Poopie Doopie

Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Or Poop Water

Once upon a time, my husband decided that the water pressure in our well was not strong enough and that he needed to fix it. He was home (because of a death in the family) and it was time; at least that is what he said. I never thought it was that bad...I was fine with the water pressure...But men (maybe not all but at least this one) have an issue with how much pressure is behind his squirter! And what distance they can master... (My hose shoots all the way out to the road ...Look at that arch!)
my husband is a mechanical genius...He is highly gifted and can stand and listen to a machine and tell you what is wrong with it from the sound of the engine...He can take a motor apart, lay it on the floor, and put it back together and watch it run in his head...However, he is helpless when it comes to household projects.
He ruined my counter top in my kitchen by putting ( his hands on it ) a hole in it with a hand held saw...He managed to drill too many holes in the cupboard doors for the handles and used wood filler to fix it. He put the faucets in the bathroom in backwards and didn't caulk around the tub when we put it in so water can get in the basement if it stands in the bathroom for very long... (Booga...Need I say more). One time he decided he thought the flooring was buckled in the kitchen and cut it with and exacto knife and so for years we had to put rugs over it to hide it...He built the deck and didn't finish the railing and the steps are lopsided and have had to be replaced. He didn't finish the decorative planter in the front yard and to this day, the end of it has the cinder blocks gathering dirt from an additional flower bed at the end.

He's getting better at it...The siding he did on the house looks relatively good still and the fence is still pretty decent....

However, I decided to drink a lot more than I should have….. most of the day….when he decided to tackle the well....
He spent probably two to three hundred dollars pulling up our well....He went back and forth to varying towns. To the Lowe's in one town because Home Depot in ours didn't have the right stuff...Then he found that the well we had, had an old fashioned kind of head that was hard to find. It was evening by then and he decided to call a well guy.
Three days...Four basement floods and a lot of my own tears later...We had a working well...
And all was good....
Until....
My husband went to Louisiana (who at that time had their own problems) and didn’t come home until the day before Thanksgiving...Which was fine...I mean this is how he makes his living...However…
One day I went downstairs to do laundry...And Chewie had complained earlier that the water was coming up in the toilet when he took a shower...And I had blown him off because he liked to tell you bad news back then. I called him the harbinger of death. Then I saw the brown liquid inside my washer and the water on the floor.
Crap.
So I called my husband and he said to get a hold of someone and have them pump out the septic drain field...Oh joy.
As a general rule this would not be a problem. However, in this state there is a time in November when "almost" no man can be found...This day is November 15. This is the first day of the rifle hunting for deer.

So I called and called all over the area...I called an hour and forty five minutes away to find someone. They wouldn't come and in fact I had people hang up on me. Crap.

These are people who would, in normal circumstances, come over as soon as they got done hanging up the phone. There would be gone until Wednesday if not for the rest of the week.
Now most people who live in the city (I was born and raised in a city) take for granted that their sewer goes down into the drain and out to the sewer system...However, those of us who dwell rurally have to rely on drain fields and septic systems to keep out the filth. You cannot flush the potty when the drain field is full or it ends up coming back up through the pipes...Two days of no potty and this girl goes to a hotel to have a working toilet. So I am crying at this point...Not only has Great Grandma died and we have dumped $2,500.00 in a well...But now we have to deal with dirty septic. Lovely. I am thinking seriously about drinking heavily....

Finally I get a hold of an ancient woman who says she will talk to her boy about sucking out the pooper and she says that she will call me if he can do it tomorrow. Oh joy!
So, we allow this time...And she does call back and she says, he will come in from hunting at noon and pump it out for me... I thank her profusely and she says right before she hangs up..."You should be very grateful." I agree that I am.

I will not argue the point with someone who has gotten a rifle carrying, deer hunting, "this is our traditional time of year to fart and drink beer and poop in the woods" male to suck out the feces field.
Joyous!

SO I sat there waiting for the arrival of the man with Septic truck, unable to look like or smell like a human being because there would be no showers here until after that.

But that wasn't the kicker.

