Kerry'd Away

Today was the day that my support group had planned our annual picnic. This is the fifth picnic we’ve held, and the third one where it has rained on us. Maybe we should have held it in July so that when we really needed rain we could have brought it to the area. If you know of somebody who is having an outside wedding in the summer you should double check with my group to see when our picnic is being held, that way the bride can make sure to NOT pick that day. Otherwise, she’ll get rained on. This is how the sky looked tonight (after the picnic):

I don’t have any pictures of the actual picnic, but when I get some I will be sure to post them. We had a very nice turn out despite the rain! There was a ton of food and all of the banana cake is gone. My parents were disappointed that I didn’t bring any back home. lol.

The people in my group are awesome. They surprised me and gave me some very beautiful flowers, along with a thank you card. Isn’t that great? Chester wanted to smell them, too:

Chester agreed that they were beautiful, too. Thanks to everybody for such a great day!

… is the beginning of a lifelong romance.” This is one of my favorite lines in Oscar Wilde’s play “An Ideal Husband”. This play was also made into a movie with Jeremy Northam and Rupert Everett (which I highly recommend!).

I need to keep this line in mind more often. Especially during weeks like the one that I’ve had. I often forget that I am just as important as everything else that I am throwing myself into. I spend a lot of time doing things for others, thinking of others, and putting my own needs aside. I volunteer to do things that I really don’t want to do, but I know that it has to be done. I start out with good intentions, but it quickly spirals into something that I do only because I feel obligated.

I have been very frustrated lately and it doesn’t seem to get any better no matter what I do. I must be causing these feelings myself, but I have yet to discover the why or the how so that I can solve the issue and move on. I don’t enjoy being frustrated. Nobody does. So why do I continue to do this to myself??

Is this God’s way of teaching me to Just Say No? Or is this his way of saying that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? I know one thing. “Hey, God? Are you listening? Could you maybe not trust me so much to be able to handle as much as I have going on? If you could help me get out of the things that I don’t want to do anymore I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks!”

One of my frustrations concerns my possible future home. The bad thing is that I’m not even looking forward to maybe purchasing my grandma’s house. I’m so tired of the whole thing. Talk about something that has been frustrating from the start! It seems like everything that I’ve attempted when it came to my grandma’s stuff, it always was way harder than it needed to be and the results weren’t nearly as good as I had hoped.

Let’s start at the beginning. First it took almost three months to get the paperwork together before my dad and aunt could visit with the lawyer. The lawyer said that it wouldn’t be a hard process and that once it got started it should take maybe a month to finish. That sounded good, right? Except it took the lawyer two months just to get the letters out to the relatives to start the process! TWO MONTHS! To write letters!! In the meantime the best months of the year are passing by and I’m unable to do anything on the house because my uncle is still living there. I did freak out on my dad in June and that at least motivated him (I think) to talk to his siblings about at least cleaning grandma’s stuff out. After all, nobody had touched anything of hers since she went into the nursing home in 2006. We finally get in there to start cleaning things out and my aunt can’t hardly throw anything away. My grandma was not a wealthy woman so she doesn’t really have much of value. Unless you attach some kind of sentimental value to it, but even then I don’t want that much stuff cluttering up my life. It’s just stuff. I have my memories, which I prefer. So the cleaning didn’t work out very well. Then she had a bunch of film that hadn’t been developed. I sent the 110 film away to be processed, and after a month I hadn’t received the pictures. I e-mailed the company and they claimed that they had shipped them out on July 19th via UPS. They checked with UPS and there wasn’t even a record of them receiving my package to ship. I received a package in the mail yesterday from a lady in Florida whom I didn’t know. It turns out that the company had shipped my pictures in with hers, so she sent them to me since they had my name and address on them. I sent her a thank you note this morning with money to cover what she had to pay in postage. There were eleven rolls of film and I think that the film had degraded because it was so old. The pictures all looked like there was a thick fog when the pictures were taken. I learned something about my grandma that I had kind of already known; 1) She really loved the dog who didn’t like anybody else and 2) her second love was my cousin. There are a million pictures of that dog and my cousin. There were a handful of pictures of the rest of us. I told my mom that my aunt owes me $60. lol

That’s just one of my frustrations this week. I wish that I could spend the weekend just doing things for myself, but I have my group picnic on Sunday. I don’t want to go, but I have to. I’m beginning to resent the group. Not the people in it, but the group in general and all of the time that I have to give up for it. And for what? What am I getting out of it? Maybe I’m being selfish. *Sigh* Maybe.

Okay, I haven’t blogged about anything light-hearted and fun in a while so I thought that I would do this post. Here are 10 Random Thoughts that I’m having right now. Ready?

1) 🙂

2) You aren’t supposed to hate anybody. You’re supposed to learn to love them. Okay, let me give this a try… I would LOVE to see Congress fall into the ocean and have to see if they could avoid the school of blood-thirsty sharks waiting for them.

3) My fingers are aching. At least they are looking better. Note to self… be careful next time I am cleaning with bleach and make sure to dilute it with more water. That will prevent chemical burns. Or, wear gloves. Your choice.

4) I wish that I could afford more cats, like the ones in the barn, but yet I don’t want to scoop more poop. Too bad the cats couldn’t clean up after themselves.

5) Would it be really evil if I stole a certain pair of nail clippers? Don’t you think that God would understand?

6) I was told tonight that I’m “stately”. I take it that’s a good thing. Especially since it was coming from Jay’s mom. She seems to be impressed with me. Yeah! 🙂

7)

8) What am I going to wear to work tomorrow? I don’t feel like ironing. I wonder how warm it’s supposed to get? Will I be walking?

