I’m Adopting…

the one on the right…at least for the summer…at least I am going to try to.

His name is Sam and he lives about four blocks that way and is pretty much the only kid around for Dane to play with.  He’s always been sort of a quiet one who bordered on shady to me…a little sheisty…and perhaps not the most ideal best bud for my kid.  But there is something about this boy that just won’t let me cross him off the buddy list, even after an incident at school last year when he could have gotten my kid in a heapin’ helpin’ load of trouble. 

Dane, of his own accord, distanced himself for a while, but all was forgiven and he wanted to play again, and I let him. 

On our Austin trip, where that picture was taken, I got to know Sam a little bit better, as I sat across from them on the bus ride down and was tickled by their incessant use of “DUDE!” whenever they addressed one another.  And to be clear, it was DUDE!, not just Dude.  More and more Samuel seemed to warm up to me, asking if he could call me “Mrs. Y” and flashing a quick, bright smile that went all the way to his velvety black eyes that look so much like my boy’s.  He’s built a lot like Dane, too, and from behind the only thing that really distinguishes the two is that Samuel is a little taller and his hair is longer and wavier.  At Luby’s, where we stopped for dinner, he sat with Dane and I and we got to know each other even better.  I learned that he hates strawberries, but loves just about every other fruit, and that he can put about four straws together and drink a Coke, and that I had this inexplicable desire to make him eyes smile.

So, yesterday, the boy and I went down and grabbed Samuel and I took them to SnoBiz for a snow cone.  Dane, of course, being the big fan of snow cones that taste like frozen adult beverages that he is, ordered Pina Colada, and Samuel blue coconut, which told me all over again that he was a good egg, since blue coconut is MY favorite, too.  We drove around a bit, the boys happily slurping their cones and DUDE! ing.

As we drove by the courthouse, Samuel said matter of factly, “I’ve been in there.  My dad sued my mom and I had to go in there.”

Nice, I whispered to myself, shaking my head and quickly talking about how it was such an old building and I bet it was so pretty since they remodeled it, blargy blargy blargy, because, duh, I can’t stand even thinking about that scenario…but the deep quiet in his black eyes started to make a little more sense to me just then. 

And he started unfolding. 

His mother, it seems, lives in a neighboring town with his brother and sister.  He lives here with his dad and (stepmom?) and an older cousin.  His mom bought him a four-wheeler, which is awesome, and she is from Puerto Rico and used to work at that nursing home.  His aunt’s last name is Zoolu, he wants to live in Manhatten when he grows up because it seems “so cool,”  he got the Most Improved Wildcat award at the end of school awards ceremony, and he dyed his pitch black hair blue the last day of school to celebrate. 

And I became positive that I wanted this boy to be that kid who is always around, flopped over this sofa or that, playing video games and eating our food.  He dyed his hair blue, ferpetesake

Anyway.

I’m going to take those two to the pool on Saturday and I’m going to find a shady spot to sit and read Twilight and sweat…and watch the dudes play while I soak up the sounds and smells of summer…Texas country music blaring from the sound system and chlorine…and I will smile.  I don’t have too many years left where I can do that without looking creepy, so I want to enjoy it while I can.

oh, and when we got home yesterday, Dane was positively beaming and proclaimed, while throwing his arms around me, I was the best mom ever.

Funny how something so simple as a snow cone run with a buddy can do that…  

Score.

I Never.

You know those memes that go around that have you check off all the things you’ve done in your life?  You know the ones where you check what you’ve done and copy and paste it and send it to your friends…you know, the ones who have also done crazy and fun and exciting things?

Well, they sort of depress me. 

Not because I am not happy with my life, because I am, but because they remind me how little craziness there has been in my life. 

I am the one at the county fair not riding the Zipper.  I’m also the one not parasailing, scuba diving, hang gliding, zip lining, bungee jumping, and jumping out of airplanes.

And it isn’t because I don’t think all those things would be absolutely crazy fun to do, because I do.

It’s because I can’t.

