Why did the squirrel cross the road?

So here's the thing, I have a small forest outside my house. There is a tree fort of sorts right outside my bedroom window that my kids love to play in. That used to not be a problem until about a month ago when someone crashed into those bushes and the driver actually died. People have come since then and set up a small memorial with balloons and ribbons and other nice things. I think it goes without saying that my kids are not allowed to play over there anymore.

The other day a man came with a chainsaw and cut down what was left of the trees and bushes. But not all of it, so really it’s just this ugly, bare patch of half broken branches and pieces of wood scattered all over the place. Its looks much worse now than it did even after being mowed down by an out of control automobile.

The real issue that is nagging me are these squirrels we have. They are living out there in our little forest by what seems to be the hundreds. Since the unfortunate destruction of the tree fort, they have migrated to the side of the house. This poses a problem because this is also where the kids have chosen to play. These squirrels constantly munch on the unripe acorns and they drop out of the trees like a hail storm. If you know what I’m talking about then you also know that those green balls are like rocks. You have to dodge them because if you get hit, it’s going to hurt.

But that is just a minor issue. The real issue here is that some of these furry little creatures are aggressive. By aggressive, I mean that I have literally ran from them. It was going to attack me I’m certain. It was blocking the sidewalk I needed to cross to get into my house. It just stood there staring at me. Every time I stepped towards my house, it stepped towards me. I went to the left, it went to the left. It wasn’t letting me cross and I became nervous. Like, what was this squirrel’s deal??? I tried yelling at it and shooing it away and all it did was keep a firm stance. Finally I just made a run for it. And so did it. The freakin thing chased me all the way to my door. Thank God, it was summer and people were home and had the front door open, all I had to do was make it through the screen door.

Everyone was laughing at me but I didn’t think it was very funny. What if I would have had to mingle with keys to get in?? The thought of getting attacked by a 2 pound squirrel is terrifying. So, what do I do about these things now? Do I shoot them with a be-be gun? Maybe poison them? Or maybe take a less violent approach and build a nut factory across the street and hope they all head there (possibly getting ran over by cars along the way). Unfortunately, I am not a millionaire and there is no real estate available across the street. I’d throw their “rocks” back at them if I didn’t think they would attack me in large groups. Besides, I really do love animals.

I don’t want these things attacking my kids. So, in searching for a solution to the on-going squirrel epidemic, I constantly have to ask myself this question…..In exercising my right to protect my family, would what I am thinking of doing be considered “pest control” or “animal abuse”????

Any thoughts?????

Stop doing that to yourself

 When we think of abuse we already assume that someone is the “abuser” and someone is the “abused.”  However, it’s hard to get to the heart of people abusing themselves. Nobody wants to talk about themselves being their own abuser. You have the cutters, the drug abusers, the co-dependents who don’t feel loved unless they are being abused, the people who don’t feel good unless they feel bad, and then there are the people who are terminally ill and do not take care of themselves. At least not the way society says they should.  This is my mother.

She was diagnosed HIV positive in 1996. Her physically abusive boyfriend at the time already knew he had it and knowingly passed it to my mother, along with Hepatitis C. She has seen a doctor for it, at most, 5 times in the last 19 years. She insists that doctors are villains and that they are positively out to make us sicker so they can all continue to have jobs. Over the years she has tried all sorts of natural cures and become quite the health fanatic. She really gets crazy at times, trying to convince me that if my children use fluoride toothpaste that the government will be able to apply mind control on them in the future. And let’s not forget that if they eat cereal they will get cancer. She goes on the internet and researches things that only convince her that the government is out to kill us all…..except the rich, who can afford the treatments to survive. But that is just another scam to get money out of the rich, not because they want to help them. There was one time when she got scared and attempted to take the medications the doctors prescribed to her. They made the veins in her legs bulge out, tore her stomach to pieces and made her hair fall out. She threw them in the garbage and that was the last time she looked to doctors for help.

I have to admit, maybe she’s on to something. I mean, really, 19 years? That’s pretty damn good. She is about to turn 61 and even though I say she is a health nut she has also been an alcoholic and meth-head over the years. When she first found out she turned into some kind of suicidal teenager. She acted like she didn’t care about anything and lived for the moment. She did not care about tomorrow. As far as she was concerned tomorrow might not come with the freedom to do as she pleased. The whole time she acted this way it made me angry and sad and all kinds of other emotions like “grow up, act like a parent” and so on. But then it occurred to me that she probably didn’t know how to act herself. How does one accept something like that?

