I guess it’s been awhile since i last posted. Have been pretty busy and exhausted!! Things at home couldn’t be any better i suppose, the new job is going well been there almost 2 months. Quit the other job 3 weeks after starting the new job with the boyfriends permission. I never realized how exhausting working 3rd shift could possibly be. I feel like i am getting no sleep. This place expects us to work 6-7 days a week and it is pure hell for me. I am not a night person at all!! But on the other hand my nights are going by quickly, they had me take over a position relieving people for there breaks which is good cause im learning all the jobs at the same time and i am responsible for putting what they make into the storage area’s and taking care of all the operators paperwork etc.

The boyfriend has been really good about making sure my kid does his homework after school, and making dinner at night so that i can get my sleep. Although there has been a few times that he has come into our room and woken me up asking me if im going to make dinner cause the 2 of them are “whithering away from starvation” lmao that would be on days that he had a bad day at work and comes home and automatically cracks open a beer then gets all hyper and silly. At least he’s not a mean drunk when he’s drinking he just gets all goofy and nutty:)

I’m actually realizing this week how much i appreciate his coming home and taking care of dinner and making sure my kid does his homework etc. He is not home this week, he is off up north playing with the guys on a hunting trip till friday, and i am really missing him. He’s already put 1 deer in the freezer but we need a couple more to get us through the winter. If we dont get at least 2 or 3 more in there this year i’m thinking of doing something i’ve never done before and buying 1/2 a cow to put in the freezer. I hate buying meat at the grocery store anymore cause it seems like the quality pf meat at the stores are not so good as they used to be and we cant afford to go to the butchers just to get good quality meat which is a major thing with the boyfriend,he dont like cheap meat thats all fatty and in poor quality which frankly i don’t blame him 1 bit.

Things seem to be going good between us for the 1st time in almost 4 years. this new job seems to have really helped alot seeing the main issue between us has been finances and the fact that i lost alot a few years back. Hopefully by christmas my bankruptcy will be finalized and i can then start rebuilding my credit and then we can start talking about buying a house which we had been talking about before i screwed my finances up a few years ago.

After 2 seperations i am finally realizing just exactly how much he means to me and how important it is to keep my finances straight. We have a future to build and that is my main goal right now, i guess i never really understood or i was just being ignorant and not caring about how important it is to have good credit, but with everything that has gone on in the past year with the fall of the banking sytem and everything else i now realize how important all that is. I need to start putting money away again for retirement, the boyfriend has his 401k but had lost ALOT of it when the stock market had gone down so badly back in the spring. I also gotta try and at least put some money away to help my son go to college which is something i have been pounding into his head lately. I had quit college and am paying the price for with with all the every day struggles financially that i go through and am hoping to be able to go back to college myself here soon but that might be another year before i can. i just don’t want my son to struggle in his adult life like i have i wanna make sure he goes to college and gets a good education so that he can have a good comfortable life. ok i think im starting to ramble now due to me being exhausted and lack of sleep im outtie here

There seems to be alot of tension coming from the boyfriend that i obviously didn’t see. He has lost all of his over time at work and quit smoking 8 days ago due to money. I was supposed to quit smoking the following day but i let the nicotine fits get to me and bought a pack of cigarette’s. Well he figured it out Friday night and asked me straight out if I’ve been smoking. I was honest with him but also told him i haven’t had that many which was the truth. Last night he got all pissy when we went to bed about it. He don’t seem to understand that he had help quitting with the patch and I’m trying to do it cold turkey which isn’t easy. He told me last night that he don’t care if i get pissy and bitchy and if i have to, to tell him to fuck off then do it. He thinks any bitchyness will only last 2 weeks at the most. But my problem is when i drink i have nasty nicotine fits. So do i give up my weekend wind down and not drink for awhile? Do i just make him happy and completely quit and let him deal with my wrath that will happen of turning into the bitch of hell for a few weeks?? I don’t want to be that person, he has never seen that side of me and he might not like it!! What to do?

On the other hand with him losing his much needed over time and the possibility of going down to 32 hours a week or worse, i finally found another job, yay!! That couldn’t have come at a better time. Working graveyard in a factory plus working my other job during the day. I’ll be able to have my bankruptcy paid off by the end of the month then put money aside for the next couple of months in case he doesn’tcome up with enough money for his guided hunt trip in December. He’s worried about coming up with that money and quite frankly i want him to go on this just trip just as much as he wants to go on it. These trips are pretty much once in a lifetime trip for some people and he is one of those people. I want him to get a trophy deer, so that he can have a deer’s head hanging from the wall. Not to mention the meat we will get!! I had told him when i moved back in with him that if couldn’t come up with the rest of the money that i would some how some way help him pay for the rest of it and i damn well plan on it.