There is this button inside me.  My own internal shutoff switch that activates itself whenever I get within sight of a roller coaster.  I can go to Six Flags and have every single honest intention of actually riding a roller coaster, but when I actually get there.  The shutoff switch overrides my brain and game off.

I can’t help it.  And for the most part, none of those things actually even come up anymore anyway. 

But there is another thing I’ve never done that doesn’t involve being in the air, under the sea, spinning upside down, or jumping off of things.

I’ve never gotten a tattoo.  Not because I have anything against them or the people who do get them, though I don’t really get why it is that so many people who get one feel driven to get 40, but because I’ve always said that in order for something to be inked INTO my body, that something better have some relevance, some meaning, or usefulness even….like “Remember to _________ ” tattooed on my hand.

So far, I’ve made it to age 45 and nothing has met the criteria. 

I do, however, play the game with myself where I ponder what I’d get if I ever were to get one…a watch…some nice white anklets…the words “bite me” somewhere…so this morning I was piddling around, doing my morning trolling of the internet, and I found this site with Chinese symbols. 

And there it was.  My tattoo. 

an means peace, quiet, tranquility and calm.

It means: When there are no wars or disasters, everything in the land is safe and calm.

 

 

 

 I love peace.  I love tranquility.  I love quiet and calm

I’d get it….only…

Somewhere only I could see it.  It could remind me to be peaceful, tranquil, quiet and calm…and to hope for a land that is safe and calm.

Yep, I’d totally get that.

or get Casey to draw one on me with a Sharpie.

My May

I’ve always rather liked May, what with all the flowers that the April showers bring and what not.  I have had my May marked up on my big desktop calendar since January: 

 

 

 

• End of Pay Period on the 2nd and 16th.
• Paydays on the 8th and 22nd.
• Austin trip with Dane on the 1st (which was later changed to the 15th because of our Swine Flu Vacation).
• Austin trip to move Reagan on the 16th.
• Family Supper at Church on the 20th (which I completely forgot about due to brain fatigue from two trips to Austin).
• Band Banquet with Kelly on the 23rd.
• Kelly’s high school graduation on the 29th.
• Kayla’s wedding on the 30th.
• Reagan to the Airport on the 31st (to fly to NEW YORK CITY for her summer internship).

Now, to some, I guess that isn’t a whole lot to do in any given month.  But for me?  Listen, going to Walmart every two weeks pretty much all the fun I can stand…wish I was kidding….but I’m not.

So yeah, heading into May I was a little anxious, but excited mostly…and then, the bottom dropped out of my world when my phone rang and my Big Boss called me to inform me that my pay was being cut 30 percent blah blah blah industry standards blah blah blah buzzzzzzzz. 

To this day, I couldn’t tell you what all she said because after that 30 percent paycut part, I think I blacked out and fell onto the floor, in a livid, pissed off heap.  And then I cried.  Now, to be sure, not everyone got how monumental this was to me or how much it was going to change my life…and I was pissed off at them for not getting it…and I stayed pissed off at them for not getting it for a good long time.

At any rate, given the fact that I was considering strapping 25 sticks of dynamite to myself and walking into the California office, and then the Pittsburgh office, and then flying to freaking Mumbai and walking into the Mumbai office, and blowing them all to kingdom come, I decided it was probably best I resign, which I did as soon as I found another job…

another job that wasn’t going to pay anywhere near what I was making before the 30 percent paycut and only marginally more than what I would have been making after…but I was in whatthehellever mode and was going to show them good. 

At any rate, there are many, many things about the new job that I love so much I want to marry…the doctors, for one.  Oh, these doctors know how to talk and I love them and want to kiss them on the face for being so clear and considerate.  The owner of the company is wonderful.  The QA lady is wonderful.  Everything is so freaking wonderful…

except the money.

Blah blah blah. Sad I can’t just go buy two of anything I want anymore. Broken record, side two. WAaaaaaaaaaaaHHHHHHH.

