It should be no big surprise, even in death you are still playing favorites.  For as long as I can remember I was not among one of your favorites.  I wasn’t thin enough,  or quiet enough,  or girly enough,  or whatever enough.  There was always a reason that I didn’t measure up for you. 
     Finally somewhere along the line I stopped worrying, or maybe even trying to live up to your impossible standards.  At least I thought I gave up striving for your standards,  but it became obvious that was not true. 
     The little girl in me just wanted to be loved and cherished, something that was impossible for you to do.
     I find it ironic that one of the last things you said to me was “you look beautiful today”.  I honestly can’t remember you telling me that ever.  It was always,  you would look nice if… your hair was lighter,  you lost some weight, your skirt was shorter/longer etc. 
     I can’t change the past,  but what I can change is the way it affects me in the future.  As in I won’t let it affect me.  The past is the past and it will stay there. 
     I am a strong independent woman with a great close family that loves me,  and those are all the most important parts of the equation. 

A blog post in Memes about the Political Contenders for US President.

    

      It should be no secret to anyone how I feel about addiction.  I have written a few posts about the overwhelming heroin addiction issue that has  Northern New England in its tight grasp.  But let’s talk for a minute about the substance that is legal to buy, if you are of age, and yet can be so addictive that it ruins lives.

     The substance that I am referring to is alcohol,  whether your liquor of choice is Beer, Gin, Bourbon, Vodka, Rum, Tequila, Fireball,  Wine… The list could go on for paragraphs.  You can go into any convenience or grocery store with a liquor license and get your fix.  Beer is touted as the beverage to drink and have fun with your friends with.  In tiny little print on the ad it says  “always drink responsibly”.  Alcoholics don’t read tiny print nor do they drink responsibly. 

     Alcohol in excess ruins lives,  alcoholics lie, cheat, steal.  In short they will do anything to feed their habit,  but you can legally purchase their drug as long as you are 21 years of age.  That is what makes it so difficult to deal with.  There comes a point in time when most of their friends get tired of being lied to and scammed.  They can no longer trust what comes out of their mouths.
    Once an alcoholic makes the decision to get sober,  don’t kid yourself, there will be setbacks.  An average of 4 of them before sobriety takes hold.  I have witnessed this first hand,  the final results once sobriety is gained is a beautiful thing.  Often the road there can be full of potholes, unpaved sections,  switchbacks and precipices, but if you follow it to its conclusion,  sobriety will be the reward.

    

   

     To say that the Northeast is one of the most liberal areas of the US would be a grand understatement.  New Hampshire with its state slogan of “Live Free or Die”,  and Massachusetts slogan being “By the sword we seek peace, but peace only under liberty.” But once the discussion turns to energy and specifically alternative energy sources all talks of peace and freedom goes out the nearest window.  Solar Farms and Wind Turbine Farms will have town meetings packed to capacity, quicker than you can notice your neighbor has another unregistered vehicle up on blocks in their yard.

     Wind Turbines,  bring out the residents armed with studies about WTS (Wind Turbine Syndrome), and how they are an eyesore,  noisy, kill bats and birds and a host of other complaints to block their installation. Let’s be real about how many birds a Wind Turbine kills.  They kill 214-368 million a year,  BUT 6.8 Million are killed in collisions with radio and cell towers,  and 1.4- 3.7 Billion are killed annually by the common house cat.  I don’t see people asking for them to be eradicated.

      As for them being noisy,  the average decibel output of a wind turbine is 43db,  to put that in context  an AC unit puts out 50db and your refrigerator puts out 40db. So that seems a pretty lame argument.  Naysayers will argue that they cause sleep problems, irritability, vertigo, childhood learning disabilities, and mood issues.  But there seems to be no proof of these claims,  to me it sounds like another case of NIMBY (Not in My Backyard).

     Solar Panels don’t elicit as much of a negative response,  but they do have their opponents as well.  Complaints that they are an eyesore,  that they also kill birds.  Solar Panels kill birds much the same way a window does,  birds sees panels as a body of water due to their reflective properties.  They try and land on them when the panels are super hot and get scorched or even in high heat scenarios they get incinerated.  Opponents of solar that complain the panels are an eyesore,  most are on roofs,  or poles and just don’t look at them. As for solar farms installed for large businesses or municipalities.  These farms make no noise,  no pollution,  no odor.  Just close your eyes as you go by,  because they are generally in an industrial area and you don’t live next door.