I am still trying to prove myself to him cause of all the problems we have had in the past. When i moved back in with him after our 1st separation 2 years ago it took me 6-7 weeks to find a job and he seems to have forgotten that. This time it took me 7 weeks basically the same amount of time. He says i don’t understand how much money he has to pay out every month in bills etc blah blah he’s full of himself there…i on the other hand  don’t think he understands that is hard to find jobs and that people cant find a job within a couple of days, and he doesn’t cause i get yelled at for not finding a job quickly. He knows this state has no jobs available, they are far and few in between but he don’t get that. I think the only way he is gonna see that is if he gets laid off whether its temporarily  or permanently. We are like night and day complete opposites. He grew up in the country on a farm where he worked hard even as a kid where i grew up in the suburbs and big cities, I’ll admit our thinking isn’t the same quite often. I’m used to doing things one way and he used to doing the same things completely different. Hopefully with me working 2 jobs, busting my butt off he will finally see that i am trying to make things the way they should be and that i am trying to prove myself to him. Sometimes i look at him and think maybe we are way to different for each other then i remember why i love him so much. He’s hard nosed , kinda old fashioned, set in his ways and pretty much keeps me in line i guess you could say…. but he can also be to difficult at times. Maybe that’s just the way people are that have lived in the country there whole life?? ok I’m off to start my day, wish me luck on my adventure to quit smoking……

So after i got out of work yesterday i had errands to run, after i was done with my errands i decided to run to the store and grab something to make for dinner and stuff to make lasagne this weekend cause the boyfriends uncle passed away and figured id make lasagne for him his kids his brother and there dad after they return from the viewing on sunday.

Was wandering through the veggies when i came across one of the “cousins” that i estranged myself from. I turned my back as if not to see her knowing she hadnt seen me at the moment and kept looking at the veggies but was able to see her out of the corner of my eye. I have to laugh at this and did exactly that after what happened next. I saw her turn around right towards me heading in my direction and she saw me. I have never seen someone run out of a isle as fast as she did, as far as she know’s i didnt see her but it was just to damn funny. I just wish i couldve seen the look on her face.

I have no feelings towards the many relatives that i estranged myself from anymore. And i know there are going to be times that i run into them seeing they  only live 20 minutes away from me. I was waiting for a confrontation but hey what can i say i think they finally realize i want nothing to do with them.

2 of the cousins got married 2 weeks apart from each other here in the last month. That kinda hurt in a way cause these 2 particular cousins i wouldve loved to see get married but ya know what? whatever!!! i had to find this out via myspace. Nice huh?!?! my parents wasnt even notified about the marraiges. That right there is what made me no longer have feelings towards them. They couldve at least sent a message on myspace, not that i wouldve gone to the weddings, cause a fight wouldve started, between the aunts and i.

I’m sure all them relatives know by now that i was seen at the grocery store. I keep waiting for the 1 aunt to text message me with texts trying to make me feel guilty. But hey i start getting text messages again i found out i can use them texts to get the restraining orders that  i so badly want to get to protect my kid against them:)

Hopefully i wont run into anyone else!!!!!!

Life always takes unexpected turns for everyone, mine always seems to take the wrong turns but for once is taking the right turn for the better and hopefully will stay that way.

3 weeks ago today i had to move out of my apartment. The night before i went to the boyfriend and for the 1st time opened up to him and just let everything out. Once i got started it amazed me how easy it was to just keep going and let all spill out of my mouth. That told me right there that counseling is working. But at the moment things didn’t go so well between the boyfriend and i.

I had asked him to let me move back in but the next day after he got out of work he told me no, and came over and helped me move the heavy stuff into storage then just left me standing there. So i finished moving the small stuff to storage. After i was finished i called and left my boss a message letting her know i  wouldnt be in for a couple of weeks and the kid and i headed up north to my parents so i could get some much needed down time and so i could think and try to find myself so to speak. 2 nights later the boyfriend called to find out where i was cause cause he felt like shit for telling me no asked me a couple of questions then hung up. 2 nights after that i called him to ask him a hypothetical question and we talked for 2 1/2 hours.