After all that fun came the big Swine Flu Quarantine of 2009 and our schools shutdown for two weeks, wreaking havoc with the other things on my calendar, like the trip to Austin with the entire fourth grade class, which was an amazingly fun time and not something I wish to do again EVER, which is a good thing since I will never have a fourth grader again.  I loved the capitol and the Texas State Cemetary and the Tres Leches cake at Luby’s. 

Mostly, though, I loved my sneakers finally being on that bus headed home.

Some things I learned on the trip:

• Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin were not BFFs.
• Sam Houston hated Austin, TX.
• Everything in Austin is either uphill or upstairs.  Everything.
• All fourth grade boys go by “Dude.” 

I forgot to add that I woke up the morning of the trip with that all to familiar dull ache in my right jaw that would would yield to a dental abscess from the recesses of hell by the time I got home Friday night.  NO FUN.

The trip to move Reagan back was fun, too.  The Teacher played hookie and came with me and the three of us had lunch at the best mexican food place EVER (edited to say it is Trudy’s, since that picture is so teetiny) and I’m not even joking.  Like, you know what is better than the best mexican food ever?

The best mexican food ever served on plates as big as a turkey platter, that’s what.

She also took us for the best ice cream EVER (edited to say it is Amy’s since that picture is so teetiny)

Again, not even joking.  If you ever go, try the coconut kreme pie with coconut and graham crackers.  Seriously. It’s worth the trip. 

So, that more or less brings us current, less than 60 hours until my youngest daughter graduates from high school…leaving me with just one left and a blissfully long break before it’s his turn to walk across that field. 

After this month, I need me a long break.

 

 

 

 

 

Miss me?

I haven’t written here in a long time. 

I haven’t written anywhere for a long time.

And for the longest time I blamed the whole no writing thing on the whole not drinking thing, which may have been true in the beginning, but not so much now.  It occurred to me this morning that the reason I am not writing is just that is has become a habit more than the fact I no longer find every bit of my creativity and wit at the bottom of a Natural Light while mah Pall Mall burns down in the ashtray.

And that stops today.  This all started for me.  It felt good at the end of the day to sit down, drink a few (thousand) beers, smoke  a few (thousand) cigarettes, and write.  In blogging, much like in much of my real life, I felt so much more hysterical after I’d had a few…and somehow, peach tea wasn’t giving me the same result…so I just didn’t write.

Oh, I’d sit down to write…I’d mull things over in my head before sleep at night…I would fashion elaborate pieces in my head about the asshat at the four-way stop on Woodard who was on her cell phone…but in the end, I’d hit delete and go find something else to do.  A lot of it, I think, had to do with the fact that when I would write after a few (thousand) beers, I really didn’t edit myself much and seemed to always have something to talk about. 

Without the few (thousand) beers, I am very careful…leery of stepping on toes, leery of oversharing. I have come to realize that much of what I have to say now has to do with God and what I have seen him do in our lives over the last six months, and I am leery about that because I am not a “spiritual” writer and this isn’t a “spiritual” blog and so many of the ones that are sort of get on my nerves and I don’t quite know how to work with that. 

But, again, I can’t let that matter to me anymore.  I am going to write again.  And sometimes I will use the word “blessed,” probably a lot, actually…and sometimes I will call someone who was on their cell phone at the four-way stop an asshat, but I’ll say it in love.  Really.  Seriously.

The fact of the matter is this, in four short days I am six months off the juice and smokes and I cannot say that without becoming a little emotional…

Because I know I didn’t do it by myself…

and that deserves talking about. 

And besides that, there is so much else going on in my life that warrants talking about.  I have this bunch of children who do fun and exciting things that warrant talking about and I have these awesome floppy yoga pant things I got from Old Navy that warrant talking about and Dane’s sunflowers are huge and I have passion flowers by my bedroom window that smell like heaven must smell, and my Easter lillies from two years ago are blooming and I have this awesome new(ish) refrigerator that doesn’t really work right because it needs Randy the ApplianceMan to come out and fix it so that it won’t freeze up solid (here’s to doing your internet research before buying)…but look at it…isn’t it so pretty and shiny?