     We as a nation are truly dependent on fossil fuels being it oil,  natural gas or even coal.  In my view this dependency needs to stop.  Solar and wind are already there,  we are just harnessing them for our power needs. As a nation,  a state or a region we can’t stick our fingers in our ears and repeat “La, LA, LA,  can’t hear you”, and make this problem vanish like Bewitched and her magic nose.  It is time to deal with the hard facts.

    

   

     Anything can be an emotional trigger,  a trigger that brings back a flood of good emotions, or bad ones as well. This past week has been one full of flooding emotions.  My children are lucky,  they got to enjoy time with their great grandmother.  That doesn’t happen to everyone.  A large number of their friends don’t have grandparents,  much less the previous generation.  We all spent last Friday at the funeral and every time I turned around there was another trigger.  The grave site was a trigger to when my grandfather died 31 years ago,  my first real brush with death,  and how it still felt now.  I was a just an older version of the kid who hated being left back then.  My dad and his brothers are 31 years older,  and many of the family members are gone all together.  I have a husband and children now that I didn’t back then,  hell I was still in high school when he died,  but the emotions were still the same.
     When I thought of my Jama this past weekend,  and I did a lot of it.  New memories surfaced each time.  Each time she saw my boys she gave them money and a bag of Crunchy Cheetoes.  I always ate half of them.  They are one of my weaknesses.  At the JDRF Walk on Sunday I got a hot dog and the bag of chips they handed me were Cheetoes.

    It was all I could do not to cry while munching away.  My fingers were all orange when I was done,  and I knew she was with me.
     Monday morning I had a cup of tea before work in the fancy cup that she gave me.  One of the pretty blue and gold leaf ones that Mrs.  Ranson brought her back from Bermuda.  After my tea was done I had to go and reapply my makeup.  I am sure I will have more days like this as time goes on and more triggers surface.  But I am just remembering what a good friend told me.  “Cry if you need to,  keeping it bottled up doesn’t do anyone any good,  let it out,  that’s the way we were made.” Thank you,  you are very right!! 😊😢

   

    Everyone deals with grief in completely different ways.  I try to let it out so that it doesn’t eat me alive.  That being said, I cry like a big baby, mascara and eyeliner running down my face like a bad clown.  I know they make waterproof mascara,  but someone really needs to invent waterproof eyeliner,  could the big wigs at Maybelline get on that ASAP!!!
     Grief comes in different forms,  the sudden kind.. That just blows you away, you never saw it coming and now along with the grief you have to deal with the feeling of being blindsided by it. 
     The kind of grief that comes with a death from a long illness gives you time to prepare.  Although I am not sure you are ever really prepared for the hole that is now in your life.  The hole that is there where that person used to be. 
     The grief will diminish over time,  but it will never completely dissipate.  Just like the love you have for that person will never change. 
     I have learned to live with both kinds of grief in my lifetime.  I can’t tell you that either one is better than the other.  They both are heartbreaking.  But they are the price that comes with love,  and to have love in my life I will take that price.

     Control,  it is a funny word.  We should all be in control of ourselves and our emotions,  but frankly sometimes we aren’t.  The problem comes when we try to exert that control over others,  and other situations.  Being called a “Control Freak”, it isn’t a good thing,  because trust me I am a  control freak in certain areas of my life.

     The ability to roll with the punches, or just go with it,  is something that took me years to learn.  Type A people don’t generally do those things well.  But if you want to coexist with your family members peacefully, as well as others in your community.  Sometimes you just have to take a step back,  be a Teflon Duck and just go with it. 
     All of the above things said there are just times that fighting for control is what is right.  Not over every little thing,  but over things that really matter.  In those cases,  make your decisions,  pick your battles and stand up for what you believe in.  Because a little bit of control can be a beautiful thing🌹

    

