Martini has nothing to do with this blog, other than the fact that its a fun word to say and it sounds good at the moment.

Things have been quite blah for me lately, which unfortunately doesn’t leave me a whole lot to say here. Although we had a quiet and delicious Thanksgiving, I wish I could somehow fast forward through the holidays and straight into the new year. Do you every have time’s like that? I wish I could escape the boxes of Christmas decorations in my garage, but I get them out and unload everything throughout the house because its expected of me. People are depending on me to make their holiday a great one. Its similar to the feeling when you have to get up and make breakfast for everyone… but you are sooo tired. You know you have to do it- but if you had your choice, you’d sit this one out.

I’m a ball of sunshine here aren’t I? J

Okay, here’s another excerpt from my writing project. I feel like I really need to preface this, but I’m not really sure how to do it without saying it is what it is. Hopefully I do a good enough job to make you feel like you were there… even though you wouldn’t want to be.

                “A few months later, (we) returned to California for the trial. Our days were spent meeting with the lawyers at the courthouse, though most of my time was spent sitting on the benches outside while mom spoke with them. I was assigned a victims advocate, a woman who spoke with me and prepared me for the upcoming trial. She took me around to the courtroom when it was empty, and showed me what it was like.

                “You will sit here”, she said, in an upbeat voice as she tapped the wood in front of the witness stand.

                When the day came for my testimony, I sat outside waiting for what seemed like an eternity as the liaison waited with me. I remember sitting on the wood bench, staring at the huge stones in the flooring of the tile, watching people walk by. Eventually the door opened and nodded to my liaison.

                When I walked through the door, it was much different than when I saw it when it was empty. This time where were a lot of people, littering the jury box, the judge in the front, people at tables and in what looked like church pews. The courtroom was quiet as I slowly walked to the front, following my liaison. I stepped up into the witness stand, and it was then that I felt his stare. I tried not to make eye contact, but I could still feel his presence. I was sworn in, and the sharp dressed laywers began their questioning.

                When the first question was asked, I nodded yes. The judge told me that I needed to speak because someone was recording what I was saying, and that I had to say words.

                The prosecutor asked me a question again, and I nodded yes again. I heard members of the jury chuckle. I have to say words, I reminded myself as they started again.

                I was asked a lot of questions, ones I’m sure they knew the answer to.

                “Where did he touch you,” the lawyer asked. I felt an elephant sit on my chest. The longer I sat there, the heavier the glares were, coming from every direction. I knew they were all anticipating my answer, they were thirsty for it. They needed to hear it, yet I didn’t know how to say it. I somehow found a way.

“Do you recognize this?” An attorney asked. He held up my white nightgown, with purple trim that I last saw in Ginger’s hands, the only time she had spoken about it to me. Yes, that is what I was wearing, I said.

                “Do you see that man in this courtroom today?” he asked.

                I glanced over to my right, and there he sat in between a group of men. His stare locked with my eyes as I turned to look at him.

                “Yes.” I said.

                “Can you point him out?” the prosecutor asked.

                My finger pointed to him, and I followed the direction of my finger all the way to the man it was pointing to. The courtroom was silent, there were so many people watching me. My voice echoed against the walls of the courtroom. The judge sat slightly above me and watched me, I felt slightly intimidated. Why were so many people were so interested in what had happened to me, and what I had to say? Eventually the questioning stopped, and I was dismissed. I was happy to see the flooring in the hallway, and felt a huge sigh of relief when I climbed back up on the wooden bench after my highly anticipated testimony was over. It was finally all over.”

I carry a lot of guilt on my shoulders, things that logically I shouldn’t be blaming myself for. For years I have done this, never believing that I deserve better or believing that I have to suffer. When they say, life is tough- I thought that is what they meant, that you have to suffer and get through each day as best you can until one day you don’t have any more days left and you don’t have to worry about it anymore. Some of us live our lives hoping that when our final days come, we don’t regret too much.

This has been a hard year for me, as I’m sure it has been for a lot of you. The holidays are rolling around which means 2008 is coming to an end. So much has happened for me… doors have slammed shut and some have been unlocked.

