How we see ourselves

There is a lot of chatter on social media these days about self images.  And how society tears us down before we are even old enough to understand what self image is.  When I think back to my childhood I remember my mother always telling me how beautiful I was.  But I never believed her,  I mean she is my mom.  Its kind of her job to tell me that.  I also remember total strangers stopping us whenever we were out somewhere and they would tell my mother how beautiful I was.  Instead of enjoying the attention,  it creeped me out.  A LOT.

When I looked in the mirror I never saw a beautiful little girl or even a kind of pretty one.  All I saw was a girl with a plain oval shaped face, long straight yellow hair, eyes that were this really weird color that was blue with a circle of yellow in the middle,  I saw "chipmunk" cheeks and this embarrassing dent in my chin that made it look like a butt.   Now as an adult and I look photos of myself at that age I am startled by just how pretty I was.  The hair I thought was nothing special was a shiny, golden blonde.  Those eyes that I thought were weird and made me look Asian are to this day one of my best features.  They range in color from pale blue to dark green depending on my mood.  The chupmunk cheeks I saw were actually high cheekbones that I inherited from my Cherokee ancestors.  And that dent in my chin?  I got that from the father that I only met a handful of times and cannot remember what he looks like.

But as a child most of the time we don't see ourselves the way everybody else does.  Fast forward to age 9 when I got my first period.  Yes,  I said age 9 and yes,  it sucked big time.  Luckily my mom noticed my mood swings and saw this coming and had "the talk" with me so I knew what was going on when it happened and didn't think that I was dying.  With that change came changes to my body.  I was tall for my age,  taller than all the boys in my class so everybody assumed I was going to be a very tall woman when I grew up.  So now when people stopped my mother and I in the store they said not only that I was beautiful but that I should become a model when I grew up.  Something my mother wholeheartedly agreed with.  Another changed occurred between the ages of 9 and 11,  I got boobs.  And not the gradual, need a training bra type of boobs but full blown C cup boobs.  Which is still not the biggest they would eventually be but at that age the only girls that had boobs that big were the overweight girls.  So by my reasoning that must of meant I was fat.  Now,  I will not refer to another person as "fat".  I think its disrespectful and mean.  But I have no qualms about calling myself a mean name.

Why did I think I was fat at such a young age?  Because all the girls that were not overweight were flat as a board.  Most of them wore training bras but still had nothing to fill them.  Meanwhile I was wearing my moms bras and they fit.    Then another change occurred.   As I continued to fill out,  my waist seemed to be getting smaller, and then my hips arrived.  VERY large hips.  So there I was a 5 foot tall, big boobed, big butt, tiny waist having girl in the 5th grade.  None of the girls in my class liked me because of what I looked like and the boys liked me too much.  And boys that age only know how to show a girl they like them by making them cry.  Once in a great while a boy would be my friend in secret but as soon as anybody found out they had to save face by saying something mean to me in front of the rest of the school.

I say school because in Oklahoma City where I grew up in the early 80's there was a thing they did called busing.  You were assigned a school not by how close you lived to one but by districts.  So even if there was a perfectly good school 2 blocks from your house,  you had to get on a bus and be driven all the way across town.  They started doing this when you got to 5th grade.  and for some odd reason we had one 5th grade school in the entire city.  So the entire school was 5th graders.

Other things changed in my life as well,  instead of strangers walking up to my mom and telling her how pretty I was,  grown men would approach me when I would go to the store for my mom or when she would be on the next aisle at the grocery store.  And they didn't always just tell me I was pretty. I learned at a very early age what being groped was.  Because of how developed I was at age 12 I looked 18.  Most of the time it was guys in their late teens or early 20's that would approach me and most of the time they were nice and usually asked my name and then how old I was.  I could tell who was the nice ones because when they found out my age they bolted out of there as fast as they could.

Others weren't so nice.  Some would say some really filthy things to me about what they would like to do with me,  or what they thought of my body.  One time when I walked to the store that was 1.5 blocks from our house to get an icee the cleark actually came around the counter and picked me up and carried me to the back room and french kissed me.  I was in total shock and more than a little scared so I ran out of there and did not return until many years later.  So due to my body developing at such a young age I had to grow up fast.  While my friends were still playing jump rope and Barbie dolls I was battling menstrual cramps and trying to find ways to make my boobs look smaller.  The girls at my school called me "fast".  And since we did not have Google back then I had no idea what it meant.  Now I know what it meant,  They were calling me a slut.  Because I had a womans body and the boys paid more attention to me.