     Yes I went there,  I did, and I am sure I am gonna irritate half of my readers and alienate some others.  But this is my blog, my views and my rules. 
     I am so tired of school shootings in this country,  how are we are the only developed nation that is contending with this problem on this basis?  It started with Columbine and seems to have snowballed from there. 
     Each shooting has a common denominator : the shooter is unhappy,  probably bullied,  they are on some type of stabilizing medication.  Whether it is an SSRI
(anti-depressants) Paxil,  Wellbutrin,  Prozac,  Zoloft,  etc.  Or a stimulant meant to control ADHD  such as Ritalin, Concerta or Adderall. 
     The so called experts will tell you if you add those two factors together you get the perfect storm of uncontrolled anger.  I also can’t help but wonder what we are missing.
     These types of random school and workplace,  or even social event gathering shootings did not happen 20 years ago.  Columbine on April 20th 1999 was the beginning of the flood of these acts.  Columbine took the lives of 13 students and teachers.  15 if you were to add Kliebold and Harris,  who turned the guns on themselves rather than be apprehended.  Before Columbine there had been 31 school shootings with 63 lives lost in that 15 year period  Since Columbine the lives lost is 215 in the same 15 year period with 89 incidents.  Something has changed drastically,  but I don’t know what.
     I do know that we have become less tolerant of our mentally ill,  while at the same time providing them less services.  Our health system sees medication thrown at them as a way to fix it.  Yet states have shut down many if not all of their mental health facilities. Relying on outpatient services instead,  obviously that isn’t getting the job done.  Most insurance companies pay for little mental health care,  and to do so want the ability to climb through your records.  My comfort level gets really uneasy with that.  I don’t need an insurance company knowing that someone might have a breakdown,  or already did.  That is between the patient and their medical team.  The insurance company needs to just write the check.

     Somewhere in here lies the answer,  part of it I believe is tougher gun control laws,  another portion is better mental health care,  and the final piece of the puzzle would be to address our dependence on some of these drugs.  Are they truly necessary,  or because we have such piss poor mental health care in this country have they just become the first line of defense?

    

   There are some things in this world that I just don’t understand.  Suicide is one of them,  some people take it as a sin against God ; or as weakness that the person could no longer handle everything.  I just view it as something incomprehensible,  like calculus or nuclear physics.  Things that just don’t add up and make any sense to me.

      Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem, a shifting of the burden and weight to someone else. By taking your own life you leave a gaping hole in the lives of others.  A whole that can not be filled. Death is final,  it is the last hurrah,  the only thing other than taxes that are certain on this merry go round we call life.

      A death by suicide messes with the natural order of things.  Parents are not meant to bury their children and grandparents should never lay their grandchildren to rest. 

     I can’t even imagine what goes on in your head of as you contemplate,  try and then succeed at committing suicide. The despair, the thoughts of hopelessness, panic, fear, and maybe relief when the final decision is made.

     What I do know is that those of us left behind, friends, family and acquaintances are left scratching our heads and wondering what we missed? Were the signs there and we ignored them because we were in denial or did you hide them so well that we never saw them until it was too late.

     What I want everyone to know is this.. We can’t erase the past,  but we can adjust and rewrite the future. We can put one foot in front of the other,  ask for help, find the resources, talk to your friends, your parents, your spouses and significant others and stop this please.  Nothing in life is that bad that death is the answer.

    

     This past weekend I had a chance to attend my 30th High School Reunion.  It really is no secret to anyone who knows me at all that I hated high school.  I was shy, scared, didn’t fit in with the “in crowd”  “the jocks” or “the stoners”.  I had my small group of core friends,  none who were going to the reunion. 

           

     I had decided,  with information from others that had done this before that once you get to 30 years.  All pretenses are gone,  you are who you are,  the cliques are gone and everyone just gets along. I was pleasantly surprised,  because it happened.  We all laughed and chatted and danced (in a big group,  no coupling off like in high school).  We sat at dinner and ate and talked about old times,  silly things that happened,  what we are doing now.  How old our children are,  what they are doing now,  how long we have been married (if we are married).  Some had grandchildren,  while some have children in kindergarten.
     Suffice to say we have all grown up.  It was an experience I truly enjoyed.  I only wished that I hadn’t been so shy while I was in High School.  Maybe I would have enjoyed my 4 years there as well.