 

So, yeah.

I’m back.

 

 

 

Those who dream by day…

 are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

Thanks, Edgar A., I’ll keep that in mind.

I’ve been divorced a long time and in that long time, there have been a small handful of times that me and “Dad,” as I’ve taken to calling him, because the only time I really ever talk about him is with the girls, whose dad he is,  so it is perfectly reasonable to call him “Dad,” have had a pleasant chat or shared a laugh without this heavy undercurrent of discomfort. 

Well, at Senior Band Night for the Senior, where the parents walked her onto the field and posed for the worst picture ever, a picture, whilst the announcer announced who she was and who we were and where she was going to go to college and what she wanted to be when she grew up.  It was the first in our many kid-related Senior activities where I just said screw all that tension, I’m going to enjoy this one…because, she Senior is our last one to do Senior Band night…EVER.

Anyway, so, I’ve never really had a dream with him in it that I would call “good.”  I’ve had dreams where he was mean to me and his parents were mean to me and I was trapped in a house with all of them being mean to me, but I’ve never had a good one.  So…

Imagine my surprise when, as I am lying there dreaming away and I realize I am having a most pleasant dream with him and Dianna and his folks, and some other people, and the kids and Rob and we’re all having a big ol’ barbecue and I’m cutting up with him and his parents and they aren’t throwing rocks at me and I don’t have that feeling of OHMYGOD IHATETHIS DREAM LET ME WAKEUP.

Nope, it was perfectly pleasant.  And I looked pretty cute in this bathing suit top and this sarong thingie, only I had a tattoo that was sort of crooked on my midsection, so that was sort of tacky, but other than that I looked good, and I like it when I look good in dreams…and I made jokes with his mom about how come the potatoes I needed for the potato salad were on their bedside table and numbered har har what’s that all about LORETTA har har.\

It was all very funny and over the top dreamlike…what with me in a BIKINI TOP, FURREAL.

Now, if I go poking around in my grey matter about why in the world I am having dreamy barbecues with my ex, I’d have to go out on a limb and say it’s probably because he and Dianna and the Teacher loaded up and went to Austin to bring some of the Longhorn’s stuff back for the summer and my brain was sort of in family mode, with family including “Dad” and Dianna and his folks, etc.   I think it also could mean that I am for real finished with the uncomfortable way it has always been.  I think I am realizing that with the impending graduation of the Senior, our last daughter, and then the college graduation of the Longhorn next year, that our NEXT get togethers are more than  likely going to be wedding/weddings and baby birthings and the last thing I plan to be while I’m being the mother of the bride and the Nani of the grandbaby is uncomfortable, and by gosh, by the time the Senior graduates from college, we oughta be bridge partners or something.  Seriously.
So.

It’s time we get on with the barbecuing.  I’ll make the potato salad.

maybe it’s just me, but…

there seems to be a lot of throwing around of the word ‘deserve’ lately.  I first noticed it while watching Jon and Kate plus 8.  If you aren’t familiar with J and K plus 8, it’s a show on TLC about Jon and Kate and their twins Mady and Cara and the ‘tups, as they are called on the internetz…the adorable sextuplets (Aiden, Joel and Colin…and the girls who are going to grow up to treat boys just like their mother, unfortunately).   anyway, Kate throws the word deserve around a lot.  Like this one time when they were on this one family vacation (totally free vacation) to Disney (or the ski trip to Colorado or Hawaii, etc) when Kate says over and over how her kids ‘deserve’ to travel.  When they moved into their 3.6 million dollar new home mansion on 26 acres in Pennsylvania, Kate talked about how her kids ‘deserved’ to grow up in a place like that.

Then, the other evening I was enjoying a nice drive in the country on the way to the Senior’s winterguard competition in Aledo, TX (aka the most perfectly gorgeous little town ever) when this commercial for these ‘free’ laptops came on the radio.  And to be honest, I couldn’t even tell you the particulars about what all hoops you have to jump through to get one because i was so fixated on the lady in the commercial talking about how her kids ‘deserve’ to have themselves a shiny new laptop computer delivered to the door FOR FREE.