I would like to say as the years progressed this sort of thing changed but it did not.  Fast forward thru middle school which was its own special kind of hell, to High school.  My body had pretty much finished developing.  and BIG surprise,  I never grew another inch in height.  To this day I am still the same height that I was in the 5th grade.  Oh and my perfectly straight hair became a mass of curls overnight.  So now when I looked in the mirror I saw a short, fat, frizzy haired girl.  I looked nothing like most of the other girls my age.  Most of them were still flat chested and they had acne.  To my horror I never really had acne that bad.  So there was another thing that made me different and in my eyes made them hate me even more.  I had a few close friends but most of the girls I went to school with were girls I knew but never hung out with.  And even my friends called me names like "Thunder Thighs, or Horse Hips"  The really mean girls just flat out called me fat.  And I believed them.  up until my last year of high school I wore baggy clothes so people could not see my body.  In fact in my last year of school when I started wearing skirts and more fitted clothing everybody thought I just lost a bunch of weight.

Gym class was the ultimate hell.  I was never athletic and the gym teachers always seemed to dislike me so I was always having to do extra reps of this or that exercise.  One teacher used to make me do suicides whenever I couldn't make a basket when he would make us play basketball.  So naturally I started finding ways to get out of gym class. Which usually involved leaving school grounds with a bunch of guy friends in one of their cars.  So the fact that I had a lot of male friends branded me a slut.  Not only was I almost 18 when I had sex for the first time but I was the very last of all my friends to do so.  But,  I somehow was the sluttiest girl in school.

So here I was in high school hiding behind my baggy clothes and I wore fake glasses to conceal my face.  Once in a while one of my girlfriends would tell me that if I lost the glasses and did my hair and makeup I would be the prettiest girl in school.  My reaction?  NO THANK YOU!!  to me that just enlarged the target on my back.

Sometime in middle school I found another thing that I would get made fun of for.  I was smart.  really smart.  The school wanted to skip me up a grade level 2 different times back in elementary school but my mom refused because she didn't think I should be with older kids.  Looking back I might have actually felt like I fit in more with the older kids because my body had matured so early.  But even though I was smart I started to do a really dumb thing.  I pretended to be dumb.  People seemed to like me better when I acted dumb.  So started failing classes which aggravated my mom to the point she just gave up on me in that area.  I screwed up in school so much that I ended up being 2 yrs behind my class so there was no way I would ever graduate high school.  Which I did not.  I ended up taking my GED instead and even though it only took me 1/2 the allotted time I scored extremely high on every section.  Except Math,  I barely squeaked by on that one.

Fast way forward to present day.  I'm 43,  the mom of a 11 yr old boy that is genius level smart and his face and hair look exactly like mine at that same age.  He is breathtakingly beautiful and going to make me hate teenage girls someday soon.  But he is called "weird" because he is so smart.  Because he would rather play video games on his computer or read a book than play sports. And because he decided to grow his hair out so he could donate it to locks of love he gets called a girl all the time. Sometimes its an honest mistake because he is so beautiful but most of the time people are just being assholes.  He is also Autistic. So he doesn't understand how to play all the silly social games that kids play.  He doesn't understand why somebody is shunned because of the shoes they do or don't wear. Or why he gets called "gay" because he cares about other peoples feelings.

He thinks he is ugly,  much like I did at that age.  Even though he is told quite often how handsome he is and yes,  total strangers comment on his looks all the time.  I think I struggle with all of this more than he does because not only do I hurt for him but the memory of what all that was like for me comes flooding back and I just don't know how to make it easier on him or how to convince him not to give a damn what others think of him.  It took me 30 yrs to stop caring what people thought of me and to stop seeing myself in a negative light.  

So while I think its great that people are taking a stance on negativity and trying to make kids today feel good about themselves I don't think we really know the proper way to do that yet.  No matter how many times we tell them positive things about themselves they will only see what they see.  And as was the case with me,  sometimes being attractive brings unwanted attention or it can still bring negative comments from peers. And I don't even know if we can actually change how kids treat each other.  I am facebook friends with many of the females I went to school with and some of them were just downright nasty to me.  But as grown women they are the kindest and caring women I know.

Or I could be wrong and the answer to it all could be that if we make people feel good about themselves they won't feel the need to tear others down.  At some point in my life I finally figured out that a lot of times when somebody is saying something mean to you its because they really don't like themselves very much.  But lets be honest,  getting everybody to not raise their children as assholes is about as realistic as world peace.  Its a lovely thought but it hasn't been in effect since the dawn of time.