About the same time that this was all going on...Booga decides that his hair is too long and (without my knowledge) cuts his hair with my razor. So he walks out of the bathroom with a towel over his head. And we ask him to take the towel off. He takes it off... "I cut my hair...Isn't that wild?"

Sure was.

I took him out on the deck and gave him a marine cut so he looked like a person again. But needless to say I had a full day of crap.

It reminded me for days of my mom who says when she is tired or disgusted with something, “Oh poopie doopie.”

I used to get really disgusted when my mom used to use her family’s toilet-laden humor to make people laugh. It wasn’t funny it was just disgusting and childish and coming out of my mothers mouth; who was just like June Cleaver it just didn’t look right.
I realize where it came from, I mean these are largely uneducated people ( I swear my grandmother got married to my grandfather to piss off her family…) But my mom married my dad who had a more intelligent and sarcastic sense of humor and this is the sense of humor I have.
The events of those days have made me say, “Poopie doopie” and I have a more interesting opinion on Mr. Hanky the Christmas Poo. I think he lives beneath my back yard actually. I was tired of water. I was tired of dirt. I was just plain tired.

Unfortunately, the woman who promised her son would come out right after hunting called back and cancelled. And eventually some people from an hour away came out at an added one hundred dollars to their normal fee. Which I was more than happy to pay it and happier still to tell my husband about who I was furious with for having thrown conniptions about the well and gloriously happy about it later because we decided later, it was the chlorine that they had put in the well to sanitize it, that killed the bacteria in the septic and caused it to back up.

So there it was….Be careful what you think you need, because it might be more complicated than you think it actually is...

My husbands still this way, currently he’s putting in a cement, patio, driveway and approach around our barn….

GOD HELP US!

Some are leaders...Other's have no beat.

Some leaders in foreign governments really sound like Ozzie Osborne talking. Really.

I listened to a foreign leader speak to the General Assembly of the United Nations and thought, “Wow, just rambling on aren’t we? Reaching, as it were….”

I just kind of went “hmmmm?”

He sort of reminded me of Adam Sandler’s, “Grandma Song”….

If you’ve never heard it, look it up.

It will make sense to you after you hear it.

I mean, it was like he wanted to get an idea across but didn’t have any idea about how to go about doing that. So he took sections of it and kind of splurted it out…If “splurt” is a word.

Hua.

Well, here’s hoping he gets a good speech writer. A good speech writer is worth a billion dollars in gold. Ask Bob Shrum, the speech writer.

He must be an intelligent man, I mean he leads a country; however, he needs linguistic help or a better translator.

I don’t know.

Any who….To continue….

Have you ever seen the movie “The Jerk” with Steve Martin?

In that movie, he tries to keep time with the music by snapping his fingers….However; he just can’t get the beat.

Thus proving that not only can’t white men dance, they can’t even keep a beat.

It’s a wonder we have children.

So, Booga and I were listening to Michael Jackson in the car yesterday. And Booga loves loves loves Michael Jackson. This is someone that he has found out he really likes listening to in the car. It’s like his own disco wonderland without the mirrored spinning ball.

He was bouncing along when Billie Jean came on, and I didn’t think much of it because he’s listened to Billie Jean before. And most people that are 40 and younger know that Billie Jean has a marked beat to it. You can’t miss it, and he keeps bouncing along like Rush Limbaugh in front of a drooling pack of Republican’s and he tries to clap with the beat…..And completely fails to hit it every time.

It was like watching Steve Martin in “The Jerk.”

I know it might be because of his Autism; however, you couldn’t get around the fact that it was downright hilarious.

You are now officially allowed to laugh.

Fall is here and it doesn't seem like we had a summer does it?

The fall is here and we didn’t have much of a summer, however, I am reminded it is still summer by the movement of a bee hive right outside my office window.
Special hua?
I have repeatedly told my husband about the bee problem and how tired I am of fending them off in my house. I'm really not trying not to kill them, however, they are stupid and don’t get the whole “Hey, go to the door! I can let you out the door!” thing.
He says he is waiting for a frost to slow them down and then he can get them off the house….
I have a picture in my head of my research scientist dad standing outside my house, in a lab coat and rubber gloves and safety glasses, with a jar of something viscous, swirling it around and telling me to “Get back, this can freeze your hand right off!”
This is why I love my dad.
Nothing more fun, now that I’m adult, as remembering my dad as a semi-mad scientist.