And talking about commercials, that commercial where the people owe the IRS 20 bazillionty dollars but they are only going to have to pay 2000 DOLLARZ gets on my last nerve.  Is it just me, or is it annoying to hear people talk about how they aren’t going to have to pay what they owe, they’re going to pay JUST A FRACTION OF WHAT WE OWE.

Well, excuse me…but when I was growing up my mom ingrained in me that you work hard for what you want, whether it be our first fancy new 19-inch color television or my first 400-dollar car or a laptop, or newnew to us leather furniture (that we bought off craigslist from the fire chief from the most perfectly gorgeous little town ever) for the den.  You get cool stuff because you EARN IT…or maybe it is because I’ve always had to work so hard for the things I have and for the things I give my kids that it sort of irritates me to no end this whole sense of entitlement that people have…this I am here gimme gimme.  I don’t like it.

As my mom would say…I wasn’t raised that way.

and please, don’t even get me started about the tax thing.  you know what i owe?  394 dollars.  you know what i’m going to pay?  394 dollars.  And in the years where we owed 3900 dollars, we paid that, too, even if it meant a payment plan where we paid til it was paid of.

Oh, and i also paid off my credit card debt, even though it meant getting rid of all my credit cards and enrolling in a debt consolidation program and making payments forever 5 long years and change.

Is any of that fun or instantly gratifying?

nope.  not even a little bit…

so, it may just be me, but i think you appreciate things a lot more if you work for them and they aren’t just handed to you.  I mean, I’m pretty sure that if the credit card debt fairy had swooped down and paid off all those cards for me, i would have probably turned right back around and gotten 5 new ones and i wouldnn’t have learned 1 single thing about managing money.

eh. i don’t know. call me crazy, but I also don’t pay my kids for good grades either.

Purge

Yesterday was March 1, but really should have been February 29, which means I would have gotten my hypothetical 3-month chip. It’s only been three months, but if feels like forever ago that so much of my time was so misused.   The Change, as I’ve come to call it, has been much more significant to me than I thought it was initially, which must mean that those nasty little habits I had were probably more significant than I initially though, as well.

It is a good thing, regardless of the packaging it came in.

Speaking of the packaging it came in, Rob had his CT scan this morning. One would presume in a few days we will have an answer as to what is going on in there exactly…and it is safe to say that I am equal parts of ready for that and wishing we didn’t have to.

In other news, I finally have the answer to a question I have pondered about for years, that being: Is it easier when a loved one just dies suddenly or if you have a long time to get ready, i.e. they are ill for an extended period of time? After the sudden and unexpected death of one of my very dearest friends last Monday, I am here to say unabashedly that it is most certainly easier when you have a head’s up.

The only other person I can compare this to is my mom… I mean, my dear mother was sick, sick for a year before we had to resort to the nursing home and only lived a month once there, so when she passed away, I could truly say that it was more of a blessing than anything else. People chided me about my lack of grieving…WHY AREN’T YOU SAD WHY AREN’T YOU CRYING???

Because, they didn’t see me crying that year she lived with us…when I lived in terror every morning I would find her dead…when I would pray to God please let her be alive this morning before I turned the doorknob to her room. They didn’t know that the moment she went into the nursing home was the moment I knew I’d better brace myself for the end because I knew very well that there was no way she was going to allow herself to live if it meant eating INSTITUTIONAL FOOD.

So, yeah…while I was sad my mom died, I didn’t have a “grieving period” afterwards. Sure, there were times when I’d be baking bread or making pork and ‘kraut that I’d get a little sad and tear up, but then I’d get tickled thinking about her up in Heaven saying I was doing it wrong and the sad would pass.

I have had other people I love die, but they’ve all been old or sick or old and sick, so for me it was easier to deal with…it was a blessing…they had a good life…they are in a better place…and all that other bullshit that you spew when someone you love dies and you need to be able to bear it.