A week later i packed my car back up, left my son with my parents and headed back down to spend the holiday weekend with the boyfriend. Ended up staying so i could go back to work and so that i could find either a full time job or a 2nd part time job. Needless to say on wednsday night the boyfriend told me if i could manage to help pay the bills etc that i could move back in just as long as i kept the promises that i threw at him 3 weeks ago the night i asked him if i could move back in. So for now im hitting every store, fast food, and restaraunts that i can think of to apply at to work at part time at night until i can land a full time job. and friday we went to storage and started pulling my stuff out of storage and to move into the house.

Life financially is going to be so hard for awhile. Most of my money is going to go towards bills and food etc. The kid seemed to sprout up like a weed in the past month to the point all of a sudden he is as tall as me. He needs new clothes and i have no idea how im going to buy him what he needs. Is it just me or do kids wait till were not looking when they decide to go through growing spurts and when we dont have the money to buy bigger clothes??

On top of that i stopped by the Secretary if State on Thursday to put in my change of address on my DL and car tags only for the lady to tell me that even though my son is only 14 years old that he is now at the age to take drivers training. I thought they had to be 15 years old but apparently not so now i have to figure out how i am going to pay for his drivers training. Do i start teaching him myself, then look for a drivers school?? I’m not ready for his one!! This is 1 of the last things i have to keep him little in my eyes for just a little bit longer. I’m not ready for him to have this type of freedom.

On New Years i posted my New Year resolutions and have been working on at least 5 of them and my father is helping with a 6th one these are the ones that i have been working on, 1st the major one

“Quit smoking once and for all”

On Friday i smoked my last pack i have cheated a little over the weekend the boyfriend has givin me a few here and there through out the weekend, but i have gone from a pack and a half a day to 5-6 cigs a day which in my eyes is a major accomplishment. The boyfriend has decided to quit also and has not bought his weekly carton of smokes he has 2 packs left so 2 people quitting cold turkey at the same time is going to be very interesting. I hope we dont kill each other. His son was warned last night when he got here for the week that we both might be cranky this week. But this is not just to save money but it is also for our health!!

The other ones i been working on are these

• Put counseling to use and start COMMUNICATING not only with the boyfriend but everybody
• Spend more time with the now teenage son
• Fix my finances regardless of how bad the “economy” is, and get out of this rut i’m inStart being me the person i am and just cut people out of my life that doesn’t approve of the person i have become in my adult life.

and the last 1 being what my father is helping me with

Start my future plans for opening my own business when the economy starts picking up

My dad has been working on starting his own business. He is opening up a candy business and about 4 or 5 months ago i jokingly told him 1 night that he should open a store for me and at my surprise about 6 weeks later called me one morning and told me hey i’ll open up a store for you down where you live. So before my parents move out of state i will have my own store/business thanks to my father. I know its going to take time to make money, but my reasoning for owning my own business is so that when the boyfriend and i retire years down the road we will have that extra income coming in to play with or use to live on or whatever we might need that income for. So 6 months into the new year i have at least 6 of my resolutions in place now i have to start working on the other other4.

Over the weekend the boyfriend (while being pretty tipsy from drinking) begged me twice to make things work with us this time, and right now i am bound and determined to make us work this time cause like he told me and i feel the same way if it dont work im not going to be able to handle it. He means to much to me and after being with him for 6 years now i want this 6 years to turn into a lifetime. I want to grow old with this man more then anything so as of right now my main goal is bettering my financial situation and making my life with him work in allaspects that i can think of, not just for us but also for all 4 kids cause this get together and splitting up has got to be hard on them also and we can’t keep putting them through this to!!!

20 years ago today started off like any other day. It was our last day of school i got myself up got my brother and sister up for school, made sure my sister was ready before my brother and i had to leave to catch our bus. It was my last day of my freshmen year at high school and 2 final’s left to take. We were getting ready to move out west in a few weeks and i had a boyfriend that i had to break up with when i got to school that morning so i was feeling pretty shitty that morning. When school finally let out that morning i made a beeline for my bus. Needless did i know my whole world was going to come crashing down on me before reaching home.

Right before our bus stop was some rail road tracks. By law the bus driver stopped and there was a train coming down the tracks, alot of the kids was yelling at her to go anyway cause everyone wanted to get home. Her first mistake was listening to a bunch of kids cause she did as they asked knowing damn well my brother and i had to walk back over those tracks to get home.