9) I need to make a banana cake next week, but when am I going to have time?? *sigh* It will get done.

10) I have some really REALLY awesome friends. 🙂

Dear Congress,

I know that you had a busy day today, what with advancing the ruin of our country, but I hope that you can find a few moments to read this letter. I will not hold out any hope that you will actually pay any attention to it, however, since you have so far enjoyed going against the wishes of the American people. It really amazes me how quickly most of you can so easily forget how you attained the position which you currently hold. With any kind of luck this will be the last term that most of you will serve. It’s been fun, but we need responsible adults in Washington D.C. in order to get this country back on the right track. Despite your many promises you have become like errant teenagers who are unable to do the right thing despite your promises to us time and time again.

I had hoped that after this last election that you all would recognize that the American people are tired of the extravagant spending and flagrant disregard for this country. The fact that 67% of the American people did not want Obamacare, and yet you shoved it down our throats, showed us that you feel that you are above the “common people”. Must I remind you that our country was specifically set up to be governed for the people and BY the people?? That means that you were elected to speak FOR us, not DOWN to us!!

There are a few members of Congress who can ignore this letter because I already know that they are doing all that they can for us: Michelle Bachmann, Jim DeMint, and Rand Paul to name a few. To you members I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. I know that it must feel like you are all alone in that group of country haters, but those of us who work for a living realize that you’re trying to bring our country back to us.

For those of you in Congress who have never actually held a real job (and this also includes you, Mr. President), work is when you put your time and energy into earning income that will support you and your family. This income is earned through hard work and sweat. You know what sweat is, right? That’s the liquid that runs off of you when it’s hot or when you’ve played one too many rounds of golf. Us “commoners” often work long hours in order to earn enough to live comfortably, that is we try to earn enough. It’s kind of hard to live our lives as we would want when you are constantly reaching into our pockets to hand our hard-earned money to others who feel that they don’t have to work for a living, that somehow they deserve to be handed everything in life. That is NOT the American way! If they want to live in a socialist country where the government takes care of them then allow them to move to Europe or even Canada. There is no such thing as Social Justice or shared sacrifice. Let me tell you something that I had to learn when I was young: Life is not fair. Whoa! Did I hit you too hard with that one?? Sorry, I’ll try to soften the blow next time.

The Progressives (both Democrat and Republican) and Liberals have completely changed the definition of the American Dream. For years and years people have flocked to the United States because it is (or rather, WAS) the one place in the world where all you had to do was work hard and you could be a success. You weren’t kept to one social class. You had the freedom to work as hard as you wanted and to gain as much fortune as you could want. Instead, you now decide to punish success. I believe that I heard the President refer to the wealthier people of our country as the ‘fortunate ones’. Guess what? Not all of the wealthy people inherited their money. Quite a few had to actually work hard and sacrifice a lot to get to where they are. And now you are going to take their money away from them because you feel that the family who has been on welfare for generations because they are too lazy to get off of their butts and earn a living deserves to be handed the money from the rich guy. The sad thing is that you’re doing this on purpose in order to bring down the country as we know it. Why do you hate the United States so much? Did your mother not hug you enough as a child? Did your father spend too much time with his mistresses instead of spending time with you? Whatever it was you need to get over it!

In closing I have one thing to say… the government needs to get out of our business and allow the hard working Americans do what we do best and get our country back into order. You have two choices, dear Country Hating Congress people: 1) Leave the country alone… get your hands out of our pockets and stop telling us what light bulbs we are allowed to use. Stop with the over regulating of the country and ‘knowing what’s best for us’. We are a country of smart people so I’m sure that we’ll be fine without you micromanaging us; or 2) LEAVE!! If you don’t like our country and you prefer the way that Venezuela or Iran works then move there! This is OUR country. On behalf of my fellow God-fearing and Gun-Toting Tea Party members let me say that you aren’t welcome here anymore! In 1776 a small group of rag-tag colonists managed to tell the British exactly what they could go do, and we can do it again. I’m not saying that we’re going to rise up in a physical revolution, but we will get our country back. You may do your best to destroy it, but what you can’t destroy is the love in our hearts for the United States. You can never tax away our pride in what America stands for, or what she stood for. You can rewrite history all you want, but we know the truth and will continue to shout it from the highest mountains.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,
Kerry (a VERY Proud American)

P.S. – I am including a picture of a portion of my fellow Proud Americans who would like Congress to stop destroying our country. This is just the tip of the ice berg. The rest send their condolences that they couldn’t appear in the photo. They were unable to take time off of their jobs so that you could be paid your undeserved salaries:

In the summer my mom goes down to the local flea market with her flea wagon (my dad calls her trailer this) and does her best to sell some of the things that she makes. I wanted to take a moment and brag on her, if you will let me. lol

I’ll start out with my mom’s wine bottles. These are bottles that she inserts christmas lights into and then decorates them:

She also makes necklaces and earrings:

My mom also crochets. Here are her doilies:

Washcloths that she’s knitted:

Then are the crocheted angels and the toilet paper rolls on which she embroiders various designs:

Most of what my mom makes is baby stuff. Her crocheted afghans:

The fleece blankets on which she crochets the edge:

Her hooded baby towels that kids can use for years:

The baby bibs she’s been making:

Not to mention the burp rags:

Just when you think that she couldn’t possibly make anything else, that’s when you notice her pillows:

But wait! There’s more! Her rag rugs:

Including one of the rugs that she made out of jeans:

Isn’t she amazing??