However, to continue….

Booga was very hilarious the other day, actually he’s been pinging them off lately over and over.
This does happen and it’s odd.
It happens when I think I can’t handle him being Autistic even just ONE MORE DAY!
I know I am supposed to patient and I am supposed to understand. But sometimes you would love to get through “Heroes” without having to tell him that if he needs to “‘stim’ or talk to himself, he can go downstairs or go into the backyard or in his room. Or at least tone it down so I can hear one of the few shows on television I really look forward to watching every week. Okay?”

There are days….

Anyway, one particular moment, I had gone into the bathroom the other day and I noticed that the penny that covered the lost dowel on our towel rack was gone.
This penny has been there for time in memoriam. So it was odd that it was gone. I mean this because it would be no mean feat to take this penny off. It’s been glued there like -forever.
So, I called Booga upstairs.
“Booga? Did you take the penny off?”
He sighed deeply. “Yes mom.”
I smiled, “Why did you take that off?”
I was also wondering how he took it off, but you can’t ask Booga a series of questions and expect him to answer all of them. You ask him one at a time.
“Because I want it for food mart.”
He likes to go to the gas station/food mart because he can buy pop and chips because I don’t buy sugared pop….Naughty mom that I am. It just so happened that he had brought a soda home the other day and when I looked at him with the unapproved glare mothers have, he said to me, “Mom, trust me, I’m a doctor.”
“Oh?”
“Dr. Pepper.”
“Oh…I see.”
Booga does chores and gets money to spend for his chores and apparently, like congress and some in the senate- insurance companies, banks, car manufacturers and etc. for some reason, he just wasn’t getting that money fast enough…So he will go and pull it off the wall, out of concrete, out of the car and the cushions….
Uh hua.
I laughed and replaced the penny with some wondercrap that I had bought at Menards to fill holes in with, and attach "would-be" dowels with….Then I put a long screw in where the dowel used to be. I figure, the bathroom will be renovated soon enough and we will loose the towel rack with all the dowels, which my father made for me.

Later we were watching “The Emmy’s” because there was nothing else on television.
And when a certain actor/actress said, “Thank you!” exuberantly, Booga replied, “You’re welcome!”
He then later announced that he would the magical age of twenty this year.
"Cool!" I told him.
And I didn't think much of it.

Then itt really hit home with me while I was talking to one of his workers about if Booga would want to work with other intellectually disabled people next year in the summer?
Next summer in a facility that uses intellectually disabled people to assemble things for companies that sell them to the public.
This would be a step towards his independence from his father and me.

It was a bitter sweet moment.

In one way, I want this. I want him to have purpose. He’s a person and should feel that his life has purpose and meaning. And it would be nice if he could know others in the community with disabilities besides his classmates. It would be nice if he could be part of a bigger world.

But, like the sad tune from a violin, it hit me, that this would also start that movement away from me and he has been a HUGE part of my life, I gave up a lot to stay home with Booga because he needs me- and this child that has been a baby longer than most children are ever babies and a child longer than most children are ever children, and it is going to be hard for me to deal with the idea that he is going to someday move away from me. Maybe into a group home, maybe he’ll see us every weekend but its still away from me.

And even though I want this, it’s like closing a really good book whose story has been a unique and interesting mellow-drama.

Part of me doesn’t want that book to end. And part of me knows it must.

Fall is here isn’t it? It somehow didn’t seem like we had a summer to prepare for it. But then, our lives have always been different than other people’s lives and our experiences have always been a lesson in learning.

There’s a reason God gave us Booga.

He wanted to bless us.

Gentle Giants

My oldest son, who we call Chewie, was a tornado standing on his head when he was two. There was nothing to him. He was small for his age and all bone and skin and full of energy.

He was the oldest in many ways. We relied on him to be responsible (even though there were times when he clearly was not). We trusted in him to grow up before his time, simply because we were dealing with something that most people did not have the capacity or patience to cope with.