My brother was off in his own little world that day and didn’t hear the other kids telling her to go anyway and it never dawned on me to make sure he knew there was a train coming, he flew off of the bus before i could even blink. Thats when it dawned on me  after i got off the bus to tell him but he had already made a beeline for the tracks, i heard the train coming but the warnings lights were not  sounding, i screamed at him as loud as i could but the train was to loud for him to hear me. One of the other kids heard me screaming for him and she turned and looked just as the train hit him, but we both saw that he looked up as it was about to him and he tried to turn around but it was too late it caught his head and he immediately was in a coma. I knew my parents hadn’t left for work yet and knew i had to get word to them. The other kid took me into her apartment so i could call my dad and this was the hardest thing i ever had to do. I told my dad what had happened and i never got a response he dropped the phone and went running. Luckily someone was nice enough to call my grandparents and let them know they only lived next door to us. By the time my parents ran to the tracks the train was able to stop by then and my parents climbed in between the train cars to get to the other side. Firemen was already on the scene and life flight on the way. My mother, grandmother and i was lead to by the road a little while later as life flight was getting ready to land. They were just inches from the ground when all of a sudden they pulled back up and left and my dad and grandpa came around the corner of the train which had moved out of the roads path by then. Just the look on  my grandfathers face told all. All’s i wanted to do was run and keep running and not stop. I couldn’t breath i wanted my brother back but knew it wasn’t possible. My grandparents walked my dad and i to there house while another lady walked my mom to the house, i still wanted to run and just keep running.

By then the school district had already been notified and the principle from my sons school and 1 of my former teachers showed up at my grandparents i didnt want them anywhere near me i know they had meant well by coming but my sister wasnt even home from school yet and didnt know about our brother or so we thought.

You see it had already spread like wild fire with the bus drivers and they were all on the cb’s talking about. My sister’s bus driver didn’t even realize my sister was sitting in the seat right behind her and my sister heard everything and got off her bus in complete shock that day. My sister was in such a state of shock that i don’t think it actually hit her. I never once saw my sister cry.

For 19 years i secretly blamed myself for my brothers death. See the night before i was babysitting my brother and sister like i normally did every night while our parents were at work. It was time for the 2 of them to go to bed, and my brother started giving me problems about going to bed and we got into a very heated fight. I was so frustrated and didn’t want to bother my grandmother for help on the situation and got very angry and screamed out at my brother that i hated him and wished he was dead.

Being only 16 at the time and thinking like a child, when my brother was killed the next day i honestly thought it was my fault and carried this guilt with me up till a year ago when the boyfriend requested that i seek some type of counseling. My first session was very emotional and after about a month the counselor finally made me see that it wasnt my fault. But there is still  the guilt and probably will always be there of telling my brother the night before he died that i hated him. I loved him more then he knew and just wish sometimes that i could have 1 last chance to tell him that!

To my baby brother it’s been 20 years today. Your the first thing that came to mind when my alarm went off this morning. There hasnt been 1 second that i havent thought of you today. I miss you like it happened yesterday, I still get teary eye’d at time’s when i think of you or remember something funny from our childhood. I know i wasn’t always the best sister to you but you did mean the world to me and always will!!! I will always cherish the short 13 years i had you as a brother. I Love You  baby bro and can’t wait to someday see you again when it is my time!!!!!!

I had never been able to go with my son on a field before so i went with him today on a field trip. I had 3 of his friends  matched up with me to chaperone that i had never met before they seemed nice i told them when we got there that i was gonna let them lead the way and i would just follow, which they did just that.  After about a hour i saw the 3 of them pulling there money out of there pockets to see how much they had altogether between all 3 of them and noticed they only had 3$ between all of them and knew they didnt bring a lunch with them but i didn’t say anything. after a few hours i was getting hungry and i knew my son was hungry so just to confirm that they had no money i asked them if they were ready to eat and they were like yea lets find somewhere to eat. well they ran up to the cotton candy stand and grabbed a cotten candy to share cause thats all they had enough money for and it upset me. Why didn’t there parents give them money or send a sack lunch with them??? i’m the type of person that i can not eat in front of people especially kids knowing they are hungry. So i walked up to another stand to get my son and i some lunch and was standing there looking at those kids and i got really angry at there parents and ended up buying them lunch cause i felt bad for them. What were there parents thinking?? kids can’t go all day without food, right? That really upset me. sorry i just needed to vent that out a little bit. i gotta scram have a great day:)

Well i guess i didn’t realize it’s been 2 months since i last wrote into this

I have been pretty busy taking care of business and dealing with my son’s issue’s.

