I should be sleeping ...

I have to be up and getting ready for work in 8 hours ... I should be sleeping ... but I want to clear my mind first ... so that I can stand a chance of sleeping ... so I can stand a chance of not crying ... so I can stand a chance, well, of anything ...

I will say that I am grateful for the things I have been given ...I am highly aware that people have suffered greater losses, have lived under worse conditions and have suffered in general far more than I have ... and been given far less than I have been given ... however ... the wrongs done to them ... the suffering they endured ... does not justify the wrongs that have been done to me ... just because someone else "had it worse" ... doesn't mean that I'm not entitled to my own suffering, to my own angst, to my own disappointment and anger ...

Here is the thing ... in my last post about freedom ... I was emotional ... justifiably so ... but I admit I was emotional ...

Here is the thing about that ... I made one request for Christmas ... ONE ... I asked for nothing  material, nothing  monetary ... I asked for one single thing for Christmas ... to be able to spend some time, a week full of special moments, with the person I want to spend my time with most ... I made one wish for Christmas, one request ... and I was told no ... what made this all harder is in the "let me think about it" period ... she was sticky sweet, she bought me things I didn't ask for, didn't need ... like she was buttering me up to let me down ...

I have volunteered to give up things of monetary value ... I have offered to sacrifice things ... I have offered to do things ... I have done everything I can think of to make this happen ... to get my solitary Christmas wish ... and none of it was enough ... there is a lack of compassion ... a lack of caring ... a lack of loving ... a lack of

Freedom ....

So I asked the warden if my boyfriend could come stay with me for the week after Christmas ....which would allow us to spend Christmas, New Year's and his birthday together ... and allow us some time to hang out with friends, including his best friend that I have never met and he hasn't seen in three years since he has been serving in Afghanistan ...

The answer was he could stay for two days ... which is better than not at all ... I will say that ... although it's more of an insult than it is an offer to help ...

I am so over this all ... I would understand if I were some kind of addict or criminal, hell, I would understand if he was ... but neither of us are ... we are just two people trying to survive in an economy that sucks, in a job market that sucks ... and still maintain a relationship ....

Maintaining the relationship isn't really very hard ... but to be able to spend time together and to have to ask

Fake Plastic Mistletoe ... Archived From 11/25/2008

The opening words of the song below :

"Great, fake plastic mistletoe, wrap me a in a great big bow, and tear me apart. . . It's Christmastime, so open up the floodgates, tell me that it'll be late, and rip me apart"

So, I don't know that I even need to write anything in explanation . . . but from the time I can remember, from the time my dad and his siblings can remember, my grandmother hung mistletoe over her and my grandfather's bed . . . something I recall even as a child thinking was terribly romantic . . . so when I was 15 (the first year I wasn't "single" on Christmas) I followed in tradition (even though I definitely wasn't sleeping with the guy lol) . . . since then I've spent a few Christmas seasons single or barely dating someone . . . but this year just seems

Yes, I know I've Been Quiet ...

... so I'm going through one of those times right now where blogging is both my best friend and my worst enemy ...

I have feelings I can't explain ... feelings I can ... and then of course this blog is not anonymous .... so I have to be somewhat careful, guarded if you will, about what I say about certain situations, people, etc.,

The holidays are very hard for me for multiple reasons ... but mostly it's the pressure and the tug of war of both myself and my children .. and then I come off as uncaring and not wanting to spend time with people, which isn't true ... but I've spent a lot of time as a black sheep, and I emphasize a lot ...

I went through a phase right around my senior year of high school where I felt much the same way I do now ... but basically it comes down to this ... I play a very good black sheep from the sidelines ... so what is the purpose in joining a game, where further injury will inevitably be the only result? ... the bulk of my extended family has made it very clear to me that I am not in the "in crowd" through various actions & words ... I grew up as an only child and considered my two closest cousins (the third of my three cousins is much younger and always lived several states away) to be the closest thing to siblings I had ... it is clear that they never really felt that way about me (now mind you they had each other, they didn't have that only child thing going on) ... anyway, I included them in everything as I got older ... invited them to kids' birthday parties, baptisms, they

15 Days ... My Reason for Taking a Break From Blogging

Last fall with an O2 tank bigger than him!

My five year-old son spent 15 days in the hospital, including two surgeries, six in-room procedures and countless tubes, IVs, pokes and other fun things ... so here is the entire story.

First off, I will preempt this by telling all my lovely readers that my middle daughter has a history of chronic illness, and usually when these kinds of things happen, they happen to her. My son does have a history of Reactive Airway Disease (RAD) and has had pneumonia three times, but two of them weren't bad at all and the third was associated with lab-confirmed H1N1 last fall. He did end up on in-home oxygen with that one, and they talked about hospitalizing him, but never did.

So, here is the story of our little adventure this fall ....

On Wednesday October 13, my cute little five year-old boy started off a cold with some sniffles and a little bit of a cough, but nothing seemed too bad, according to his dad (sidebar- my kids go every other month and every other weekend between their father and me, October was their month with their dad). Saturday morning his dad started getting more worried about him, he was spiking high fevers, throwing up almost everything he ate (including medicine), and had a really good, unproductive cough ... Sunday morning my son was taken to urgent care, they said that he sounded clear, his O2 Saturation was in the low 90s, which isn't bad ... they told my