Ok, that’s a snappier title, right? And, yes, I realize that I was supposed to start with the 16th, but guess what? No picture, and I am not going to get the camera card out to see if I used it instead of the phone. So there. The 16th will just have to remain a mystery!

May 17 Mary Jane Shoes It is no secret that I have a shoe issue, right? Didn’t think so. You know I love sky high heels, but I also have a thing for Mary Janes. I like to wear them with cute socks. And on this day, I did. Whenever I wear Mary Janes, I sing Fergie’s song to myself as I go about my day. It perfectly captures the beautiful irony of wearing this kind of shoe as an adult. It reminds me to be young, and makes me feel all grown up at the same time. And what could possibly go wrong when you are wearing your Mary Jane Shoes? I think the next pair of shoes I buy will be sky high Mary Janes.

May 18 Coloring Time Batman had an appointment on this day, and so while we waited DaBaby and I colored a picture. We teased each other about her side of the page and my side of the page. I love this age, when they are learning about social exchanges, and sharing, and all that good stuff. Sigh. I miss being the main one to teach her these things.

May 19 Shoe Shopping But not for me. I took Diva to buy the shoes for her dance on the 19th. I knew I wasn’t there for me, but I just had to try this pair on anyway. I ended up going back to get them a week or so later. Is anyone surprised by this? No? Didn’t think so.

May 20 More Roses Have I mentioned I like flowers? These three roses, all a different color, were growing on the same bush. I said “get out!!” and took the picture, because I knew no one would believe me without it.

Say, do you reckon walking in tall heels qualifies as a natural fat burner? I mean you have to use good posture and hold yourself tight from knees to waist…..that oughta be worth something, right?

Of course, I am hoping to not fall so far behind anymore!! That would be better, don’t you think? Then I could maybe come up with a title to just explain ONE picture. How cool would that be? And I just did the math: this post plus 4 more will get me current. Yay!

May 11 I was so mad! Ok, here is the part I didn’t tell when I was talking about the camping trip. I ended up working a 10 hour day on the Friday before we left. And on Thursday, I told the kids what had to happen in the house before we could leave for the trip. They had a half day on Friday, so I expected them to pitch in. After I ended up having to stay late at work, I especially expected them to pitch in. And they did absolutely nothing except bring in the camp stuff and watch tv, eating food that made more dishes and wearing clothes that made more laundry. So, after I got home, around 9:30, I spent another three hours cleaning my house, including burning stuff I gathered in the dark. Sometimes, despite the best acne treatments, you just have to bust a zit, and that is what I am doing by getting rid of stuff they refuse to pick up. If the camping trip had been for the kids, I would have called it off right then, but it wasn’t for them. It was for me, because I wanted to hang out with them.

This is the pile of stuff I gathered on a quick walk through of the already cleaned areas on Tuesday morning, when I could actually see since I couldn’t turn on the bedroom lights when I got home Friday night because some of the kids were sleeping. I don’t think I’ve actually had to burn since this day. Maybe they believe me now.

May 12 Blooming Roses So, when I got to work on the 12th, I found this: a bush with three huge blooms, looking like a small bouquet. I love to stand and just look at my rose bushes at work. The are slowing down now, but during May, it was an eye feast every day. Big blooms, nodding in the breeze. I do love working with the flowers.

May 13 Really? That’s the best you’ve got? I took a picture of this ad because I hated it so much. The tag attached to the ring says “Virtually eliminates cheating since it’s so beautiful you’ll never want to take it off.” Really? If a pretty ring is the only reason you aren’t cheating on your spouse, you need more help than money can buy. I was disgusted.

May 14 Puppies!! She had a litter of 5, of which 3 have survived.

May 15 Lunch with Guitar Guy We finally managed to sit down in the same place at the same time after weeks of too much busyness to see one another. I was great to just hang out and visit.

May 6 Restful I really like this picture. I was sitting on the retaining wall at the ballpark, leaning against the built in post, enjoying the feel of the evening sun, relaxing, thinking of everything and nothing, cat-like in my solitude, surrounded by people. It was just very pleasant, right up until my neck cramped from the angle, rofl! Sometimes when life gets hectic, the thing I miss the most is the quiet pleasure of my own company.

May 7 Ouch This part of the day was no fun. I was mending hoses at work, using the pruners as a screwdriver to tighten the clamps, when they slipped and gouged a hole in my thumb. I was not impressed.

May 8 CAMP!! No picture, because I am lame. We woke up early and hit the road for Jones Lake State Park. It was a quickie trip, but really fun. No ab workouts, but plenty of laughing and time in the water.

