Back To 'Normal' Crazy

I'm beginning to feel more like my normal crazy self again, which I consider a good thing.

I think this picture was taken about four years ago when we came down to Orlando for Thanksgiving at my brother's house.

The next year gave me another photo opp so I took that one as well... had to beg Massey to take this.

I remember my sister telling me about a friend of hers who commented how funny she though it was. I should have asked for her address and sent her a Thank You note. My kids roll their eyes at me a lot, which I also consider a compliment. They refuse to admit I am funny. Crazy, yes, funny, no.

That's okay too, at least I make myself laugh. Being sad drains me. With that being said, I've felt drained for a couple of weeks now.

Losing a pup is the only bad part of having one. As much as we made fun of Charlie, we loved the fat little doofus even more. He came to stay with us for two weeks and ended up staying the rest of his almost thirteen year life. I'm surprised he even knew his real name. Let's see, we called him 'Switzerland' because he was neutral and got along with both our other dogs. We also called him 'Chally TooPhat' (no explanation needed) and lovingly called him 'Sir Charles' because certainly thought he was royalty. As the days go by, we have learned to deal with his loss but still miss the little dummy.

As the weeks have gone by, I have also really been missing my Lost Boy. I am a worrier by Mother nature...pun intended.

 He hasn't called me once since Christmas and my feelings are hurt. He hasn't returned any of my phone calls although his phone was cut off for some time. I'm okay living apart from my kids as long as they all check in with me from time to time. I really got my feelings hurt at Christmas when he was less than cheerful when we all got together on Christmas Day. He had gone out the night before with some friends and obviously had a little too much fun, and that was fine with me but for Pete's sake, shake it off like a big boy. Massey had to force him to open his presents and he just ripped every box open and tossed whatever was in it to the side and ripped open the next one, never commenting on a single present. That really hurt my feelings and unfortunately voiced those feelings to him in a sarcastic way.

Here's the thing. I had really put a lot of thought and money into his gifts and told him as much...and then some.

That didn't go over well with him and I knew it wouldn't...shouldn't have done it, but the proverbial cat was out of the bag and wasn't any thing I could do about it then . We didn't speak to each other the rest of the day, or before we left for Orlando the next morning.

I sent him a text the next afternoon, apologized for blowing up at him but reiterated how my feelings had been hurt.

Crickets. That's all I heard from him.

Then more crickets.

I've heard nothing but crickets for well over a month now. My hurt turned into worry, so did what any desperate momma would do. I transferred thirty bucks into his bank account. That got me his one and only response since Christmas Day.

"You don't need to do that anymore, I have over a thousand dollars saved up."


            Here's the other thing. He may be half "Cotton" but is a whole lotta "Leach."

Once we get a bee in our bonnet or a bug up our keister..the stubborn side of the Leach in us rears (pun again) its ugly head. We don't back down and we don't give in and we rarely give up.

All good qualities to have unless you are in a squabble with one of us.

I let three weeks go by, all the while constantly trolling his social media which were all totally silent and unused. If you know me at all, you know silence isn't in my forte'...unless I'm mad.

By this point, the mad was long gone and replaced by constant worry.

Was he okay?
Was his job still going okay?
Has something happened?
Does he need anything?
Was he still living in the same place?

I think about him at least twenty times a day. I try calling at least once a day but got tired of hearing "The person you have reached has not set up a voicemail..."

Then his cell phone (our only lifeline) got cut off. I let that worry me for another week then asked Massey to go on line with my bank card and pay the bill.

Crickets were still the only thing I heard even though his cell was cut back on.

Massey sent me a text at work the other night. "He's alive."

Followed by another text to say he had posted on some outlet (Snap/Insta/Sump'n or other) and had commented to ask if he was okay?

Zach:

"yes"

She typed something back to him but never got another response.

Great, guess he's mad at her too now.

Guilty by association I assumed.

Tim has even started to come home from work at night, and if I happen to be there always asks if I have heard from Zach?