I would love to say that I am totally a lot further along than I was a year ago this time, but the truth is I am not. I am the same person, fighting the tides of life and that seems to be all I am really doing… fighting. It makes for a meager existence to always feel like you’re fighting… fighting what is, what isn’t, what you control, and what you can’t.  My hands are constantly in the battle position, ready to protect my face and do whatever I have to do to keep standing. After awhile of this, one may feel like she is not deserving of anything better… than to just stand and fight.

As I have mentioned before, I know that there are some very dedicated angels in my life. Their works in my life feel sometimes too much- that I am not worthy of it. But they keep on, they keep believing, they forgive my faults when I haven’t even begun to forgive myself. They see me capable of so much, and when I was so used to fighting, they whisper in my ear, “Deanna, you do not have to suffer.” Right now I feel that I do not have many choices except to suffer, but at the end of the day it is the angels who keep me going, their whispers echo in my ears and eventually I start believing that things one day, will be totally different.

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful to you, my angels. You have filled voids that have never really been filled before, and I drop to my knees with tears in my eyes to say thank you. Thank you for believing in me. Thank you for taking notice in my broken spirit, and telling me that I am deserving of so much more despite what others say. Thank you for loving me that much, but most of all, helping me see that I am worthy of it. One day I hope to believe it as much as you do.

Thank you.

I apologize for not updating this more often, but this writing challenge has me all writed- out by the time I get to this blog. So far, I have around 10 thousand words written, and 40 thousand to go, in less than 15 days. Even if I don’t get to enter it into the novel writing challenge, I think it will still become something very special. A lot of editing and rewriting will have to take place, but I would like to officially finish it before the beginning of the year. I have an interesting concept to make it more of a novel, and I think that I will do it, but right now I’m just trying to get as many words out as I can. It’s the only baby I have. I can visualize compiling it and sending it off to some of you!

An excerpt from Part 1:

My grandfather has always been passionate about his bees. Looking through the photo albums is like looking at a National Geographic magazine featuring bees as the theme throughout. He would often pose my grandmother, unprotected, with the bees and snap a photo. He related to them like it was his own little army that he was responsible for… he trusted them, so much infact he would often allow the bees in his home. Dad once told me how he would have to gently flick the bees off the faucet in order to get water to drink. The absurdness of this was the beautiful thing about my grandfather, who opened his home to goats, ground squirrels and owls, to name a few. My grandmother would chase after the critters with a dustpan cleaning up behind them… she never complained and she too fell under the spell of the contagious love my grandfather had for all animals.  When the goats would jump on the couch, she would gently shoo them down and chuckle softly. She would happily get on all fours to make sure that the ground squirrel who climbed between the stack of old magazines that were faded by the desert sun was safe from any sort of harm.  She was the most patient woman I ever knew, taking everything in stride- much like my father does today. Being a mother of four boys, I guess she figured nothing surprised her anymore and what possibly used to be uptightness has since been beaten out of her. Nothing negative ever came out of her mouth. Everyday she had the same routine… fill old mayonnaise jars with water and tea bags and carefully place them on the propane tank outside to brew in the hot desert sun. Her daily passion was reading murder mysteries. An entire room in the house was dedicated to store all of her books, which were on shelves from floor to ceiling all the way around the room. She had stacks of books inside old bee boxes that were stacked up against the shelves. In between reading, she would make grocery lists with a copyright symbol next to the items she had coupons for, which I find myself doing today. At the end of the day, before starting dinner, she would gather the tea jars and add honey to each as my grandfather looked on.

                “Do you know how good honey is for you?” Grandpa would ask me as we sat at the old wooden dining room table watching grandma swirling her plastic spoon in the tea.

That’s all for now!

A common theme in so many areas of my life is something called transference. Transference is when you take a reaction of something you experience from someone, and you direct it at someone else, who isn’t necessarily the right person to direct it at. I really believe that everyone has been at least once the giver and receiver of transference. Have you ever had a bad day, come home and snap at your dog for something that happened at work? Or wife? Husband? Sister? Brother? Etc.