May 9 Breakfast That One did all the cooking while we camped. Fire is, apparently, man work. Although I am going to note that he did allow, nay, encourage, me to make coffee. Which I did. Let me ask you something. How long do you reckon it takes to fry 3 pounds of bacon and 2 dozen eggs on a 9×18 inch griddle surface over a gas grill? Yeah, a really long time. I’m thinking the meal lasted an hour and a half, from the time we served the babies until the two of us finished eating around 11:30. And then? Then, they had the nerve to ask about lunch! We bought them off with a trek to the lake, and had dinner around 5 instead.

New rule: camp means two meals a day, not three.
Bonus: I got to spend Mother’s Day hanging out in a stress free environment with my kids and that boy I like…somewhat.

May 10 Perpetual Flowers This is a gift from That One, I’m not real sure if he meant it for Mother’s Day or not, or if it was coincidental. When he gave it to me, he said that I always talked about people killing my plants at work, and here were some that wouldn’t die. Awwwwwwwww.

Picture-wise at least! For today. I know you came here thinking I’d be talking about force factor, but you are wrong. I am going to talk about pictures, instead.

May 1 My other new hat I am totally buying this one, too. On Saturday, it shall be mine. And I will be wearing a hat and ridiculous shoes to church on Sunday. Period. Because I can rock a hat and the pictures prove it.

May 2 Do they make this in Hot Wheels? Cause, this truck, it is totally suh-weet, and I want one.

May 3 Oops Sometimes it happens.

May 4 Grandmother’s rose is blooming This is the rose bush in my yard. I planted it in honor of Grandmother the summer after she died. Interestingly enough, I woke up Christmas morning to find one perfect bloom at the very top of it. But this picture is actually from like, 3 weeks ago, just like the date says. I didn’t snap the other one. When I took this, there were actually 5 roses on the bush, all fully opened and stunning. Which I know doesn’t sound like a lot, but there are still only 2 real stems on my “bush”.

May 5 Butterfly Again, I shoot what I see, and on this day, I saw an orange butterfly on a very red car and it amused me.

Geez, am I ever gonna be caught up catching up? Apparently, this week was mostly about me. Three of the five pictures are of myself. It’s kind of interesting that the better I feel emotionally, the more often I am willing to take pictures of myself. Not surprising, but lots of things that one understands on a knowledge level are interesting when applied on a personal level. Let’s hope that all these self portraits don’t leave me wishing I had purchased the extended service plan for my crackberry.

April 26 Silly Me I just love this picture. I snapped it to make That One smile, because he was having a rough day. Those of you who are friends on facebook will recognize it. And by the way, I decided last night that I am totally buying this hat, if it’s still at the store. And also another one, which I haven’t shown you yet. Time to live some dreams, people!

April 27 Crafty Me I finished another hat. I was sure this one would be too small for him, but knitting stretches. Apparently, it stretches a lot.

April 28 Amish Cockscomb I think I spelled this right. Correct me if I am wrong, please. My Grandmother used to grow this in her flowerbeds, always red. This year, for the very first time, I saw it in other colors: this light pink, and also in cream. I wonder if the other colors have always existed, or if they have engineered them through selective breeding. Err, selective cross-pollination. Err, screwing with nature.

April 29 Working Me Yes, this is what I look like out in the garden shop. It’s not quite fashionable, I know. But so far, my crow’s feet aren’t any deeper, my face is still white, and my hair in undamaged. I’ll take it.

April 30 Leeeeezard! Yet another lizard. Hey, I shoot what I see, k? K.

And, yay, a post without drama!

April 21 Dead This, my friends is the pile of dead plants that I pulled out of the garden shop when I returned from my two weeks out of their. Clearly, someone needed to check into life insurance rates for them while I was gone. They expired from a lack of water. I continued to pull plants for about a week. At one point, I set up an intensive care nursery for the ones I thought I could save, but my manager said we didn’t have time for that, and the plants I was nurturing were thrown away. Her call, store’s loss.

April 22 DaBaby visits On the 22nd, Mama was in town and brought DaBaby by to visit me. It was lots of fun getting some midday hugs and kisses. I miss my kids a lot when I am at work.

April 23 Lizard! If you look closely in the middle of this picture, you will see a wee reptile. I see them quite often at work, but they rarely remain still long enough to take a good shot. Today, I won.

April 24 Fire the Third Hmm, they still didn’t believe me. This was the day I cleaned the living room. It still looks pretty good.

This was also the night of catharsis. I continued to cry up until this night, and most of the way through it. I cried for a lot of reasons this night. For loss and betrayal and the grown up me and the little girl me and for my children and it just went on and on and on. But when I woke up on Sunday I was a different woman. Actually, I was my old woman again. The depression that had plagued me for a very long time (years) had lifted somewhat, and that laughing, fun loving girl I used to be was clawing her way to the top. Somewhere in that night, I faced the ugly truth that a lot of really bad crap had happened to me in my life, and I grieved for it, and I tried to let it go. That’s not to say I’ve been completely perky since that point, but when I get down, it’s for a couple of hours, not….for the forseeable future. I can deal with that!

