Clinical Coordinator, who does the lions share of work for the boss, told the boss that she could no longer attempt to take on my old duties. That my old duties is a full time job. etc etc. This is happening very close to the time that I will be moving to the newest job they have given me. One that has me concerned that I won't be physically able to cope with. The two of them went upstairs to the boss's boss for the 2 oclock meeting they have every Tuesday. It is my understanding that during this meeting the CC and the boss discussed with the boss's boss the above info. I do not know the outcome of the meeting, as I am not supposed to be aware of the topic discussed. Now what do you think happened next? Either during the meeting or right afterward, the boss began to feel ill. Turns out she had quite a high blood pressure. They came back to the office. She developed some numbness and tingling of her face , spoke to her doctor and was directed to the Emergency Room. They slipped quietly out of the department and down the hall. It was only when the CC came back for their purses that she told someone what had happened. She didn't tell the person to spread the news or to be mum. One of the other staff heard some of their conversation, and asked if they were ok. The CC stepped into her line of sight and said everything was ok. She was going to stay with the boss till her spouse got there. I can't figure out why the illness was so hush hush. It may not mean a thing except that she did not want to make a big deal out of the situation, or she could have been frightened. As mad and disgusted as I have been with her over these past few weeks and or months, I have to say I felt left out by not being asked to help or being told she was ill. I must be nutso for sure. Any way, we left work without any of the others of us going down to check on her. We discussed it and assumed that we were not wanted to intrude. We'll see how things are tomorrow.

Brain Power

2007-03-05T18:58:00.000-08:00

A little over a year ago, I had a tumor in the pituitary, a gland connected to the brain. It ruptured and bled. The action of the bleeding and what it can do to you is called Apoplexy. That is supposed to kill you, funny thing is, it gave me a terrible headache and made me throw up, but I'm still kicking. It is rare that a person sails through Apoplexy. I eventually had surgery to remove the remainder of the dried up dead tumor and I am more or less back to "normal". I have trouble with numbers now and don't process things as fast, but I was not quite normal before either. Now we find that my dear husband has a rare brain condition called Arnold-Chiari malformation. It seems that the lower part of the back of the brain is pushed down through the opening in the skull where the brain meets the spinal cord. Then the pushed down part pushes against the spinal cord and you start to have weird symptoms. like stumbling around, hands and arms becoming numb and tingly, numbness and tingling of the face and head, a change in sense of taste, a new increased hearing loss. What causes part of the brain to get pushed downward you ask? Well, it could be that you have begun to collect excess fluid in the ventricles of the brain. This fluid has to have a place to go so it pushed on the part of the brain that has a place to move. So now we are waiting for an appointment with my neurosurgeon to see what he thinks. Our primary care MD, who we love dearly, is not yet convinced that this malformation is the cause of his symptoms. I am not so sure....but when you start putting two and two together it seems that you get four,,,,I need to hear what the brain surgeon has to say. PS The girls at work say we should move away, our house must be haunted or built on top of a toxic waste dump.

things look better

2007-03-04T02:23:00.000-08:00

The Girl's mom, aka the SD, has been released from a psychiatric hospital where she spent 10 days after literally going off the deep end of normalacy. She seems well medicated, a little anxious, and looks better than I have seen in months. I think the anxiety is coming from overcompensation, she thinks it's from them meds. She sees someone Tuesday so hopefully she will talk about it with them. We decided to play by ear the decision to let The GIrl go with her mama or not. The whole point of all of this is to do what is best for the Girl. I did not want to cause increased anxiety by not allowing her the option, dictating where she could be, etc. And the first meeting after release was at the other mawmaw's house so they were there too. I did not want to be there because it causes another distraction and The Girl bounces from one to the other like a ping pong ball, not sure where to land. The Girl was so happy to see her mama. She informed me by phone that her mama was feeling much better because the doctor gave her some medicine. She will hardly leave her sight. We will continue to monitor the situation daily, as I told her mama on the phone when she was released on Friday. I have to be sure you can handle yourself and the daily activities that go along with your routine. She is being very cooperative with me, and her negative attention is on the other family of the 6 year old who are seeking full custody. This should all help us get the joint custody we have been trying for for 2 years.

The Girl's dad has had some time to think, it seems. He asked for a Bible with a glossary. He has been going to a Bible study. He told his dad that just lately 3 people were saved. His dad explained to him that many people in jail are looking for anything to help them, and that it may not "last" when they get out, but it can help them while they are there. One guy gave them all his cigarettes and quit cold turkey because he was through putting poisons in his body. The dad doesn't want to smoke the guy's cigarettes because he feels he will be needing them back, but he hasn't had one in a week and seems to b e doing well. This guy happens to be someone who my husband taught in school some years ago who still remembers him and spoke well of him. It's a small world.