Hello everyone,
This is a picture that Niki sent to me two nights ago of her and my son Steve.
Niki has become an important factor in his life and I am glad he has a good lady beside him in life. Everyone needs a good friend beside them, and I feel lucky that he is blessed with her touch.
I think if we are lucky today, the clouds will disappear after a bit and the sun will start to work on drying us out, as we have been blessed with having three days of moisture here even if it did cause me to turn the heat back on here in our home. I have been occupying myself with normal chores around the house and moving dirt, and thinking of the show and being a true lady changing my mind on certain songs lolol. I think that as I know there is this huge gap of time, that I will alter its course time and again before I know it is just the right one to do.
By the way, happy birthday to Annie, yesterday. I tried to email her a self made card and attached the song I want Frank to consider, but as usual MSN said hey that file is to big so your message puked. So, I will have to get in my car and find her and deliver it in person sometime this weekend.
I did find a new person to be in the show yesterday with my doing the Moose call labels, so I have some really good positive energy going in that line of thought.
I have been talking again to Andy, the 18 year old morman who has been diagnosed with schzitsophrenia. He has expressed his wish to become a Navy Seal and has started making efforts to tone his body up to get prepared for enlisting. His family has expressed objections to his becoming part of any war like actions, but he wishes to do something to not only prove his value in life, but become a hero to others in the world instead of being an outcast.
My only downfall at times is the fact that I do not hold any degree in psychology or can say with any certainty that I have a true grip on all the solutions in life. My inability to be able to share thesis from personal experiences of what others have hampers my judgment at times in talking to those with higher issues. All I can rely on is the fact that I will never fail to listen to them and try to direct them to not harming others or themselves.
I reminded Andy that it was good to have and outlet for anger but that he needs to remember that the only true path for getting along in this world is to follow the golden rule in life. It is great to tone yourself to become the pillar of strength, but respect of that strength comes through compassion and caring for others rather than beating into them that which they will eventually resent.
My father's father was an acholic, who never tired of drinking when he was not working in the coal mines of Illinois. His passing of his memories to us, because he died at a young age before we were on the scene, was of being beaten regularily, and a reason to him that if he beat us the same, without drinking, it was okay because he survived and we damn well would too.
And yet, one of his famous stories of his father was a paradox. He told of his neighbor one night going over and kicking the belly of his goose that was raising hell in the yard. The neighbor said a few choice cuss words and went over to show the goose who was boss and his father stood there with his drink in hand and said, 'Hey Joeseph. Why you kick-a my goose in the belly?
He no do you something.'
I can remember my father's dark eyes when he relayed that story over and over to us, and his half laugh at the incident. It may well have been the one time he saw his father in a different light, protecting an animal, and yet have the paradox of being the brunt of his anger later. How could he think more of a goose than his own sons? My father was smarter than the goose and yet came to the same end. I know he made his own way and hated his family for many years. He left the tending of his mom and her stroke to his younger brother for the seven years she lay in the nursing home, and tried to make amends by giving him cars, money, and whatever he felt would pay for that devotion, but in many ways his own family was dead to him.
He never quite understood Uncle Steve or why he did what he did in life.
He never 'got it' that the simple life was so much easier than the life of stress and striving to never be back in that coal mine town or live with those low life individuals, and yet he knew how to reach those that were lessor in his book with his speal.
When family crisis hit, he grumbled his anger and found ways to make things right. My brother was born with web feet, and I can remember how he took him out of state to have them fixed when he was small, because he would not stand for his children to not be classed normal or above. My sister Patty was born with her peyton ductus valve not closing in her heart and when she turned 9, they did open heart surgery on her to close it. The fact that my mother had the same condition until she was 72 and I brought her here to close that valve never occured to him to fix. She also had many problems with her eyes, but he did not have time to fix her up proper as he knew then he had cancer and needed her, so he let her wait and made me promise that I would take care of it after he was gone. The fact that he was hooked on drugs and dealt such horrid blows to me at times mentally and physically caused me to use my mind to find out what was normal in this world and what was not right. I guess in my own realm I learned how to maneuver like him on many levels and what to trust or sense coming from others.
Andy is on drugs but likes to not take them. Some of his reactions are way out there, and yet when he states them to me I pause, think, then react back to him. I wish at some point that he would find a therapist that will get through his vaneer to the truth to him, to help him help himself, but I am satisfied that somehow, someway, he is still reaching and opening up to me.
I will show you his letter to me now and my response to him. I do this not to make an example to him but to find out if you all have any further suggestions in how to guide Andy. I am stubborn to the extent that I want him to make it in life as normally or abnormally as he can. I don't want him to take his own life or feel that he has no chance.