Sometimes we expected more of him than he should have been able to give us. We blundered through bouts of being uninsured and hoping that things would either heal on their own or that you would get better and be stronger for it. However, if your life had been in danger at any time, Chewie, money would have been no object and we would have gotten you the help you needed even if we had to sell things to get you treatment.

(And you wonder why I am the way I am about health care issues).

There were also times when I wish I could have been more his mom than this woman trying to get this "other child" diagnosed or looked at him for the age he was instead of the age I needed him to be.

I wish I had been more aware of what he needed. But there were so many times when we had to focus elsewhere.

I remember a particularly frightening experience he had when he ran to me crying at age nine and buried himself in shirt with his arms wrapped tightly around me. And suddenly instead of the preteen I was thinking he was, I realized he was still just a little boy.

However, he is twenty-three now. And he is finally a responsible adult. He is kind and gentle and a good man. And I am proud of him for it. For all my stumbling, bumbling, inept parenting I think he turned out well.

However he is no longer a tiny boy, all skin and bone but a strapping young man who is taller than his father and broader by far.

He is a gentle giant.

His teacher told me one time that he could get through life simply on charm alone.

I believe that is true to a certain extent. He has more charm than the law should allow and a smile that could out shine the sun. I tell people that Chewie is "sparkle and shine" because he is….Always, sparkle and shine.

I apologize for the times it seemed like we either were ignoring you or forgetting you, because we never did it on purpose. Possibly it was because he never complained that he needed anything except computer parts. The occasional pair of shoes or some new jeans- maybe it's because you were just such a good kid as a teen that we never had to worry about you and in turn relied on you to be every bit the adult you were.

He never went out drinking till he was twenty one…Never felt the need to, and didn't do drugs…Computer gaming was his drug and could have been his downfall. But for us there was some tough love involved and that was harder us more than you will ever possibly imagine.

However, not every kid gets to drive a 67' Camaro to school and not every kid has a mom that rebuilt computers and allowed the occasional role playing game taking place on the table in her dining room. Not every mom would allow LAN parties in her basement, a girlfriend sleeping on the couch in her living room, or subs in the back of her Buick. Not every mom would give a child the day off from school simply because it was their birthday, get excited at X-Men movies, plan Star Wars parties to go to the cinema with costumed friends, go to zombie movies or to bat for someone because their principle didn't understand the workings of the schools server or the complexities and rules involved in giving rights to people with Novell.

Not very many mothers could tell him (when she called because her son was disciplined after he deleted his teachers files off the server) that this was because Novell was not set up so the students could not delete the files. And why weren't they set up with rights to only certain files and the inability to delete files but the ability to save copies of files to the desktop?

Okay, now I'm being a computer tech.

We fed you and dressed you, loved you and disciplined you in the best way we knew how at the time and we didn't even have a technical manual and I believe we did a pretty good job. I hope we did.

We appreciate your patience Chewie, while we blundered through this part of your life. You were the proto-type. You were asked to burden a lot of responsibility and we appreciated the help. We still ask you to shoulder the responsibility but now we ask you to do it for your own life and those you choose to accompany you. We ask you to take care of your brother and sister and as you have always but now as an adult. You're not responsible for them, but we would ask that you always be there for them. And we ask forgiveness for our short comings and appreciation for our achievements.

As I always have stated. We did the best we could with what little we had.

We love you Chewie, we always have and always will.

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I wanted to clarify something....DON'T WRITE WHEN YOU'RE EXHAUSTED!

I wanted to clarify something.

I wrote last night about family members and a few former friends and acquaintances I know, who have lifestyles that are suppose to be normal but are just messed up in my book. I was pointing out how my son, by those standards, can be considered more normal than these poor souls.

And that we need to reevaluate that word “normal”.

But the problem was, it was late at night and I was exhausted and when I write when I am in a hurry, or exhausted, I stink at it.

So I am going to tell you what I am fixing.

This is what it said, and it’s just poor writing:

I know people who walk the streets that have college educations that don’t contribute to society and are supposedly more “normal” than my son; they speak clearly and eloquently at times, however, they cannot function as human beings without being high.