When my therapist brought this term up to me, it called attention to so many people and events in my life. The more I paid attention, the more I saw transference – not only in my life but also the lives around me.

I also realized there is so much of it.

Pain has such a domino effect. It’s so important for us to have healthy boundaries in our lives. I’m realizing now more than ever how much I have allowed my boundaries to be broken. In order to reinstate those protective walls, there has to be change. As a very special person in my life has said to me, “When you do the right thing for you for a change, it doesn’t make you the most popular person.”

My hopes is that I can restore a healthy being in myself, and get some monkeys off my back. After that happens, I hope to help others once again- in a way that doesn’t cost me so much…. until then, I’m busy establishing those boundaries.

I wrote this poem this week, it is also posted in the About Deanna section:

I was once a beautiful sandy beach.

In the beginning.

The tide has come in, the tide has gone out

Stripping away my beautiful coastline

Taking my sand

Their expectations roll in

Silencing me

Crash over me

Sometimes subtly

Sometimes for more

No sand left.

You cannot ask the tide to stop

For it will always come, on time

Close down the beach

For repairs.

Establish boundaries

The waves cannot break.

I will meet you, where it is healthy for me.

Where we can both

Enjoy my beach together.

                                     ~DLHR2008

(I’m determined to create the weirdest post titles ever.)

Well, I noticed only two of you voted… tired of voting this week, are we? Current word count is 4851. Can I do this? YES I CAN!

Funny urban dictionary phrase of the day: PEWS. Do you have pews? Its Post Election Withdrawl Symptoms.

“The feeling of general depletion and emptiness in the few days after a presidential election. Caused by the sudden withdrawal of any campaign coverage, sound bites, or pictures of babies being kissed. May be accompanied by aimless clicking on news websites looking for something to read.

*NOTE: This condition has been observed in people whether their chosen candidate won or not.

Wife, to her Doctor: “I’m worried about my husband. Ever since the 4th, he’s just been sitting at home wandering the New York Times and CNN for hours on end.”

Doctor: “I wouldn’t worry about it. He probably just has an acute case of PEWS. He should be back on his feet by the end of the week.”  (taken from the Urban Dictionary)

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Interesting phone call yesterday.

My phone rings.

Me: Hello?

Caller: Hi, may I speak to Deanna *?

Me: This is she.

Caller: Hi, this is ** with FRG. I just wanted to call and let you know that your husband has landed safely in Kuwait, their estimated time of arrival in Iraq is *.

Me: <I look up, I see Neil walking into the garage..> Really? Because he’s standing right infront of me.          < chuckle.>

Caller: Oh. Um. Okay, I’ll take your name off the key caller list.

Did you know November is National Novel Writing Month?

I didn’t either. I didn’t even know there was such a thing, until today I received an invitation to participate in a month long challenge… to write a 50,000 word, 175 page novel. Yes, you read that right… 50 thousand words… AND I’m starting late. You can check it out and learn more about it here: http://www.nanowrimo.org/.

I decided I (with the help of my NEW laptop- affectionately referred to as Gigglebyte) am going to do a memoir… of my life. Frankly because it’s the only thing I could really write 50 thousand words on… I mean I can write a long story about pumpkin puree and falling off a rope ladder but lets be real here.

If you are interested in reading it, please vote below. Would you rather see the story as I write it, bit by bit, or see the finished product so it flows better for you? (if the first option is chosen, the story bits would be posted on this webpage but password protected, where you would need to email me for the password to avoid plagarism- assuming my stuff is that good :p)

I can do this… I can do this… I can do this…

“People may not remember exactly what you did, or what you said,

but they will always remember how you made them feel.”
     —Unknown

I remember being around 18 years old, and my friend “C”, who I often spend my weekends with at her house, told me she needed to see me after church to talk to me. I didn’t think anything of it because we were close, and I just figured she needed a favor. I often would spend time with her family, I would babysit for her, we would go shopping or to the movies. She technically was my only close friend locally.