About 6 weeks ago my kid’s science teacher had called me cause he was a little concerned about him. He had a break down of sorts in math Class and he refused to talk to his math teacher when he asked what was wrong and said he wanted to talk to his science teacher. So he was sent to his science teacher. After about a hour of trying to get him to calm down he finally was able to drag out of him what the problem was. My son proceeded to tell him that he was scared that he wasn’t going to be able to live with me and that he was even more scared that my a-hole uncle was going to kidnap him. When his science teacher called me that night n told me what had happened, i explained to him what had happened back in nov with that side of my family and we talked for awhile about the whole situation and it was very upsetting for me cause everyday i’m looking over my shoulder to make sure they do not see us. I can’t take the chance of them finding us cause quite honestly i do worry about the same time. This same uncle whom is only married into my family treated his own children like door mats while they were growing up, verbally abused them and he thinks he has the right to waltz into my life and accuse me of not providing for my child over hear say/lies told to him and try to take my child from me at a funeral. so what do i do now?? Put my son into counseling now that i know the extent of the emotional distress my now estranged relatives gave my son?? He is scared to death and only feels safe when he is with my boyfriend. The “uncle” my son has always been scared of and hate’s him. When i first met thisuncle b4 my aunt married him i was only 6 or 7 years old and i didn’t like him right off the bat, but never knew why.  I guess a child’s instincts about people are always right and at such a young age i must have sensed something about him and i think them instincts were completely accurate. I live a block away from my aunt and uncle up north where they live for 3 1/2 years so my aunt could babysit for me and day in and day out i saw first hand how he treated my aunt and 3 baby cousins like shit and it killed me to see them treated the way they wer treated. I despise him with a passion.

I am pressed for time so im gonna head out of here with this question in mind…Do i send my kid to counseling and let a counselor help him deal with this emotional distress?

Well the therapy i have been receiving has been on the back burner and am only seeing this therapist every 6-8 weeks. She wanted me to get started on another type of therapy that i need. Domestic violence therapy, i started it last month and what’s amazing is the therapist i’m seeing has gone through the exact same thing as i did growing up, so she is on a mission to help me.

See as a child my mother abused me she would haul off and punch me out of no where but it would always happen while my dad was at work. Growing up as a young child my dad worked at night in a factory for 1 of our now failing big 3 auto makers so my siblings and i really only saw him on the weekends.

My mother would also do stuff like ground me for what my younger siblings did or for stuff the neighbor kids did and then lie to my dad about why i was grounded. It was a never ending story for me, but it was enough to screw me up.

Then at almost 20 years of age i met my sons “father” and eventually we started seeing each other and he could be pretty verbally abusive even long after we broke up, it was always said to me stuff like “you’ll never amount to anything” blah blah im not going to say everything that he would say to me but it added to my already screwed up mind but i think my favorite is when we were together his always calling me a bitch blah blah blah. The words that he would say to me i didn’t realize that they affected me until recent years.

Because of my mother i ended up being a shy child growing up cause i was always scared which caused me to not learn to communicate. And now as a adult i still do not know how to communicate and when it comes to the boyfriend i clam up when ever I’m questioned about any little or large thing. It could be simple questions about something little and i would just sit there and stare at him and just not say anything at all.

My therapist for the domestic violence had given my some papers from a book to read a few weeks ago and some of the stuff makes so much sense. The book is for adult survivors off all types of abuse, and there was 1 paragraph that really made sense to me and has had me thinking since i read it this paragraph says this

“Relationships can be difficult because they call upon personal characteristics and emotional capabilities that are often new to adult survivors, such as trust, assertiveness, intimacy, self-confidence, good communication skills, and the ability to give and recieve affection, self-awareness and empathy for others, and acceptance of one’s own feelings and needs.  Many adult survivors find their personal relationships characterized by fighting, feeling misunderstood, projecting blame on each other, and feeling overwhelmed by powerful moods. Frequently, adult survivors anticipate rejection or non-acceptance and projects themselves by withdrawing or by becoming overly aggressive. These behaviors, and others, are probably ones you adopted as a child to help defend yourself against abuse, but they may not be productive or healthy in adult relationships.”