Thanks for reading my insomniac ramblings.  and I know I haven't written a new blog in almost 3 years but i've been kind of busy with homeschooling my child and health issues which is a long winded blog in itself.

So until next time I have a lot to say and nobody awake to listen,  Hope wherever you are while reading this you are happy and healthy!

Love,
A.

Fruit instead of junkfood for snacks

Today we went to Samsclub (Oklahoma's version of Costco)  and bought a ton of fresh fruit.  We got strawberries, blueberries, kiwis, grapes, mangos, and peaches.   Then when we came home I set about chopping , slicing, and separating it all for freezing, snacks and future meals.

The fruit that I set aside for my boys snacks (they are ages 16 and 8)  I divided evenly into snack sized ziplok bags,  and when I finished bagging a particular fruit I put all those lil baggies back into the plastic produce containers that they came in.  they are perfect to keep the bags together and in case one happens to pop open while the boys are getting a snack I won't be digging wrinkled fruit off the shelves of my fridge!!

The blueberries, kiwis and grapes I put in the freezer.  That way they make a nice cold snack and I can grab what I need for dishes I might make,  like the blueberries for any baking, although I won't be doing that til fall,  or even pancakes,  the grapes I use in chicken salad.    and Sams was having a killer sale on blueberries,  they were 5.98 for 2 lbs,  in off season they cost that much for a pint so I think we will go back next week and stock up on those babies and freeze them!  we bought 6lbs of strawberries,  they were $4 for 2lbs,  one container we gave to my father in law who loves them,  one container I sliced and put into the snack bags,  and one I chopped up and made up for us to have strawberry shortcake this week. and I made enough so we can have it a few times if we want,  I put it in a airtight container w/a lid and put it in the fridge.  

the peaches I only put half into snacks for the boys,  the other half I just cut them in halves and put in a gallon sized bag for grilling later on.  we can just take how many we want out and seal the bag back up and put it back in the freezer.  the mangos I cut ALL of them up and put in a bag to freeze for grilling.  after having grilled mango I can never eat them any other way again!!

here is a pic of my handy work,  and it was work!  but its alot healthier and cheaper than junkfood for snacks.  i'm lucky that my kids love fresh fruit and will eat it any time.

you may or may not be mentioned in this blog...........

before you read further,  if you get offended by cursing then you want to exit out of this blog right now.  this is a pent up much needed long overdue rant of a blog

still reading?  well, you can't say I didn't warn you.  don't get pissy with me the next time I see or talk to you because you don't like what I wrote here,  because I may just be talking about YOU!!

and no, I don't apologize ahead of time.

so normally I try to treat people how I want to be treated,  I try to not point out what  whining, inconsiderate, judgemental, pretentious fucks people are on facebook/twitter/real life.  I try to be thankful for the roof over my head and not be jealous of how much easier others seem to have it,  I won't say better because I don't know what goes on in their everyday lives. 

I try not to say fuck you to the people who complain about having to pack for their 5th awesome vacation they have taken this year,  or to tell the person with the 2 year old house that cost several hundreds of thousands of dollars that is bitching that they hate their kitchen/master bathroom/theatre room and want to do a gut job and redecorate how ungrateful they are.   I try not to tell the person that is complaining about the cost of gasoline and how its going to suck paying for it so they can use their various recreational vehicles to shut up.

I keep my thoughts to myself when the person who is barely 20lbs overweight is devastated they can't find a bathing suit they like.   I don't say a word to the person who is always bragging about how they can stretch a buck on their tight budget but when they are being thrown a wedding/baby shower they register for the most expensive things in the store. and fyi,  i'm not talking about anybody that is currently with child.  

there are a few people on FB that were really, really, really mean to me back in high school.  so much in fact that it still hurts to think about.  All but one have turned out to be nice people,  I don't know if they remember how they treated me and truly feel bad about it,  but I'm thankful that they are nice people now.  the one that is not nice in presentday pretends to be a great family guy and christian but he is still an ass,  a pretentious ass that is constantly correcting people and acting like he is the wisest person around.   and I don't think he will even have a inking that i'm talking about him because he is so much better than me in his eyes that he wouldnt stoop to read my blog.  in fact i'm surprised he is even a facebook friend anymore.