Eventually she began to care about living and started taking better care of herself. These days she still does her weird remedies but her biggest killer is stress and wearing herself out physically. She was able to visit my brother in prison for the first time in six years and had to drive 13 hours to get there. When I spoke to her on the phone she sounded terrible. She had gotten a urinary tract infection and was trying to rest up for the trip. Instead of going to a doctor she headed down to California with a friend to see my brother. She got pulled over, not once but twice, for people calling in a disoriented driver on the highway. She was told to pull over and rest. She didn’t listen and when she got to the prison not only did they not let her visit, they detained her for four hours, insisting that she sleep before they would let her leave.

On the way home she had to let her friend drive because she could no longer handle the pain and had started becoming disoriented again. They pulled over in San Francisco so she could run in and use the restroom at a hotel and she never came back out. When her friend found her, she was down the street sitting on a sidewalk moaning and talking to herself. They got back on the highway to head home and she only got worse, until he was so scared he took her to the closest hospital he could find. They ended up life flighting her to Eugene, Oregon where they put her in ICU. She is trying to fight the bacteria that has spread through her internal organs. They ended up having to sedate her because she would not relax, constantly trying to leave.

At what point does a person just let go and allow someone to help them? At what point do you stop hurting yourself and allow others to help you heal? When do you stop abusing yourself and realize that you need to ask for help? I guess these are the questions I will ask her when I can.

WHAT A JERK!!!!

 I was ten years old when my mother and stepfather, who I will refer to as dad from here on out because he was the only dad I ever had, split up. I had seen it coming. One night when my mother was gone, there was a knock at the door. My dad and I were watching TV and when I answered there was a guy with a long beard and a beer gut asking if my mother was home. He looked like some ugly ZZ Top fan and I knew then that I did not like him. I told him to hold on and closed the door. It felt good when I went and told my dad that there was a strange guy at the door asking for mom. Within two seconds my dad was up and chasing the ugly guy to his car. He was beating on the windows and  I thought he was going to break one of them. The guy peeled off looking scared out of his mind. I felt satisfied. The next time I seen him was when I walked in on him nailing my mom at the end of her bed in our new house. I hated that guy.

We moved into this cool red house after my parents split was final. I remember that house well because so many crazy things happened there. My mom wasn’t single long. The next boyfriend I hated right away. His name was Helmute (hell moot) which made me hate him even more. He drank all the time and was obnoxious. I couldn’t stand him. One night my mom decided to play a prank on him and lock him out of the house. I liked that idea. He, not so much. He freaked out. Like, broke out the window on the house, crying and screaming to the point it scared me and my mom. I was running to my room upstairs when he called me a little b*#!$, so I turned around and spit the best loogie I could muster right in his face. That made my night.

I came home from playing outside the next day and there he was, holding a pair of pearly pink jelly shoes. Back in the 80’s I was obsessed with parachute pants and jelly shoes. They were the intro of the plastic sandal and they came in any color you could dream up. I thought he had gotten them as some sort of peace offering. That was the furthest thing from the truth. I stood there staring, waiting for him to say something but he just stared back at me. Then he walked into the other room where he had built a nice little fire in the fireplace and tossed them in. Just like that.

What kind of jerk off does that? Literally goes out of their way to hurt a child. Unfortunately, the world is full of them. Was he trying to teach me something? If so, it was an epic failure. He intentionally tried to hurt my feelings. All it did was make me mad and dislike him even more. It also made me want revenge. After that, I made it my mission to ruin that dudes life in any way I could. When I look back if I could have just blown it off and not let it bother me it would have been so much better. I wouldn’t have given him the response he wanted and he wouldn’t have got the satisfaction of getting to me. I wouldn’t have wasted endless amounts of energy on trying to destroy him. All the dedication I gave to that was very self-defeating. As a kid, it worked out just as he had hoped for. Not to mention, it paved the way for many other instances like that one. Every time someone hurt me, I became vindictive. And the cycle went on and on. It’s strange how these little blips in time create the person that we become. Had I turned around and not given it any more thought, would I have still become that “tit for tat” kind of gal?

Come here, let me show you.