Same answer every time...Nope!

Tim's tried calling him a couple of times lately but guess association runs deep and wide with my stubborn Lost Boy.


So what's a momma to do now?

Tim got home from work tonight and said he had spoken with our oldest , TJ this afternoon. We talked about that for a few minutes and once again Tim asked if I had heard from Zach.

Once again..."Nope."

Tim said, it's that Leach side in him.

I rolled my eyes but pretty much agree with him. He had some work to do on his computer and I had some to do on mine. He came into the bedroom and asked what I was doing? I told him I was doing what I always do when bothered by something. I was blogging about it.

Here's the third (and only lucky) thing.

Zach doesn't read my blog. Of course neither does Tim or even TJ. Massey just does when the mood strikes her.

The Leach family crest hangs framed over my computer. My Aunt Tillie did a watercolor of it years ago as a present.

I looked up what 'Finis Coronat Opus' meant.

I was not surprised.

Definition of finis coronat opus. : the end crowns the work : the goal gives value to the labor that produced it.

Tim tells me I worry too much, and do. I also (think I) know everything will be okay. I'm not going to bother Zach again.

When he wants to get in touch with me he will. If he needs something, knows all he has to do is ask.

He was very close to Sir Charles so know he is grieving Chuck's loss as well, from over four hundred miles away.

I mailed Zach, Charlie's collar and dog tags. No note. They should have gotten there a couple of days ago.

 I knew Zach would love to have them and ole Chas would love for him to have them.


I know Zach loves me, just like he knows I love him.

Sometimes it is just hard to say "I love you" but sometimes it is a very necessary thing to hear.

This boy.
My boy.
Our boy.

My eclectic Lost Boy...

I feel more lost without having contact with him.


But he's a man now, finding his own way in life and I need to respect that, even if it hurts. I think the above is my favorite picture of us together. He's looking my way instead of actually looking at me... but seems happy to be doing it.

That's all I want , for him to be happy.

That's all I want for all three of my kiddos. I worry about all three of them and for some selfish reason want all three of them to worry about me.

I'm far from winning Mother of The Year but have never been arrested by social services so I'm gonna call it a win either way.

The only thing I want at this point in my life is to know they are all okay...with or without me.



Being a mother is hard.

Letting your kids go is even harder.


Till next time...COTTON

It's Getting Better

                                                    Slowly but surely...That's my mantra.

After a long couple of weeks, things are looking up...slowly but surely. I feel a tiny bit better every day about our decision to let Charlie go. The other two dogs still look for him, actually so do I when I first walk in the house. It's still just a natural reaction.

I kinda snapped out of my funk when my brother went under the knife and surgery went on longer than expected.

Thankfully he's fine now and slowly on the mend, but is one stubborn son of a gun and is like pulling teeth just to get him to let you help.

He acts like he just sprained his ankle when in fact it was basically sawed in two, repaired then reattached.

He went yesterday for the initial follow up after surgery.

Mind you this picture was taken after a week of healing but he went back to work less than a week after surgery.

                                      Trust me, he doesn't usually have Fred Flintstone feet.


                                     ...and my sister and I thought our Diddy was stubborn?!

 Chris takes the cake, but still needs crutches or a knee scooter to retrieve it. The surgeon told him absolutely no driving for six weeks and is driving him (huge pun) nuts.


We sent in Massey as our ambassador instead. He doesn't seem to get as snippy with her. She stayed with him the first few days after surgery and still goes over every morning to drive him to work.

 Tim picks him up every afternoon on his own way home from work and takes the hobbler back home.

I took the easy route. I'm the cook. Delivered him dinner the other night and doing it again tomorrow. I cook meals which can be heated and reheated and last a few days. Tomorrow will be spaghetti, one of his faves, and have known him to eat it for breakfast. That means I'm cooking for him three times a day!

I was working the day shift earlier today. One of the managers came up to me near the end of my shift and quoted the number of desserts and bottles of wine I have sold since the beginning of this year.

