Havenots or Willnots?

I dislike the Jerry Springer mentality.  I dislike classless piece of trash human beings that presume it is their right to live off of the support of the government and hard working people in this world.  I dislike the notion that it is better to have one more child, thereby increasing the amount on a welfare check, than to have one more job.  Where does this type of thinking originate?  I believe it is learned behavior.  The only answer is to unlearn it.

I believe a liberal government makes sheep by putting public policies into effect that literally make it easier to sit on your ass and draw benefits than to go out and work for your living.  I am no sheep!  Can anybody tell me whatever happened to good old American pride?  I remember being a child and one of my friend's lost their dad to Operation Desert Storm.  After the life insurance took care of the big bills, there was not much money left.  Having three daughters, the mom had to resort to government assistance in the form of food stamps.  My friend and her sisters would die of shame before they went to the store with their mom spending food stamps (and she really needed them).  How far we have fallen!   

I was born a have not.  I still do not have a lot. ( I totally just rhymed.)  What I do have is an understanding that every single thing I have ever had or will ever have is going to be mine because I worked for it.  My family doesn't give me anything.  They do not have anything to give.  Everyone is working and struggling to make their own way in life.  My family rescued me from a very uncertain future and instilled within me values and work ethic.  They also taught me about God, and I learned almost every hymn in the Southern Baptist Hymnal.

If the little girl from the trailer park can pay her own way through graduate school, have two jobs and still manage to provide for her kids, I have a really hard time understanding why everyone can't.

Of course, that's just my opinion!

Can't Get No Satisfaction

I hear that post holiday blues are normal.  I am feeling a little blue.  Considering I am anything but normal, I wonder if this applies to me.

 I wake up every morning and go to one or both of my jobs.  I have Saturdays off every week.  I make a decent living.  It is nothing to brag about, but I can maintain my family's needs.  I come home in the afternoon, figure out dinner (or more precisely where we are going for dinner!), do laundry, help with homework and bath time, read or watch TV and eventually fall asleep.  I wake up the next morning and do it all over again.  The routine is always the same unless it is ball season.  That gets a little crazy, but it is nice to have it shaken up a bit for a couple months out of the year.

If you are reading this and you are a parent, your routine is probably very similar to this one.

Last week I read a book called The Watershed Year.  In the book, Harlan, a 33 year old guy is diagnosed with terminal cancer.  He eventually dies,but during his journey he comments on how once you realize you are dying, you crave that routine.  Apparently monotony is amazing in the face of death.  I have never been and hope to never be in Harlan's shoes, so I can't say for sure.  I am not making lite of Harlan's situation either.  I am just curious.

I am a very practical person most of the time, so when I start feeling blue, I give myself little pep talks.  I say to myself, "You have nothing to complain about.  You are blessed with good health and healthy children.  You have a nice home and vehicle.  You are blessed with intelligence and good work ethic.  You have a special person that loves you very much.  You have great friends and family."

It is easy to see where I am going with this.  I don't have anything to complain about, so why am I feeling blue?  That is the much harder part to explain.

Sometimes I think it would be better to just be ignorant.  What I mean by that is to live in a world where I did not know the difference between average and better.  If all I ever strive for was getting by and not caring to be more, I would not know the difference.  Fortunately, that is just not me.

I want to make a difference and leave my mark.  I want to think critically about issues that matter in the larger scheme of things.  I want to nail the curriculum that will give our students in America a head's up over the other developed nations in the world.  I want to make a world where no child goes hungry, feels lonely, is abused or left behind.  I want it to truly be possible to work your way to success.  I want to write books.  All of these are lofty goals.  I also know that helping others and achieving them is where I can get my satisfaction.


That is all for today!  Next blog, I am cooking up a Jerry Springer show......

An Angel Literally

I always assumed that one day she would come back to me.  I was terribly wrong.

I was eleven when it became necessary to send her to a "special place".  I was so sad and lonely, even in the midst of my new family.  They were really great and loved me a lot.  I was still sad.  I was mad.  I did not understand.  I had always picked up the slack where she was concerned.  I know that she took more effort that the average child, but I was always trying to overcompensate for that.  I was good enough for the both of us, or I tried to be.

When they said she had to go away, I felt a huge amount of guilt.  Part of me was glad.  I was glad that I wouldn't have to work so hard to take care of her.  I was glad that I would not have to stand up for her all the time to all the asshole kids on the school bus and at school.  Like every other kid, I just wanted to be normal.  Then came bedtime.

I was so sad at night when it was time to lay down and go to sleep.  Then there was only time to think about missing her.  She had been such a huge part of my existence.  Taking care of her and looking after her had always kept me grounded.  Even in all the crazy upheaval of our young lives, I was hardly ever scared or sad when she was there because I was always brave and happy enough for the both of us.  Only time would make this better.

She moved to a special guardian's house that would become her caretaker for the rest of her life.  Her new guardian was wealthy and she enjoyed a private nurse, awesome vacations and endless support.  She went to a special school that would teach her to adapt to "grown up life".  When she went to live with her guardian in the early 90s, the lady was already in her early 50s.  I always assumed that one day she would get too old to take care of her, and she would eventually come back to live with me.