I also just love how the people that claim to be so liberal and open minded unfriend you if you speak your mind on something they post that you don't happen to agree with.  or the ones that are so closeminded and blind to other peoples feelings that they will just vomit their opinion on everything and not care if what they say upsets others.   

and the religious people,  while i'm very , very happy that you are happy with whatever your faith is,  I really cant stand seeing something pertaining to it posted every freakin 5 min on FB.  its cool if you want to do a daily scripture posting or quote something that relates to what you are going thru in your life at the moment.  but i'm perfectly capable of reading the bible myself. (which I do more than you would think)

and for the dozen or so people that I have deleted and blocked this past year because I posted something and they decided to declare WWIII on me for it.  FUCK YOU!!!    if I want to bitch about my sons little league baseball coach,  the stupidity of most of the percentage of people that call 911,  how bad I think OSU football sucks or how crooked NBA refs are I will, if you don't like it then don't read it.  you can post how you feel but don't try to start a FB fight with me.  I censor myself on there because there are people that I don't want to offend that reads my posts. (again if you are offended by my language and are still reading this I warned you at the beginning)

oh yeah,  if you have ever done a particular thing,  don't look down on somebody else who has/or is doing it.  I know alot more about you people than you think and I have an amazing memory.  lets just say you better be glad I don't get a vote in whether you go to heaven or hell.  for example,  don't act like you are a model citizen when I know about the bong(s) you own and that you have a monthly pot bill,  don't put down somebody for having sex before they were married if you were/or got somebody pregnant before you could legally drive.  don't question someone elses parenting abilities when your kids are one step away from juvie hall.  don't act shocked that somebody is getting a divorce when you cheated on your first spouse.  

I try really hard to be nice to everybody even if thats the last feeling I have towards them because i'm a believer in karma.  and to be honest right now I could use some of that what comes around goes around stuff because things arent going so great for me right now. 

so now that i've got alot of bitching out of my system I will count a few of the things i'm thankful for.  that while my health sucks to me, I do not have a life threatening disease.  my husband and kids are all healthy,  I still have my mom around,  I have great inlaws that I get along very well with.   and even though I'm not really happy with it,  I am thankful for the home I have,  that my kids don't have to go hungry.  my husband is kind and considerate and while I may complain about him sometimes I would not trade him for anything.  

so if a few of you could toss some of those positive prayers and feelings of goodwill towards me and mine I would sure appreciate it.  not sure what the immediate future has in store for us but I hoping and praying that its not bad.  

thanks for reading the blog,  and no i'm still not sorry for the cussing. :)

Love, 

A.

Politics and such

yesterday was "super tuesday"  and after the choices the people of my state made I am now terrified and contemplating moving to another country for the next 4-5 years.  

but after reading several articles,  comments on the local news channels FB pages and getting into a couple of debates here and there on friends pages i've come to this conclusion.  whether you are far left or far right,  you've got a screw loose somewhere.

I mean no offense,  some of my best friends are extremists but I want to clarify a few things for all of my leaning this way or that friends.

first of all,  not all Republicans are racists, sexists or homophobic.  Just because somebody has strong religious beliefs does not make them any of those things.  I know some damn fine people that don't hate me or wish bad things upon me just because I don't agree with them all the time.  er,  at least they don't tell me they do. :)

and on that note,  not all Democrats are lazy, baby killing, socialists, communist, satan worshippers.   Again I know plenty of liberals that are hard workers,  that don't think Obama is all that.  And alot of them have strong religious beliefs as well, some of them even believe in God. 

It cracks me up when I hear somebody lump an entire group together and put a label on them according to their political affiliation.  Some people only check that box because in order to vote it is required.  I did not want to be lumped into either group so I checked the Independent box,  now at the time I thought Independent meant exactly that,  that you were free to make up your own mind and did not need a political party to decide for you what issues are important.  I had no idea that it was a actual political party that has its own agenda.  but since I have a headache and there is no major candidate running for office on the Independent ticket I don't have to go into what they stand for and can pretend this time Independent means just that.  

I believe in separation of church and state,  simply because not every person is the same religion and mixing the 2 is always going to step on somebodys rights.  I believe that what goes on in consenting adults bedrooms is nobodys business but those consenting adults involved.  I believe everybody has a right to love and to be loved,  again as long as its consenting adults.   I believe that if 2 people want to have a life together and raise a family and they want to make that union legal then they should be able to.   and I don't care if they are the same sex or not.   I also believe that there are some people that act before they think and before you know it they are on their 4 or 5 marriage before they turn 40.  and I'm talking about both gay and straight people here.