My therapist only gave me 1 chaptor from this book but this particular paragraph caught my attention and made so much sense to me, it came from a book called “Survivor to Thriver” from The Morris Center. I ended up going online and looking for the book and am currently reading it right now if you’ve been abused in any way as a child i suggest reading this book its pretty interesting the book is at

http://ascasupport.org/manual.php

If i knew now what i didn’t know years ago i would’ve gone to counseling a long time ago.

Now i am going to test myself, i need to go talk to the boyfriend tonight whom i have not really been able to communicate with in the entire time we have been together which is almost 6 years. Even though i have only had 3 sessions so far for this counseling i am putting myself to the test and see what happens tonight.

I love this man alot and so badly want to get back on the same page as him like i was 5 years ago before we started having problems. Call me stubborn if you must but even though this is seperation #2  i want very badly to make this relationship work and seeing he is the 1 person i have hard a hard time communicating with it just makes me even more determined to make things work with us. He is a good person, he says he’s a A-hole but i think not. I honestly think i see something in him that no one else see’s in him that even he doesn’t see in himself. I see a sweet, loving and caring person even though he hides that side of him. Regardless of all the problems we have had he has constantly given me many chances that he wouldn’t give to other people.

Am i stupid to want to work things out when we have had problems for 4 years, and 2 seperations? Maybe, but love does funny things to people right?!?! Seeing i cut alot of my relative’s out of my life( see earlier posts in Nov) they had a problem with the boyfriend and the funny thing is the 1 cousin and her hubby used to be close friends with him, but got upset when they realized that he wasn’t going to “party” with them anymore after i moved in with him. but the feeling was apparently mutual cause he seemed to have a problem with them, and my cutting them out has made things a little bit better with us. But yet my parents seem to like him and my sister has never met him and she like’s him (she live’s on the other side of the country which is why she has not met him yet) the only thing that matters to me is that my immediate family likes him the “relatives” do not count in my eyes!!

My counselor want’s him to join us on a session or 2 to have him help her teach me to communicate with him without actually discussing our situation in the session or session’s, i have still got to talk to him about that which is another thing i need to talk to him about tonight.

I’m hoping that i’m not a lost cause and that she can help me learn to communicate with him. This means so much to me to be able to freely talk to him without clamming up or talking to him without hesitation, like i have in the past. I’m out for now i need to go gather my thought’s together for tonight so that i can hopefully talk to him without backing out, wish me luck!!!

Valentine’s Day is kind of a bitter sweet day for me. Over the years i have began to  look at it as only a Hallmark holiday (which i now call it) thats annoy’s me like crazy. When i was young i loved the “hallmark holiday“ but as i started getting older i started despising it.  Why have 1 day out of the year to show your unconditional love to your spouse or significant other, when you have  364 other days in the year to show that love? It should be shown unconditionally on a daily basis in my eye’s.

The boyfriend also does not like Valentines Day which to this day i have no clue why, but October of 03 when we were first seeing each other i got home from work 1 day to find mail from him in my box. So i opened it up and it was a Sweetest’s Day card, which i had never heard of before and come to find out everyone i asked about it that night had never heard of it before either except for my co-workers. So i took it as being a Michigan thing. I thought it was sweet of him to send that to me, although he hasn’t given me anything for it since.

Is it wrong of me to think of Valentines Day as just a annoying Hallmark holiday?? I used to think i was wrong until i have recently discovered that i am not the only one that feel’s the same way, i have found that lots of people think of it the same way i do which made me feel better. The boyfriend and i did have some romantic quiet time in a way Friday night which was nice.                                                                                                                                Ok i am gone for now have a good day …………