Always the worry wart, asked it that was a good thing or a bad thing? He replied if I thought being number one was a good thing, it was a good thing.

I was one of the top two servers in total sales as well.

Of course that doesn't include banquets (joint efforts) which we do a lot of...but still made an ole girl feel pretty good to at least be near the top.

Certainly beats being last!

Gonna be honest.

I worried myself almost (literally) sick when I began this new job. I detest starting over at a job and began this latest one at a point when I was already a frazzled ninety five pound bag of bones, in a new city in a new state, in a new house with one friend, and he was my brother.

                           Trust me, I have polished and polished and polished and polished.


But you know what?

Somewhere, over the rainbow...and have seen many since moving here , only means one thing to me.

Dreams really do come true.

Till next time...COTTON

No One Wins The Blame Game

              My heart is heavy for this country of mine. My heart is heavy for this world of ours. 

When we pick apart other opinions and accusingly point fingers towards them as being part of the problem; it makes me even sadder and will certainly never be any part of any solution.


True fact.


While am pretty much honest about my own social and political views, would never stoop so low as to make racially slurred comments or typecast someone simply because of ethnicity or legal status.


There are two types of humans in this world of  7.6 billion.

Good people and bad people.

Which would you rather be?

It's a black or white answer (unintentional pun) with no gray area or any given leeway.

                                                             Sometimes the truth hurts.


Jimmy Carter was bashed as president. Called terrible names and blamed for things totally out of his control.

He never tweeted (granted pre social networking) or called disgruntled opponents by disgusting names.

              He simply tried and do the right thing, for the betterment of every one.

 I still keep my thermostat kept on 68 in the winter because Carter kept the same temp in the White House during the energy crisis.

In this age of  modern technology, typed words tend to speak volumes about the person typing them.

Yes, we'll always have problems...that's just the way life works. Trust me... been there, done that for the past decade.

No, I didn't vote for our current president but sincerely hoped he would do well, once elected to be our leader.

While have been disappointed, I have been even more disappointed with the backlash of his seemingly blind supporters.

Obama was called and depicted every derogatory name in the book, along with his wife and two young daughters. In the eight years he served, there was never a scandalous story about his marriage or about his daughters.

Yet he was called out time and time again, with racist comments overwhelming his accomplishments.

I never remember Reagan, or even Nixon being called the names Obama or his family were called or labeled with.

Case in point.

Are you kidding me that you think a person not  born in the United States of America could ever be allowed to run for the senate, let alone the presidency?

Really?

Seems ironic to me that the same man who publicly bashed Obama as being a Muslim and stating he wasn't even born in America or had a legitimate birth certificate now holds the title of President himself, after taped recordings of him making extremely disparaging comments made and directed towards women were released...but he does.


You know, personal attacks don't do anything but make you look like a hater and there is way too much hate in this world.

Hate begets hate. Always has.

Love begets love. Always will.

Another true fact!


I simply wish our President acted more presidential. It's been over a year, and am still waiting for it to happen.


Which brings me to the 'trickle down effect.'

It's not just Trump. Some of the members of congress really get on my nerves as well, and I mean on both sides of the aisle.

I've never been a fan Of Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell makes me want to gag. How in the world did we actually elect these pompous, selfish individuals? There are enough crooks and bribed pockets in our government that you'd think Shonda Rhimes was casting their roles in Washington for her next juicy, scandal ridden series.

It is borderline embarrassing, to say the very least.

Then,  it trickles from Washington on down to each and every state. The pockets are smaller , but way too many are still lined.

When Tim and I were in jeopardy of losing our house years ago and our mortgage company wouldn't help us refinance because we were only six years away from payoff and knew they could make a buck off repossessing it, I turned to our local congressman. I bet I wrote or emailed him six or seven times.

Never once heard back from him. Needless to say, he didn't get my vote.

And then (not kidding) it trickles further down, to counties and  then cities.