So, when Bill up and died with not so much as a warning, like, wow, I haven’t been feeling right, or man, my diabetes has really been out of control lately, I was, in a word, dumbfounded. Paralyzed. I’ll never forget the profound words I finally found, after sitting there in silence for what felt like an hour. Well, dadgum.

As in… well dadgum, one of my best friends who was only 4 years older than me, who had just wrapped up his eleventy millionth Little Dribbler’s tournament last week, who was planning to go to Austin for his and Bobby’s eleventy millionth Boys’ State Tournament, who I just talked to last week on IM about the tournament, was dead.

well dadgum, a man who wasn’t family but sure felt like it, a man who was my champion and always had my back when the assholes came barking up my tree when I ran the Little Dribblers program…the person who helped me do the brackets and open the gym and close the gym and refereed games when the other referees didn’t show up…a man who loved my children nearly as much as his own, and really, if we’re being honest, one just like his own…a man who was 6′9 and redheaded and had a heart that big, too…was dead.

well dadgum…

The funeral was Friday and we went, Rob and I, and while it was a nice enough service, if I’m being honest I’d have to say that it lost a lot because the guy who did the service just talked for 5 minutes or so about how much Bill liked basketball and the Longhorns and his kids and his job…and then went to preaching on John 3:16.

The music was good, though, and I smiled sitting there listening to Boston and James Taylor and did my own eulogy in my head.

But I’ll tell you this much…I didn’t waste a second before I told my kids if all they could come up with was some guy who didn’t really know anything about me other than I loved my kids and the Longhorns and Top Chef and Survivor to just skp that part and let’s all just sit and listen to Boston and James Taylor and Jackson Browne and let Rob and Margaret and Sue and Amber and Johnny and whoever else wants to talk shit about me after I’m dead stand up and do so and let’s laugh and remember mom properly…because that is what mom would want.

Anway, this has been really weird for me and I miss him and I hate this.

Enough then.

Want to hear something weird? Our neighbor, the one who banished me….well, he and his wife have been just gone for over a week…her mom is here taking care of the kids, but we haven’t seen hide nor hair of he or Kelly in 10 days or so….

Yes, I know it would be easy enough to ask the Grandma where they are, but then that wouldn’t lend itself very well to the mystery theatre I play in my head, would it?

OH!

 Look what I got

Supposedly that is going to help my carpal tunnel/excruciating elbow pain. See, it’s a mousepad/armrest thingie so you don’t have to stretch your arm out to mouse. I’ll let you know how it goes… Also.

OH!

Look what I did Friday night

CUPCAKES…48 CUPCAKES…Chocolate with White and Yellow with Chocolate CUPCAKES…for the Senior’s Band garage sale…I know, I know…it was a garage sale, not a bake sale, but I don’t really hold onto stuff, so I didn’t have any junk to chunk, so this was my contribution to the cause…and a few printers that didn’t sell and some old clothes of the Boy’s. Let’s see…what else.

OH! Got my hair cut I swear, if I ever make it big, Kim is going on staff. I love her.

Okay, kids. I think that’s about all I have for now…so I’ll leave you with this… Tell the people you love, you love them…today. Call your dad or brother or mother or sister and tell them. If you’ve been estranged, tell them anyway.

Life is short, love big.

So, now it’s personal

Since I went through the change I have had a really, really hard time writing.  The thoughts are there, constantly swimming around in my head full of oatmeal, but for the life of me, when I sit here…I got nuttin…not even able to muster up a lousy post about how good the meatloaf plate at Ma’s was yesterday.   Since November 29, I have written 11 times. 

And it is weird because I really have so much to say, yet so much of it is so big…

But if I don’t talk about this, I will explode into a million mute pieces.

Yesterday morning, the Teacher sent me an email with the subject line:  IMPORTANT.  And thinking she just needed her sore spot diagnosed, as usual I opened the email to find this message:  Call Me.

My heart sort of stopped right then, sort of like it does when your phone rings at 3 a.m. 

No good news comes at 3 a.m. and no good news is going to follow an ‘IMPORTANT, call me’ email. 

