A New View

It has been more than a year since I left Florida, my birth place and where I have always gone back to.

I don't think I would have kept going back except that my Mother was there and later it was that my children were growing up there.

My Son has since left to go to college and then to start a family.  My Daughter has done the same things, but she did them in Florida.  I thought that by living between them I would be able to go and visit them and still be here to help Rachel (Mom2) when she needed me, but that just hasn't happened. You know what they say about the best laid plans of Mice and Men?

Well it happens that the help she needed she wont take or follow the Dr.'s orders either and I AM NOT  a maid. I will not wait on a person that is able to do for themselves, but doesn't want to. Nor am I willing to watch her waist away because she refuses to get any dang blasted exercise! Can you tell how frustrated I am? No matter how much you love a person, there comes a time when you aren't helping, you are enabling.

Well, I think it's time for me to go home.  I hate the heat, mostly because my Tank, I mean truck, has no air conditioning and secondly, there are no real seasons.  Every year I miss the changing of the leaves. Spring is really green there and the winters, in recent years, have been pretty cold too, 17 degrees once, but there is virtually no fall foliage to speak of. Having lived in so many places in my life, the one thing that always pulled me away was the seasons and I really love snow. Some times I think that's because I've never had to get to work in it, but that's not true either.  I believe in keeping a pantry, and rotating it too. So if you do get snowed in with heat, you can still have food and be happy. It gives you time to read, or knit or even clean.  Twenty five years ago I got snowed in, while living in this very neighborhood.  Funny, it was January, I'm sure because I watched the Super Bowl. Yes, I am one of those few females that actually loves football, I've even been known to use bad language and yell when the Bucs where making a mess of things, lol.  That year I was only one of two that made it to work anyway, so then I stayed home for probably the rest of the week. I got cabin fever so I walked to the corner mart, it's still here, and bought beer, I drank it back then, for watching the game with.  My now 28 yr old son was 3.  We had fun in that stuff and then a couple years later, literally, we where in Germany where he and his Dad, the one I'm widowed from, made a snowman. Lord it was magical! My daughter was born there too, and I lost their father there too.

I think what I really love the most is to travel. I've said many times that I love to "go", but need to have a good home base. I am also a good daughter, weather I want to be or not.  When I'm needed and I can get there, I'll go, but this is wearing me down and it's time again.

Another part of it is also that I can't seem to get a decent paying job. I know for a fact that I am able and skilled, my tests prove it every time.  I think the real problem is the recession and even though the law says that we can't discriminate it happens, daily. One of the services I was asked to come in and meet the agent at said that, that was true. I told her that since it was a distance to drive, that if my wearing a scarf was going to make a difference, I'd just as well save the gas if it was all the same to her.  Lol, she was very friendly even in person and she agreed that it does happen, but not in her office. I got the feeling, you'd be out of a job if you had a problem.

Of course, then I got a terrible head cold that wouldn't have mattered except that I had pretty much lost my voice by that Monday and we'd met on a Friday just before I went to the Mosque. That ment that the job she wanted me for was out, because one must have a voice to be a switchboard operator :p  Back to square one.

My pick up needs seals and it's $300, which isn't bad, but you have to have the extra $300 above and beyond your bills, which a job would give me in a week or even two.

Anyway, ramble, ramble....so once I can earn some extra money, I'll give it to the mechanic, one I actually trust, and then I have a place to go when I get home.  Then it'll be a matter of getting a job there, even part time so I can qualify for a place of my own again.  At least now I know I can do it on my own.

In Tampa the Islamic community is much bigger and friendlier too. I have friends there that would help me by giving me work or telling others that I need it.  That has been one of the hardest things here and even in North Carolina too.  The Islamic communities were so small that they were disconnected from each other.  Here there are so few females that cover, we don't know each other on sight so we don't know if there are Muslims in the neighborhood or not.

Wow, I guess I needed to get it out, ha?  Well time to pray and get some stuff done.

Kathleen

An Update On My Life

Sweet Rody-10 yrs.

Brewer Man-12 yrs.

Dino-6 yrs. and Miss Sheila-14 yrs.

Hello dear friends and family,     

I have been purposely avoiding updating this page because I avoid painful things when reasonably possible.

In my last post, I thought that I was going to have family coming, but it turned out that my daughter got a position she had been wanting for a while so they stayed.  That was actually kind of funny, in retrospect, because I was already planning where to put things and had reserved a storage unit for their possessions, when I read on Facebook about her new job! Of course I was happy for her, but I was also hurt that she didn't tell me first.

I'm blessed that I don't hold grudges, except one instance in my whole life, so things like that fade pretty fast and I get on with the business of living.

I have actually been hired three times and I moved from one job to the next with the happy consent of the last to get higher pay. The final move was from a $7.5 and hr. (can you believe that!?) to a $10.28 hr. job.  Well I had to get OSHA qualified, which I did at $135! and then I got my VA badge so I could work on the VA Hospital campus.  The site Foreman was very pleasant and showed me around the job and then we got the badge. There has been one delay after another since then and I still haven't actually worked a day, three weeks now. I was to get the money back for the OSHA test as soon as I got to work.

As you may have guessed, I've been looking for more work, but making my bills due to my widow's pension, just. There are some promising propositions in progress, so we'll see, again.

The reason I mentioned trying to avoid pain when at all possible is because I have to actually "say" one of the more painful things I've had to say in recent years and that is that my Rody passed away on October 29th. It was the seizures. That last one got him and wouldn't release him, so in desperation I took him to a local emergency Vet that operated nights and weekends only.

Even now, two months later, I am crying trying to write this, so suffice it to say that that damn seizure stole him away and I had to let the Dr. put him to sleep.  Three different Vets said that he was quite healthy and the last one really believed that there was probably a tumor in his skull pressing against the spinal cord causing the seizures. I am still so lost without him. A lot of the color has faded from my life.  Intellectually knowing, and having it gouge your heart out are two very separate things.

One of my neighbors, the one that I painted all the rooms in his apartment, as a way to earn money, and his daughter insisted on giving me their cat.  While I painting in their apartment, Rody and the cat got along so well that when they got a dog that was a puppy and chasing and terrorizing the cat I actually thought about offering to take her.  After Rody passed away I didn't think about much of anything for about a week.  Then one day I was talking with the man and gave him "what for" about letting that dang dog harass the cat. He just sat there and let it chase her around so I got mad at him and told him that doing nothing was the same as condoning it's behavior. Dogs are like kids in that, if you don't say anything, they figure its ok, if they think about it at all.  It was actually funny because then he did do something about it, it just hadn't occurred to him to. He said he'd been a little worried about her and that she wouldn't leave the dinning room table. Duhhh!

Anyway, after Rody had been gone about a week and a half, maybe two, I don't remember a lot about that time because I slept and cried A LOT. The man and his daughter pretty much accosted me saying I had to take the cat because I shouldn't be alone and she really needed to get away from that darn dog.

So they cave me a beautiful back cat, with shots, litter pan, food and even toys. She's six months old, probably seven now.  A really great companion and Islamicly acceptable to boot. I got a lot of silent flack from some of my friends and new ones, when I warned them that I had Rody living with me, they didn't speak to me again. Oh well, their loss, he was a really wonderful guy, the best one to date. I won't be a dog owner again because of that. He was the last of my pack of four. They have all passed away now of old age.

The cat really is great, but she just isn't a dog and I've always been a dog person.