When one of our sons got into trouble when eighteen years old for doing something really stupid, the cops told him they would make the charges go away if he would just name names.  He wouldn't. As much as I was disappointed in him for his mistake, I was proud of him for accepting his own responsibility and taking the punishment. He owned up to his own part but refused to drag others down with him.


Trust me, these were some crooked cops and could certainly tell you some tales, but won't. Instead I will tell you they obviously never heard the saying "people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones."

It then trickles down (I kid you not) to school systems, churches and even neighborhoods.


I worked for a school system years and years ago when my kids were little. After the Indonesian tsunami in 2004 (killing from 230,000 to 280,000 people) decided to ask the kids if they wanted to bring in pennies to donate for the relief efforts? They were pumped, excited to help and the pennies poured in!

I was called on the carpet by my higher ups at the school system and told to stop. They were worried some parents may say they had donated "X" amount and try and deduct it from their tax returns.

Are you kidding me?

I cut the fundraiser off, per instructions but had already raised a butt load of pennies so called a charity to donate the money through. They were so thrilled with the effort and asked if they could come take a picture of them accepting the donation from the kids for the local paper.


The year before that,  had a dear friend who I worked with at my other job who was called back into active duty and  promptly sent to Iraq. I thought it would be nice for the kids to have a soldier to pen pal with. He sent back letters and the coolest CD's with pics for all the kids to see and watch. There was one video where they had to be air lifted from their Humvee (Humvee included) stuck in a dried riverbed by a Chinook helicopter.

Word got back to my superiors. I was visited and told "What if he send pictures of himself in his underwear? We simply can't allow this. It's a liability issue."

Are you serious????

So I cut off the pen pal thing , per instructions. When the soldier, my friend, got back from his tour of duty...defending our country, he wanted to come meet the kids. I was embarrassed to tell him what transpired but you know what? I went ahead and invited him anyway.

Guess what?

The day he came to visit the kids, the local newspaper showed up as well for a photo. So did my superiors, who had poo pooped my idea. They sure looked happy in the photo taken and published.

I quit the job at the end of the school year.

It's almost like a few bad apples are trying to take over our huge basket of life, filled with perfectly good  apples.

Inch by inch, block by block, rule by rule, law by law, mile by mile, state by state.

I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed but know what poop smells like...and  getting quite the whiff more often than not these days.

Once again, trickle on down with your hate. Trickle on down with your politically correct self. Trickle on down with your greed. Trickle on down with your homophobic self. Trickle on down with your racism and opposition to people wanting to live in our country because it is a  great country and want to be part of a great nation.

Let's see how far that hate gets you.

There are more lovers in this country than haters and we  are the ones who count.

The Healing Process

It's been a tough week for us, from beginning to end. Having to put Charlie down left a hole in all our hearts. I received literally over a hundred condolences from here, from back home to from across the pond. Anyone who knows me at all knows how much our pups mean to us.

I've had to stop myself more than once from filling up three bowls of food instead of two. I still look directly at the love seat when coming home from work, expecting to see Charlie sprawled out as soon as I walk through the door.

Both our other dogs have paced the house and yard, sniffing around every spot where ole Chas hung out.

People at work have been very nice and given me many hugs and condolences as well.



By mid week, things changed again.

My brother had major surgery scheduled on his ankle. It had been hurting him for quite a while and ended up being from an old fracture when he was a teenager. They had to basically saw his ankle in two, make repairs and reattach it. Massey spent the night at his house the night before and took him to the hospital in the early morning hours of Wednesday. A two hour surgery turned into four and makes you think about a lot. Anesthesia is always risky, along with complications after. We were much relieved to finally get the call that he was out of surgery and in recovery.

These two are all that's left of my immediate family and both mean the world to me. We are different yet also very similar. We all love our pups and all love each other.

It made me realize that while losing Charlie was a huge heartache, losing one of my sibs would be a devastation I'm not sure I could recover from.

He had a lot of pain after the surgery and if anyone knows my brother, knows he isn't one to complain or have to rely on others.