April 25 Hello Old Me You may not be able to see it in my face, but I sure can!

Pull up that rustic furniture and sit a spell, why don’t ya? Oh, and grab some coffee, too. For both of us, hahahahaha

April 16 The Clean-up Begins On this day, the clean up began. I had given my kids two weeks notice to clean up their crap, or I was gonna burn it. And for two weeks, they sat around and did nothing to corral their junk. And so, on the 16th, I came home from work and dropping them off with their dad and I began to clean. I began in the small bathroom, and I cleaned both bathrooms that weekend. Here is the first of many shots I took that day, detailing exactly what I found and where I found it, just in case they were interested. Which they weren’t.

April 17 First Fire This is, as the title suggests, the first of several bonfires in which I burned excess stuff. The house is by no means spotless, because I’m not done yet, but I can at least walk through most of it now. And I told the kids the burnings would continue until the housekeeping improved. They started believing me after the third fire.

In other news, I continued to cry this day, and for the rest of the time covered in this set of photos. And somewhere around 11 pm this night, I rolled over in my bed, my chest heaved and the little gentle tears I had been crying for a week became sobs. And yet, that was not the end of it.

April 18 Finished Clapotis Yes, I still knit. This one was a gift, but I will be making one for myself. Soon. Like, as soon as I finish up some other stuff. You do realize that in knitting, “soon” is a relative term, right?

April 19 Spidey and the Man Purse I just love this picture. This is my middle son, who found a discarded bag in the house and packed it with the stuff he wanted to take to the ball game. And he wore that bag with such awesome self confidence that it just made me smile. That’s my boy, and he is his own man.

April 20 Relay for Life I didn’t end up going to this, but I did snap a pic of the flyer so I could remember the details and share them with That One in case we decided to go.

So here I am again, finally. Not yet ready really to talk, but having reached the point where I probably need to. It has been so long since I took some of these pictures that I will probably have a hard time remembering the significance of a lot of them. Whatever the case, it is time for stories to be told.

April 11 The End There is no picture for April 11. I slept in a bit on this Sunday morning, and then I called Mama and told her I was ready to head to the hospital, did she need me to look after her dog on the way. And this time, she told me not to come. Quite a difference from the previous Sunday, when she had called me to hurry. The family had gathered around and they were about to take the breathing mask off of Granny. I think it ended up that I was one of maybe 5 family members not there. I’m still not sure how I feel about that. I guess I am upset that maybe some think I didn’t care enough to be there. But then it also seems pretty ghoulish to think that some 20-30 people were there to watch someone die. I mean, where is the peace to that? HOW DO YOU EVEN DIE LIKE THAT? Thinking about it turns my stomach.

Granny was my last living grandparent, and it was on this day that I started crying. Daily. For quite awhile. Which we will get to eventually.

April 12 Lunch This is a hamburger, and I think it came from Chili’s, but I am not sure. I know it had fried onions on it and it was very good. And on this day, I worked and I cried and I picked clothes for the wake with my mother’s help.

April 13 Visitation Excuse me. I have to go smoke before we talk about this. And also get more coffee.

This is a picture of a plant that was at the funeral home. Behind the plant, you can see the “beautiful people” who compose my family. I worked this day from 9-5:30 and then I headed to the funeral home for the visitation that started at 6. The night before, as I mentioned, I had picked out my clothes, which had to adapt from work to wake because of the time issue. And….as I was trying to figure out something suitable, Mama asked me if I was planning to stand with the family. Because, you know, it might not look right, them all standing there, having had time to make themselves socially presentable, and I had to pretty much wear what I wore to work, with the exception of changing my shirt and shoes.

I think I have probably mentioned before that I have always felt isolated by this step-family of mine, tolerated, but never enjoyed and loved. Not part of them, not accepted, the short, dark ugly duckling in a group of tall, blonde swans. But until this night, I had never felt like my appearance embarrassed my mother as well. I had never felt excluded by her. And so, I spent this evening sitting on a couch there in the visitation room, lying to everyone about how I wasn’t up there with my family because my feet hurt because I had been standing up all day and feeling so unloved and unwanted and unworthy. And then I went to back to Granny’s for a bit and then I went home and cried some more.

And I knew again that my decision to love and accept my kids no matter what weird clothes they choose or what crazy thing they do to their hair was the right one for me.

April 14 The funeral
This is the dress and sweater I wore to Granny’s funeral. I had That One help me pick my clothes via pic text. Golly gee, I do love technology. And I wept through the entire service. And yeah, the person who “lost it” during the springtime song, that was me.

April 15 Azaleas
These are from my own yard, blooming on bushes Grandmother gave to me when I moved in here.