And it should be this:

I know people who walk the streets that have college educations that don't contribute to society and are supposedly more "normal" than my son; they speak clearly and eloquently at times, however, they cannot function as human beings without being DRUNK!

I should take my own advice and call a stray cat a stray cat.

I was so tired when I wrote it I should have waited, but lately for some unknown reason, I work myself to exhaustion before bedtime.

Here’s another example of “DON’T WRITE WHEN YOU”RE EXHAUSTED!”

I know people who think that the world should hand them a living and that their extended family should take care of them even though they have been taking care of themselves for years and now and feel that they just want to retire. These same people have unfortunately, spent all their retirement on having a good time with their friends or buying all sorts of expensive crap. They have not established families of their own, or put anything back, but now they believe their extended family should take care of them.

What the frick was that about?

It should say:

I know people who think because they made bad life decisions and made bad money decisions, decided to burn their bridges and retired early despite the fact that they were in a money hole and now live off social security and disability.

Now generally this should cover all their living expenses, but since they were in a hole to start with, without any way to dig them out, it is now impossible for them to live off of these things.

And they have become a pariah to their families.

They expect their family to support them even though they saved no money for retirement and have no relationships that panned out to help them deal with the loneliness of older age.

They now cling to their extended family for the support a good friend, a spouse or a child would offer.

And they are considered more normal than my son.

This person:

I know people with master degrees that are the meanest people I have ever met and are wrapped up in their own self importance. They care nothing for anyone in the world that doesn’t contribute to their universe.

There is very little humanity left in them.

Real person. Can’t tell you how I know them, but I know them.

I know people that can’t handle a relationship with anyone else but themselves.

Same person.

Yeah, I know. Sad part is, that the mighty have fallen a couple times (I think). And I haven’t been there to see if this has given them hubris or not. So….This might have changed in their lives, though, knowing them, I doubt it.

Also, I changed September a lot.

Because parts of it didn’t make sense to me, so you might want to go back and look at it.

I rewrote it after I woke up this morning and looked at it again went…. “OH YUCK!”

It was written like I was running a race.

What?

But then again, I was exhausted and I should never write while I am exhausted.

Anyway, just wanted to clarify because it bugged me all night and I know there are people out there that get a digest of my blog in their emails and these people see none of the corrections unless they go to the blog itself. So I wanted to post this so they know I realize that my writing last night…STUNK! And yes, I did fix it.

I am not normal. Not by a long shot. Then again what is normal?

What is normal? and September

What is normal?

I've heard that normal is what everyone else is, but is what everyone else is truly normal?

I'm not normal.

I'm a bundle of insecurities and neurosis. I question my worth in this world constantly. I weigh too much, I'm too short. My nose is too big. My mouth is too small (Contrary to what my family thinks), I worry too much and I have problems doing higher levels of math.

I'm not average or normal.

So what is normal?

We complain and go on about how much we want our special needs children to be normal contributors to society.

Normal contributors to society.

Honestly?

I know people who walk the streets that have college educations that don't contribute to society and are supposedly more "normal" than my son; they speak clearly and eloquently at times, however, they cannot function as human beings without being drunk.

Yeah.

I know people with master degrees that are the meanest people I have ever met and are wrapped up in their own self importance. They care nothing for anyone in the world that doesn't contribute to their universe.

There is very little humanity left in them.

I know people who think that they are normal, but are so warped as to believe every comment coming out of the Republican party's mouths and listen intently to someone as biased and jaded as Rush Limbaugh. These same people think that he's an intelligent and good journalist.

I have met people who act average on the outside but are so obsessed with outside appearances that they puke in toilets to get that all important pant size "0".

I know people that can't handle a relationship with anyone else but themselves.

I know people who think because they made bad life decisions and made bad money decisions, decided to burn their bridges and retired early despite the fact that they were in a money hole and now live off social security and disability.

Now generally this should cover all their living expenses, but since they were in a hole to start with, without any way to dig them out, it is now impossible for them to live off of these things.

And they have become a pariah to their families.

They expect their family to support them even though they saved no money for retirement and have no relationships that panned out to help them deal with the loneliness of older age.

They now cling to their extended family for the support a good friend, a spouse or a child would offer.