I believe until everybody can get over their fear of talking about sex then birth control ie: condoms should be handed out starting in middle school.  there are 8th grade girls in our town that are pregnant right now,  somewhere a parent should have put down the bible and have an honest talk with their kids.   

I believe that  everybody should respect others religious beliefs and not step all over them.  I also believe that what goes on in a womans uterus is nobody's business but hers and who she invites in.

I also believe that everybody should have the right to bear arms,  if they can pass a basic common sense test and show that they can be responsible.  I believe that if those people want to own a thousand guns then its not the govt's place to try to prevent them.  

I believe that if your child is a bully and you don't have a problem with it then you are a bully that taught them to be one.   And you need your ass kicked by a bunch of nerds.

I believe that our country MUST stop being so dependent on the middle east for our oil reserves,  if we have it here then we need to drill for it.  and if we are saving it for when the rest of the world drys up,  then just say it instead of pretending to care about the environment.  nobody is fooled by that.  

and I believe that we are totally screwed when it comes to this next election.  Obama is going to ruin the country if he stays in office and whether Romney or Santorum gets elected they will do the same.  The 2 men that had a chance of defeating Obama and actually doing a decent job as President don't stand a chance because of their personal lives.  Something that has nothing to do with how they would have actually done the job.   

so thats all i've got,  living in Oklahoma where the wind comes sweeping down the plains and leaving everything covered in dust and allergens,  my head is pounding and I can't think straight.  hopefully it will all clear up soon,  and hopefully I don't have to move to another country come November.

Why I am so passionately against the Personhood bill in Oklahoma

those of you that have been paying attention to my activity on facebook lately know how I feel about this Personhood bill going for a vote in the house ,  it was just passed by the Senate.  Some of you probably wonder why I even care since I have had a complete hysterectomy and it doesnt affect my body.   Well ,  let me explain why it matters so much to me.

There are actually several reasons why I care about this bill,  my own personal reasons are if this bill was in effect when I was in my 20's then I would not have my son Caden today, in fact,  its a strong possibility I would be dead.  I was married very young at age 22,  it wasn't a happy marriage yet I became pregnant several times,  each time resulted in a miscarriage,  twice I had to have a D&C performed because I did not pass the fetus.  I had to go to a abortion clinic both times for this procedure,  once I had to walk thru a line of protesters that screamed ugly things at me,  they even threw things at me.  I wanted to scream back at them that I was not killing my baby,  it was already dead and if I did not have this procedure then I would die too.  But I did not say a word,  I walked in with my head held high and ignored them.   and then the same when I left afterwards.

Towards the end of the marriage I was told I could not carry a baby to term,  that I had too much endometreosis and it had caused too much damage to have a healthy pregnancy,  also I found out I had PCOS,  which is a disease that causes cysts to grow on your ovaries,  sometimes very large and very painful cysts,  it also causes obesity which I am still dealing with to this day.  PCOS causes every morsel of food you eat to turn to sugar thus adding the weight,  it causes other problems as well.  Like infertility,  and a even higher risk of miscarriage due to both the disease and being obese.

A few years after my divorce I remarried,  a few mos before we got married I went to a new Dr and begged for something to be done to help the PCOS,  I'm a size small frame and had over 100 extra lbs on me,  I also wanted to see if anything could be done to eventually help me have a baby somewhere down the road.  I was referred to a fertility Dr who gave me a very honest consult,  that it would be crazy to go through the time, pain and expense of taking fertility drugs when my weight made me high risk for miscarriage,  and given my history that risk was doubled.  So he sent me to a specialist that put me on Metaformin to help control the PCOS and to help me lose weight.  I lost 30lbs almost immed.  I got married on April 25th and on May 28th discovered I was 4wks pregnant!!!   it was a long and stressful pregnancy,  I went into preterm labor on a regular basis and my water broke at 20wks,  they were able to stop the labor and determined at first that I must have had a high leak that sealed itself back.   exactly 9mos from our wedding day Caden was born.

he was perfectly healthy in every way and to us he was a miracle.  after an emergency C section they found that I had 2 amnio bags inside me,  which means at some point I was more than likely pregnant with twins.  we have no idea when I could have miscarried one of them,  there is a the dissappearing twin theory.  somehow that extra amnio bag stayed intact and leaked every so often causing us to think my water was breaking,  yet every time they did a ultrasound it showed I had plenty of amnio fluid.  They don't know why this never showed up on the DOZENS of ultrasounds I had done during my pregnancy.  its a medical mystery.   Caden used to talk about the "other baby inside mommy with him"   so I do believe there was a second baby we never knew about.  