Since this is my very first blog, I will try and make a long story short. I was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. I was raised mostly by my grandparents but there were times woven throughout where I was with my mother. I never knew my biological father. He was a heroin addict who ran the streets of downtown and wanted nothing to do with my mother when she got pregnant. I have two younger brothers and my stepfather left when I was nine. I learned early that men were not to be depended on.
My grandmother was an alcoholic and it was known but never talked about. I never seen my grandfather so much as drink a beer my entire life. As for my mother, she was a hippie and according to my grandparents a "wild child". To this very day, I don't think my mother will ever grow up.
As far back as I can remember, I would see my parents partying but it wasn't until I was nine that I got to experience it first hand.
I will never forget that morning. My parents woke me and my brother Adam up and brought us into the kitchen. Adam is three years younger than me which would have made him six. It was dark and my stepfather wasn't wearing a shirt. There were many times I had seen him without his shirt on but I remember feeling uncomfortable and wondering if we were in trouble. They set us up on the counter so that we would be eye level. I was groggy but I was also very nervous because knowing my parents, something crazy was about to happen.
My parents, like many it seemed back then, had a marijuana plant growing in our garden. As if that was just normal. Our neighbor, who was a friend of my parents, had one too. The things were huge. It was like a gigantic bush and we were told to leave it alone. I remember every time my babysitter came over she would fill a brown paper bag up with all the leaves and send it away with her boyfriend.
So, when my father pulled out his smoking pipe and asked us if we knew what it was, we were already quite familiar. At that point I just remember feeling like I wanted out of that kitchen NOW! My parents then proceeded to have us smoke it with them while explaining that it was ok to do this if it was with them. Only them they said. I did not like the way it made me feel. I looked at my brother to see how he was handling all of this. As if  as long as he was okay then I was okay too. Then came the really scary stuff.
Being the daughter of a hippie, my hair was down past my behind. My mother used to braid it for me and tell me to never cut it, just let it grow. My hair made me feel pretty. My stepfather then told me that if I ever did this with anyone else he would cut off all my hair and shave my head bald. I was terrified. I didn't even want to do this with my parents so why would I do it with anyone else? I was not enjoying any of what was going on. I really can't remember much after that because all I could think about was my head being bald.
As I mentioned earlier, I was going to make this story as short as possible. Often, stories concerning any type of abuse are anything but short. I have three children who are ages twelve, eight, and two. I cannot fathom introducing them to anything that might harm them. Just the thought of them doing any drug sends me into a "heartastroke". I know some people would say that times have changed, things were different back then, but I'm not buying it. Parenting and the natural instinct to protect our children has not changed. But sadly enough, parents are still introducing their children to all sorts of things that aren't good for them.
That morning, the morning when they were showing me and my brother that it was okay to do drugs, paved the way for me and my brother to becoming full blown drug addicts. But what gets me is that my family has always taken the approach towards addiction that "it's okay, we still love you and accept you just the way you are". I get it, we are family, but to enable it and even encourage it, that is just unhealthy no matter how you slice it. In short, my family is all jacked up. My mother is in Oregon doing whatever illegal thing it is she has gotten into, my stepfather passed away this year due to all sorts of health problems, my brother Adam is in prison where he has spent most of his life, and my youngest brother Ben is now a diagnosed schizophrenic due to some crystal meth he tried at a friends house but he never came back down from. He used to be the family member we all had hope in to accomplish big things. He was 17. Now he is as crazy as the homeless guy you see running around talking to himself.
I partied through my school years but nothing major. Drinking, smoking pot, and dropping LSD. It wasn't until I graduated high school and was enrolled into college that I took my major left turn. I was working two jobs and enjoying the summer before school was to begin when I met a boy. It always seems to start with "I met a boy". He wanted to show me how to use heroin like him so bad he actually paid me to do it. I wasn't interested knowing that my father was a heroin addict so I refused until I got money to do it. My life was destroyed over $60. That relationship changed who I was for the rest of my life. Along with the substance abuse, I experienced verbal, emotional, mental and sometimes physical abuse. Becoming a full blown heroin/crack addict was not something I ever set out to be but it was what I became with ease.
Having grown up with addiction all around me no one in my family thought there was anything wrong with what I had become. It was almost like I had become one of the family now. There was no one to confront my behavior or make me feel bad for the choices I was making. Inside I always knew that this was not how I wanted to spend the rest of my life. It wasn't until almost four years ago that I got clean and changed the way I looked at life. I spent almost two years in a residential treatment program specifically set up for women with children who are struggling with addiction. It was there that I learned about myself, my family and friends, as well as all the others who passed through the program.
I have seen and heard it all from here to Timbucktoo.....so these next thirteen weeks will be filled with stories, advice, inspiration and information that I hope will help anyone to overcome the hurdles that life sometimes throws in our way. Recovering from abuse is possible.... you gotta kick it where it counts!