He was a zombie for twenty four hours, with his worried pups by his side, pacing back and forth.

Day two brought the real pain, after the anesthesia had worn off and the healing began. When you get our age (and he is three years older than me) healing is never as easy as it was when you were a kid.

Massey has been an excellent Florence Nightingale to her uncle. She doesn't get on his nerves the way I do so I let her take the reigns.

Although I am  a pretty good Docta.

                         My possum innards poultice is legendary in Bugtussle and Hooterville.


Day three of his recovery his next door neighbor and close friend got married at the park in their neighborhood, right around the corner. My brother lives in a nature preserve and is an absolutely beautiful place to live or visit.

Chris had been planning on delivering the groom to the ceremony in his boat via the dock at the park but pain just didn't cooperate. His friend drove the boat over for him and did the honors.

                                                               It was still pretty cool.

                                      Once the groom arrived, the bride came down the aisle.

                              It's been a week of loss, worry, healing and even  a new beginning.


Seems in a few short days I've been through the circle of life...literally. Tim had to leave after the ceremony, one of his drivers at work had been in an accident. Chris simply couldn't make it because of his pain, but the groom totally understood.

No worries, Massey and I ate and drank and had a grand ole time. Afterwards we stopped by my brother's house and checked on him. He was feeling better and had two of his friends visiting him.


                               In the grand scheme of things I got pretty lucky this week.

I had to lose someone dear to me but was able to give him release from a painful life. My brother survived surgery is on the mend. We got to celebrate friends starting a new life together.


                                       When it all goes crazy, just remember I love you.

Till next time...COTTON

Pretty Sad Day

           If you've never owned a dog, you may not get why I keep posting about our dog.


Today was the final chapter in Charlie's thirteen year life. We woke up by seven AM and were on the way to the vet before eight. It may sound crazy but think Charlie was ready too. We put him on the leash and he willingly sauntered out to my car and slowly climbed into my back seat. He promptly laid down. We got to the Vet and he lumbered back out of the car. He usually doesn't take direction well, especially from strangers in a strange place but followed all commands asked by the techs...from stepping on to the scale to following another tech out of the room to have a catheter put into his leg.


At this point, Tim said he didn't really want to be in the room while they administered the shot.

I said Charlie has been by our side for almost thirteen years. What kind of people would we be, if we weren't by his side now?

They brought him back in to the room and the tech gave him a treat from a cup off the counter. Charlie slowly chewed it up and she said "You can have the entire cup if you want " and poured it onto the dog bed where I was sitting with him.

I immediately liked these people and knew we had found our new Orlando animal clinic.

Charlie never seemed nervous or anxious, which I was worried about, because I was nervous and anxious.

The vet came in and asked us a few questions about Sir Charles. She asked if we wanted to try some pain medication to help with his joint and breathing problems first. I told her we had tried  but at this point felt it best for him to simply be released from all his aches and pain.

She agreed, just stating she was obligated to ask. She also remarked how astounded she was that he was a thirteen year old English Bulldog.

She was very gentle and caring with Charlie, as well as with Tim and me.  She asked if we were ready and with tears and snot already flowing said yes.

Here's the thing. I never thought Charlie would be as calm as he was, especially knowing he could totally sense our anxiety.

He never flinched, he never tried to get up.

The ole boy just wanted his release and think was okay with that, as long as we were right by his side. 

And we were.

It took less than a minute.

It broke part of my heart but filled the other,  knowing he was whole again.

Silent car ride home for us both, except for commenting about how great the staff had been after first getting back into the car....sans Charlie.

Half of me is relieved for him. He much deserved rest from his pain. The other half is an emotional wreck.

I went into work at noon and I was okay until someone mentioned how sorry they were. I then fell apart on the inside, but kept it down to tears welling up on the outside.


                                                There is nothing better than a dog's love.

If this world had more dogs than people in it... would truly be a loving and wonderful place to live, with abundant happiness and no critcism or or judgement.


I salute you, Sir Charles


Till next time, COTTON