And they are considered more normal than my son.

I know people that live their lives in video games in online virtual communities.

I know people who are so love starved as to be carpets for children so they don't loose the love they aren't even sure they have from their families.

I have met people whose families can't seem to love one another long enough to be in the same room with one another.

I know people who make their children believe that they are not wanted and are only there because they came with the whole "marriage package".

I know people who had these children and loved having children until they became teenagers and then were done with them. In other words, they treated their children like some people treat puppies and kittens. As soon as they become dogs and cats these same people don't want them anymore.

I know people who have to take drugs to control their temperament.

I know people that can't tell the truth if they had to…

I know people who allow themselves to be abused.

I know people who are so angry to be alive that they don't remember what it is like to love, or be kind, or what a family actually consist of and have therefore become psychotic.

I know people who believe everything they hear on television- read in the paper- see on the internet.

I could go on all night long.

So what is normal?

Truth is, no one is completely normal.

So how could anyone think that I would want my son to be "normal"? He's fine the way he is, because he's relatively happy.

He may never have a high paying job, but then again, these days; the most recent college graduate may end up working as a Wal-Mart manager or the manager of a Jiffy Lube.

We must be careful not to believe that we are normal. Because being normal is like being rich.

It's subjective.

Someone you think is abnormal may be more normal than you think and they may be more normal than you are.

Yeah.

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September

Booga was watching a TV show with me about September 11, 2001 and I asked him if he remembered that day.

He said, “The World Trade Center.”

He knew. He remembered it.

That day I had taken off work to take Booga to a new doctor. So, the date was very loud and pronounced in my mind for several weeks.

I don’t know why, but for some reason doctors don’t like to give appointments for Mondays. Or at least they didn’t back then. Anyway, I had just started a new job in Information Technologies and I felt ridiculous because the day before I was putting an operating system on a computer and the silly thing would not connect to the network server. I found out later that it was because of a pervasive virus that affected many servers all across the United States that day.

Now, for a while we thought it was part of the terror attack but apparently it was simply coincidence.

Anyway, I was almost happy to have to take Booga to the doctor as it would get me out of there. I felt like an idiot and questioned what I was doing in Information Technology in the first place.

That morning I was watching The Today Show like I always did, and they said a small plane had hit the first tower. I ICQ’d my co-worker and told her about it and her response was, “Oh great, that’s all we need.” (Later I would print out the entire conversation and put it inside a magazine and store it for my children to fight over after my husband and I were gone.)

I couldn’t sit around and be perplexed by the happenings, life does go on even during terrorist attacks, and so I packed up Booga and went to the doctor’s office.

But not before looking at the building that had been hit (later we would call it “that first building”) and thinking, “That buildings going to fall.”

Later on I would think that it was strange that I thought that. I mean, it wasn’t leaning but for some reason I thought it would fall. I don’t know why.

Booga and I left and when I got there I told the receptionist what was going on, because she didn’t know about it, because it did stun me. And when we’re in that situation we want to know that someone else around us knows why we are acting funny so we tell them, plus we want them to be aware. When your at a doctors office like that you can’t allow yourself to think much more of anything else until after the appointment is over. Because your child is your focus and very much should be…

When the appointment was over I drove over to the satellite office of our company. I walked into my friend’s office and she said,

“We’re under attack.”

Okay, that just seemed silly.

“No no,” She said, “A plane went down in Pennsylvania, they’ve attacked the Pentagon and the towers are gone.”

“What?”

“The towers are gone in New York, where is your husband?”

It was then I realized that I hadn’t even thought about that, because he was always in a different town everyday and sometimes I just knew the state he was in and not the exact location of where my husband was…

“He’s in New York…..”

And he was suppose to go to Manhattan….Oh my heavens, and it would be just like him to go site seeing in New York on a day like this, because he sometimes had time to kill and he would wander around and look at the town he was in….Oh my word. What if, no no, he wasn’t there. But what if???