One weekend, her guardian went to Hot Springs and left her with a trusted friend.  The friend ran a home for disabled people and was supposedly trained in their care.  Friday evening, Patricia fell off of the deck and broke her shoulder.  She was taken to the hospital and prescribed pain killers and given a referral to her orthopedic specialists for the following Monday.  She was crying and complaining of pain so bad the following day that the "friend" decided it would be a good idea to give her the Fentanyl patch of one of the terminal cancer patients.  Patricia was 4'11" and weighed about 110 pounds.  She went to sleep that night, and never woke up again.  The EMT s were called at 9 AM Sunday morning and found her non-responsive.

The only way I can find any peace in this situation is that I know if Patricia had lived to be of an old age, she would have suffered an excruciating death.   Along with her mental disabilities, she suffered curvature of the spine and sever muscular dystrophy.  I find peace in knowing that she went to sleep and never woke up.  I hope that I was in her dreams.

I am still sad.  I am still angry!  I feel as though I were robbed.  I wanted to be there holding her hand when she left this Earth.  I always figured she would go before me, but I did not ever guess it would be this soon.  Maybe the saying that God will not put more on you than you can bear is true.  And I am sure he knows better than I do.  Now my angel is literally an angel, and that is the rest of the story.

Her Very Own Angel

There once was a woman who lived in a shitty trailer park, off of a rural country road right down the way from a very small town with exactly one stop light.  Her name was Ruth.  She had at least four children, two boys and two girls.  The oldest boy and girl were born both mentally and physically handicapped.  The Doctors said it was environmental, not genetics, that caused the physical and mental defects in the children.  The other two children were intellectually gifted, but would take very different roads in the lives that they would lead.  We will get to that later.  Back to our story.

I am not sure what the motivation was for Ruth to drink alcohol and take drugs while pregnant with her children.  Maybe it was the late 1970s and early 80s mentality.  Maybe it was the white trash breeding.  We will never know. 

As the narrator of this story, I firmly believe in God.  I believe that for every right there is a wrong.  I am a strong believer in karma, meaning that if a person sends good out into the world, good will happen for them.  For Ruth, I am not sure the reasons for her karma, but her oldest daughter was an angel on Earth.

Patricia Susan Childress was the mentally handicapped daughter of Ruth and Ernie.  Ernie was in the Navy, found out about the baby and high tailed it out of town.   Ruth was a terrible mother.  She neglected her children and eventually abandoned them to her elderly, alcoholic mother.  Soon the state workers came to take them all away in a terrible scene that included screaming and crying.  All four children had different fathers and none of them wanted the children either.  The children became custody of the state and soon found their way into the foster care system.

Patricia and her younger sister Kathy were luckily able to remain together.  Many sibling that enter the foster care system are not so lucky.  Many are split apart, never to see one another again.  Many find homes where they are abused worse than the homes they originally were taken from in the first place.  This was not the case for these two two sisters.

Being that Patricia was mentally and physically handicapped, her sister Kathy took it upon herself at a very young age to be her protector.  Kathy looked after her sister, protected her from kids that bullied her, helped her with her bath and washing her hair.  She also helped her learn to read and write.  Patricia would never mentally grow any older than 10 years old, no matter how many years she lived.  Her physical disabilities included severe muscular dystrophy, so it was incredibly hard for her to grip anything, much less learn to tie her shoes.  She was constantly knocking things over due to her bad coordination.

Patricia had nothing to fear.  Kathy would always be there for her, until they took her away.

More Nonsense Heaped Upon the Masses

I am Kathy & let us just leave it at that!  No Ms. Billings or mom for the purposes of the blog.  Lots of people call me KB which stands for Kathy Billings.  Billings is my married name (and I am divorced), so I am not sure what they will call me if I ever marry again.  I really am not sure why I am concerned about this because that is not a likely occurrence in this lifetime!  Although, one truly never knows.  I am a teacher, tutor, waitress, MBA, mom, daughter, sister girlfriend and friend.  I am also a wannabe writer.  I have ideas for about 1000 different books, so I decided to start blogging & see what happens.  Surely some seed will be planted or some idea will rise to the occasion. ;-)

I come from a small town & just like every other person (or most people) that came from a small town the only thing I ever wanted to do was leave.  So I moved fifteen minutes down the road & have yet to make it any further.  I have visited many places and will continue to do so.  Now that I am getting a little (tiny bit) older, it is not as important for me to move away anymore.  I haven't given up on the notion.  I simply feel that it's not all that bad a place to grow up & the kids are getting older and blah, blah blah......!  Anyway, one day I will have a small shack on the beach somewhere. I will divide my time between here and there and that will be just fine with  me. 

My ideas for entertaining the masses range from erotic fiction to stories about life in a small town.  Once I figure out how to combine both ideas, I am absolutely positive that I will have a best seller on my hands!  For now that is enough about me!  To be continued........    KB