So, I found my phone and found the charger, because it was dead, as usual, and plugged in and braced myself to call, but she was already calling me.  I answered, trying to be calm…hoping. 

She was crying. 

erojkl dfkljaopiu dfoijdfdf  died.

What, I said, because I hadn’t really processed the words that were coming out of her mouth, plus she was crying and that didn’t make it any easier…plus my brain was simply refusing the data input.

She repeated and this time I understood…but I didn’t hear.

Slowly I asked again…what. did. you. say.

It’s amazing how many thoughts go through your mind when you hear that someone you love has died.

First, of course, I knew it had to be a mistake…the regular Joe equivalent to the Miley Cirus is dead thing.  Then I remembered every bit of the last IM conversation we had just the other day about the Little Dribblers tournament and who won and how many games he refereed and who helped and all about the asshole parent that had to get booted out of the gym for…well, being an asshole (and as much as he’d never really say so, I know quite well that he probably had a ball doing that, too, since he said the parent was a little feller talking big and Bill, well Bill was 6′9 and could kick. your. ass.)

Anyway, with everything that was going through my mind and all the questions and the random memories, it really was like those scenes in the movies where the guy is seeing his whole life flash before his eyes…and all I could manage to say…

Well, hell…dadgum.

I KNOW. ELOQUENT.

So I will try to do a little better.

Bill was this 6′9 redheaded teddy bear.  He loved basketball and baseball and football…a lot.  He was my friend Jackie’s husband back in the day when our kids, The Teacher and JoB were BFFs in elementary school.  He had a fast smile and a quick wit and quite the way with the ladies…my Senior, for one…and it was just hard not to love him.  My senior loved him a lot.  When she was 3 and she fell in love with him, he would swoop her up and say in his booming voice KELLY WARD and she would say I love you, Bill Stacy.  

He loved us all and we loved him. 

Gosh, the girls and I spent so much time over there with him and Jackie and their girls…endless summer evenings, grilling and drinking beer and laughing while the kids played.  They were my best friends. 

One thing you always knew about Bill was that if you called him at 2 o’ clock in the morning from Mumbai and you were out of gas, he would grab his gas can and be there for you…and you…and you.  Because he was just a good guy. 

And oh my, his girls.  He loved them so much and was so fiercely proud of them.  I know they knew he loved them, but I hope, for their sakes, that they told him they loved him…a lot.   

So, anyway, it’s been a weird 24 hours for me.  I’ve had older people I love die…my mom, folks from church…and with them, it’s easy for me to say, oh well, it was a blessing because, well…they were old…life was lived, time to go on.

But Bill was just 49.  He had a ‘lady friend’ and ran the Little Dribblers program and for petesake it was time for the state basketball tournament and March Madness and now who is going to dispatch the calls at the co-op…and he is on my yahoo buddy list…over there in grey…

Bill Stacy appears to be offline and will receive your messages after signing in.

Except he won’t.

It’s just really surreal and quite difficult to wrap my head around.

Had I known the last time we talked was going to be the last time we talked, I guess I would have spent less time razzing him about throwing that guy out of the gym and more time telling him what a difference he made in so many people’s lives.  He certainly did mine, and my girls, and countless other kids he influenced over the years through the Little Dribblers program.  He’ll be missed.

I would have told him he made a difference.

Going Home

As long as I can remember, I’ve never really wanted to go home.   I mean, who doesn’t get homesick while they are at church camp for the first time in 4th grade?  Me.  What little girl doesn’t decide she wants to go home while she is at a slumber party?  Me.

Isn’t that strange? 

I’ve always thought so and often wondered why.  Why didn’t I ever want to go home.

But when I go to Glen Rose, there is this tree… My kids know it as “Mom’s tree” and to me it is the most perfect tree I have ever seen.  I love it most in the winter, as it is in the picture, but in the Spring it is every bit as glorious and it makes my heart happy every time I see it.  Every time I see that tree it is like going home…

and I don’t mind it at all