So I spent the rest of the day freaked out. I tried desperately to get him on the phone; along with my sister in law who insisted on calling my husband’s employer. I really really wish she would have left it alone because his job is such that, the location of where he is working currently, changes like some people change clothes. Besides, there wasn't anything they could do about where he was. I personally didn’t think it was her place to call them. Honestly if I thought it was necessary I would have called them and I wasn’t going to go into fits about it until I knew for sure he was in Manhattan and to be frank I wanted to hold on to the thought that he was somewhere else, it was helping me coup with this at that point, and relatives sometimes can do more harm than good. We know they want to help but when this happens it’s just best to be patient and call ask for updates as soon as information is imparted.

When my kids came home I hugged them tight and sorry to say, I drank a little too much that night.

My husband was in New York, however he wasn’t going to be in Manhattan till the next day (praise God) and he was fine despite the fact neither one of us got a chance to talk to one another until the evening of that day. My children and I were very happy to see him come home after that month gone from us and we hugged him like we’d never hugged him before.

Now why do I tell this story? Well, one, everyone has a story like this in their generation. And two, I didn’t know the affect it would have on my children until they were grown.

And really it was my daughter who was the one affected by this day.

My daughter chose to work in law enforcement and hang out with policemen and sheriffs deputies. She chose to be out there with people who make things safe for everyone else. And she chooses to surround herself with domestic heroes.

If anything 911 honed something that was probably always in her because my cousin is a police officer and I’m sure that sort of career runs in families.

It makes you wonder sometimes.

Everything happens for a reason doesn’t it?

Maybe it gave her someone to look up to that she’d never really looked up to before or maybe it made her think about it more than she’d ever thought about it before. I’d never thought about it, but there it was.

Someone is pointed in a direction because of an act like that. And no one knows why something like that happens at the time. But then, later we look back and think, if that hadn’t happened- someone would not be in the job they have or someone else would not be the person they are, or someone would have picked a different career, or someone would not exist in the world.

It’s the “Cause and Effect”. And what would the world be like if that hadn’t happened? How would all our worlds be different?

Everything happens for a reason doesn’t it?

Warrior From the Peninsula

On the third planet from the sun, the one on which God placed his sentient creations; the one circled by a moon that lights the sky at night.

In a northern continent in a land that has a government who has been in existence for almost 250 years. In a region surrounded by three sides of water called a peninsula, around the time called "Christmas" in the ninth year of the eightieth decade of the twentieth century, was born a baby boy whose name meant "Warrior – from the peninsula" in the afternoon, during a snow squall. In a town whose ancestry was made up of Scottish immigrants. This boy was born in the location of his mother's very birth, and to two very young and very naïve people.

At the moment he breached the world, the doctor exclaimed, "I have never seen an APGAR of ten!" Because at the moment he was born, he was pink and perfect and only after a breath was there even a remote shade of purple in the newborn.

His mother looked down at him and said, "You're gonna hate your name," because it was a name given to nerdy guys- men whose mothers were harpies and insisted in their unrelenting loyalty, and intensely vocal brave men, and in the end some historically grumpy religious leaders. It carried too much weight for someone who was only at the time 8pds and 3oz's.

However it fit.

And strangely that name was amazingly well put together and meant exactly what he would ultimately become.

Not because he would fight battles on a field or wage a war of words but because his very existence would cause havoc and change the minds of more than one person in the world.  (As had happened with others who carried that same first name had found out in their turbulent yet all too brief lives.)

He would remain, as perfect as his birth until he reached the unremarkable age of eighteen months. Then clearly the transformation, that was probably already in place in the womb would come to fruition and then his parents and his siblings, his aunts and uncles, his grandparents, great grandparents, and teachers and all who came in contact with him would forever be changed because the warrior from the peninsula was born.

And this is his character.

Why God chose to make him one of many who came into being at this time is unknown.

But I am proud to call him mine and he is remarkable in his own right.

 

Clearly there were reasons I will never understand. But many things in my life I am sure have prepared me for this, like Moses in the reeds waiting for the pharaoh's daughter to pick him up….All that I was raised with, the tolerances I developed and the things I saw happen to others, all these things, prepared me to raise such a person as this and I can only hope I have done well.

 

Perhaps after all the searching and seeking in my life and in my soul…This is my task and special reason for being.

 

To raise the warrior from the peninsula.

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