January 16, 1995 at 12:05 am i gave birth to my son. When i was about 4 months pregnant i made a decision that i didn’t want to do and put my son up for adoption. I was young and not ready to be a mother at the age of 21 and a friends mom found a private open adoption agency for me. About a month before i gave birth to my son i started having odd feelings about the agency. After i picked out a family to adopt my son the lady from the agency had told me the adoptive parents would pay for my rent, food, medical bills car repairs or anything else i needed paid. Well i had medical coverage so that wasn’t a worry for me, and they did pay my rent and groceries. Then came a day where i needed help fixing me car and all of a sudden they wouldn’t. With open adoptions the birth parents do not have to sign the adoption papers till the baby is 6 months old and 3 weeks before i had my son all of a sudden i had a lawyer calling me constantly leaving message after message telling me i had to sign the adoption papers before i had my son, which was not what i had agreed to. Things started not setting with me right, so i told me friends mom about the messages and she started feeling like she set me up with a bad agency, and so i started ignoring all calls from the agency and lawyer. Then 2 weeks before my due date i went into labor, and so i went and spent the day at my friends house with her and her family and i eventually drove myself to the hospital. I spent a total of  around 18 hours in labor and finally at exactly 12:05 am had my son. The hospital knowing i had my son up for adoption asked me if i would like to hold him and hesitantly i said yes. They put him in my arms and i looked down at him and all’s i saw was a spittin image of my late brother and knew right then and there i couldn’t give away my dad’s first grandson after losing his only son. Then my Friends mom whom went with me in the delivery room took him from me and immediately hoped i would not give him away. At which point watching her holding him i had made my decision to keep him and the next morning the  worker at the hospital called the agency and let them know and then she started gathering as much baby clothes as she could for me without getting into trouble. Went i went into labor i had a low grade fever and went through labor with the fever so they kept my son and i in the hospital for 4 days before releasing me. The day i was to be released my parents came to get us and take us home with them for a few weeks, but they had come too early so off they went to sop and find me a car seat and more clothes etc. My mom told me that my dad turned into a little child in the store as if he was looking for toys and was jumping up and down grabbing this and that and whatever he could. That’s when i knew i had made the right decision. A month later i moved back in with my parents so they could help me and it was all bonding between grandpa and grandson. When my son was a about 6 days old my mom went to show me how to sponge bath my son and he was so cold and screaming at the top of his little lungs and our lasha apso whom hated kids with a passion came tearing down the hall barking like crazy at us as if he was telling us off and from that day on the dumb dog became my sons body guard which was funny cause we had never been able to let young kids around him. Many nights i would wake up in the middle of the night to catch the dog sneaking in the room to check on my son, and sometimes he would realize i had caught him and he would look at me get mad growl a little bit and run off. As my son got older and more mobile day by day the dog grew accustomed to his getting hair pulled , ears pulled etc and the dog would let him do it to our amazement but as my son got older the dog started teaching him and would give him a mild quiet growl to let him know when he had had enough and my son would then back off. They had become best buddies but yet the dog would still snap at any other kids that came anywhere near him, go figure!!!  When my son was i think 7 my parents finally had to put the dog down he had a bump on his side that over the years kept getting bigger and bigger. I miss him i’ll always cherish the memories of this dog and how he so protected my son even though we knew he hated children. He was so good with my son that even though he’s been gone for 7 years i’ll always remember how he was with my kid.

14 years?  Where did the years go??  Why does it seem like time speeds up after having a child? Where does the time go?? It seems like just yesterday he was born, then there’s all the firsts rolling over, crawling, standing up, walking (my dad and i had to trick him into walking) its all seems like it happened just days ago. My favorite memory from when he was little which i love telling people about spring of 97 we had to make a emergency trip to Ohio My eldest uncle had committed suicide and wasn’t found till about a month later so my eldest aunt and her husband set up a small memorial service which we dropped everything for. My dad rented a car and off we set, we arrived in Ohio in the middle of the night and we ended up in Pennsylvania cause my dad had made a wrong turn but we weren’t far from my aunt n uncle’s house. It was about 4am and we thought my son was asleep but he heard my dad swearing and all of a sudden started yelling out “dumb Gunky” “dumb Gunky” (my sister had taught him to call my dad gunky instead of having him call him grandpa which he had done for years) naturally my dad got even more mad at which point my sister and i started laughing and he got even more angry and still my son is in his car seat between my sister and i just yelling out “dumb Gunky” over and over again. Its a memory that i love cause it was just too funny !!! I been walking down memory lane since i woke up at 5am this morning , cause it amazes me that my baby is now 14 years old i just can’t believe 14 years ago i made a life changing decision to keep that little bundle. I love him so much and would not ever trade him for anything. I have so many memories from the past 14 years that both perplexes me and amazes me ad yet i still am amazed that he’s 14 years old. For anyone out there that has babies or young children treasure every memory and everyday of there childhood cause they grow up way too fast!!! i’m gonna go back to my memory lane and leave this as is… called into work today due to bad temps its -17 with a windchill factor at less -30 plus i wanted to spend  quality time with him while we will still let me. Have a wonderful day and stay warm!!!