If this personhood law had been in effect way back when I prob would not have been able to get that D&C and would have died. if I had lived,  I would not have had the chance to visit Dr. Reshef about possibly doing fertility treatments or IVF because he would be doing his job in another state.

After Caden was born I had complications that caused even more damage to my reproductive organs,  my high risk specialist Dr advised me to NEVER get pregnant again,  that if I did it was a strong possibility that I would bleed to death without warning.  So our choices were to abstain from sex even though we were a married couple,  use birth control, or one of us have surgery.   If our birth control had failed and I did become pregnant the personhood law would not allow me to end the pregnancy,  it wasn't 100% that I would die if I got pregnant,  just a large chance I would.  somehow I don't think those odds would be enough for the supporters of this bill.   and I would be forced into a life ending pregnancy and leave my husband, our adopted son, his daughter from a previous marriage and this new baby that I fought so hard to carry full term. How is that even sane ???

Now for the other reasons why I care about this law,  my daughter is a young woman now,  I want her to have final say in what happens to her body!!  I also have many friends who have had children or are exploring IVF now.  I have many gay friends that want to have children via surrogacy or IVF, or artificial insemination.  I want the young women of this generation to have choices,  they should not have to worry about their bodies being hijacked by the judicial system if they want to make an unpopular choice if they should become pregnant.  I want them to have every form of safe birth control option available to them.   and if God forbid one of them is a victim of rape I do not want them to be denied the chance to have a pill that will PREVENT a unwanted pregnancy offered to them and thus they be forced to relive that horror every day for the rest of their lives because somebody that doesn't even know them decided they should.

Whether you believe in abortion or not,  you should be against this bill.  it violates basic human rights.  If we cannot choose what happens with our own bodies then how is that living in freedom?

That is why I oppose the Personhood bill.

Alysworld: Happy New Year!!!

Alysworld: Happy New Year!!!

Happy New Year!!!

Happy New Year to all of you reading this!!! (all 2 of you!)  LOL,

I really hope this year is not as eventful as last year was for me and my family.  We had a near fatal 4 wheeler accident,  a runaway semi truck tire attack us,  several earthquakes that really "rattled" our nerves.  not to mention a huge snow storm,  hell-like temps in the summer.    not to mention our teenaged son and his friends decided to clean out our locked liquor cabinet the one time ever we left them home alone.

a few really good events happened this past year,  our daughter graduated high school,  I got to see my favorite band in the world in concert.  and i'm sure many other things that I have just forgotten about,  but i'm sure they will come back to me when I least expect it.

speaking of past memories coming back out of the  blue,  here lately I have been remembering different things my ex husband used to say to me. (we divorced in jan of 1999),  funny how I never got mad back then,  my feelings got hurt but I mostly just ignored him.  but now when I remember these things I get really mad and wish I would have told him off back then.  here are a few of the things that have been popping into my head lately.

1. "wow!"  you have really just thrown in the towel on your looks haven't you?"
2. " I'm losing interest in this relationship"
3.  6mos after my brother committed suicide " how long are you going to take getting over this?"
  he also threw his wedding ring out the front door of our apt 2 wks after we got married.  ,  he got angry because I had not done laundry that day and threw all of our brand new towels in the trash can outside,  while it was raining.  oh and he told me on a regular basis that his biggest fear is I will turn out like my mother.

and all this wasn't even the really bad stuff he did.  of which I would need a therapist to go into with.

not sure why I have been thinking about all those random things.  maybe because we divorced at this same time of year.  oh and how can I forget this,  I told him what atty I was going to use to file for divorce , (whom I had already spoken to on the phone and made an appt with for the next week)  and he went in ahead of me and hired the same atty and filed for divorce himself.  not sure what he thought he was accomplishing since it was a no fault divorce, I didn't want alimony or anything from him.  oh and he did try to prevent me from going back to my maiden name.  he tried to block me from getting that in the divorce decree ,  I had to threaten alimony for him to drop it.

maybe this time of year I'm just thankful for all my blessings and getting that divorce probably saved my life!!!

but anyways,  hope everybody's year is off to a great start and continues to bring good things.   I'm looking forward to a nice quiet, boring year!  LOL

love to you all!
A.