            A few minutes later, I was standing in the church parking lot listening to her tell me all the ways she disliked me. I specifically heard her say, “I don’t want to hate you, but I feel like I already do”. I wish I could call it a conversation. I wish I could even tell you WHERE it all came from. Or what exactly I did to blow her gasket like July 4^th on steroids. All I can tell you is that I was standing  on a hill full of gravel, under the starry sky listening to her bash me. I was utterly shocked. To say the very least.

            I never really knew why or where it all came from… and I definitely never saw it coming. I think the most painful part of this is the fact that I don’t know where  I specifically went wrong. That night would forever be burned in my memory. And its worth noting, my memory is award winning. It was just one more person in my life telling me that I was a terrible person (in so many words), that ultimately left me.

            The days following this event was not good in my life. I ended up trying to harm myself… because I thought I deserved it. No one understood how I felt. I didn’t even understand. At the time I felt that if things were so bad, then I must be the cause of it… and my thought process at the time was that I was only taking up space. Depression followed… confusion grew. I had to reshape the life I knew. What was once safe was no longer comfortable. I still had to face her weekly, for months following.  When the church had a function, she was there. When I stood before the church being recognized as a graduate, she pinned me with her glares. If I walked into a room, she walked out. Not another word was every spoken between us.

            I believe some people were born sensitive. I think others, including myself, acquired it as a defense mechanism. If we feel we are doing wrong, then we step back and examine every relationship we have… and every word that is said- directly and indirectly, and we watch… and almost expect, someone to hurt us, because that gives us permission to blame ourselves.  And if we aren’t busy waiting and watching for you to say something, then we are busy trying to give too much so we will earn your acceptance. To make sure that when we do fail, maybe our good deeds would cover the cost of the check our mistakes wrote.  This is self-destructive behavior.

            In my happier self, I would like to be someone who doesn’t care what others think. Who takes everything with a grain of salt. Who when faced in a church parking lot by someone who was a “safe” individual, I can demand a proper conversation and respect… and then when its over, considering it done. But currently, I carry pain around with me like a taco during fiesta.  Which is why, 10 years later, I still feel that pain like it happened yesterday. It has humbled me. Fueled me. And made me aware.  But to be honest, I often wonder if I deserved it.

            My happier self says no. 

But I’m not my happier self.

A little late… down to the eleventh hour… but I have finally decided on a candidate. When Neil gets home with the truck- I will go VOTE!!!!!!!!

I’m not sure if I have shared it here, but right now one my goals is to read through the entire Oprah’s Book Club list. I’m not the type to go into a bookstore and just pick up something first… I’m lazy in that way. I’d rather YOU read it then tell me if it was worth reading.  I’m a few books into the list, and I must say that I have been pretty happy with the selections. Infact, my favorite book of all time is She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb, has come from that list. (I wonder if we can have books dipped in gold when we finally find our favorite…)

I recently finished the book The Road by Cormac McCarthy. The cover is dark and mysterious and doesn’t offer too much up in terms of what is to come, or so I thought.

This was the first book that when I read the last page and put the book down, I felt worse than when I started reading it. It is a story about a father and son traveling (walking) a road in the US, after every green blade of grass and every live leaf has been burned. Food is scarce. People are gone, and if they are not gone they are dead or burned with their bodies littering the entire story. It gives you a sense of urgency, fear and detriment all in the same context.  It definitely gives you a sense of adventure and puts you in a place where your mind couldn’t fathom being in.  

To put it briefly…  it does a number on your mind.

Have you read it? Share your thoughts.

This is me 500 years from now when I finally finish my degree.

I have promised myself that no matter where I am, needing a walker, cane, or a 24 hour nursing care, I will walk across that stage in Kansas City, where it all started.

What does this picture say to me? It says despite needing an eyebrow wax and some eyeliner, it says, you know, I may be a little late, and it may have taken me a long time, but not only did I finish, I finished with honors.

It also says to me, Deanna, no matter who they are, or what happens, or what has gone wrong, you have the power to make it right.

I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it. ~ Maya Angelou