I'm on pins and needles here, T&L...I'd better not have to wait till Sunday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I would be willing to bet that most of you type with more than one finger.

Sheesh.

SS

I'll have you know I am a fast, talented typist that is extremely lazy. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I do not post much, but I lurk every day at work. I too am awaiting the rest of your story. I love a good, compelling book, and this is much better because it is REAL. There is nothing like a great story being told by a great story-teller. Thank you so much for sharing pieces of yourself with us. We can all grow through your words.

Shelly

If you are lazy, then............

No, I won't go there.

This may be a DJ, and sure, you may take a rest now and again, but you are NOT lazy.

I've heard everyting now.

SS

You can jolly well bet that if I typed with one finger you'd get, at the VERY least, a lot fewer adjectives and adverbs in this story, and probably a decrease in nouns and verbs, too! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> Neak is giving a musical vespers program tomorrow tonight at the church, and trying to sell some of her books afterwards. I'm going over to practice with her later, and if I can I'll use her computer to take a few paragraph-steps farther. No supervision, and DSL besides! Whee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HP has very kindly agreed to pick up something Neaksis wanted that he can get on the way home, but which is out of the way for me to get for her. He's not a bad person. Just emotionally walled-off. Bricked up. Concertina wire on the top of his fence. Guard towers with rifled watchmen. Dogs patrolling the perimeter. You get the idea. I just want to make it clear, as I tell my taleofwoe, that I'm not HP-bashing because I think he's a jerk. Annoying, yes. Inaccessible? Absolutely. But not a jerk.

t&l

Just teasing you, SS. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> I am lazy now and again, especially when posting here.

I invited the Idiots to my program, but would any of you like to come, too? If you live close enough to Lodi, CA you are welcome, and would get to find out that T&L has a very nice voice, and that she is shorter than both of her daughters! I will post more info if anyone is interested.

I vote T&L Storyteller Extraordinaire, as well. But don't worry, even if I figure out the photo thing myself, I will post no nekked pictures. She is much too white!

(On the topic of whiteness, she used to sunbathe nude, maybe still does on occasion. Many years ago, while she bathed in all her glory atop our corrugated metal back porch roof, my younger brother answered the phone. "No, I'm sorry, she can't come to the phone right now. She's lying naked on the roof." Mom never did find out who was trying to reach her...)

>Mom never did find out who was trying to reach her...)


Yeah. But helicopters everywhere started including your airspace on their flight plans.

Neak, did anybody ever tell you that you have a BIG MOUTH?!!! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" /> When she was little we called her Diarrhea Elizablatt because she talked so much. How things have changed, haven't they?

t&l

P.S The above caller was a MAN. And my husband was a teacher at the local church school. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> I spent the rest of the summer beet red all on my own, without the necessity of further solar exposure. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

ROTFLMAO!

I cannot imagine how HOT a tin roof would be...specially nekkid.

Actually, I had a sheet of plywood on top the tin, a beach towel, a big fan...and a really long extension cord! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> Why, you ask? Can you imagine how HOT it is nekkid on a tin roof?

t&l

No. I know the asphalt here is hotter than the sauna in hades, tho.

I think I must've had a lot of rejection issues back when I was younger. The aforementioned serial nectar spreader, within a short time of our becoming engaged, and very soon after he told me the only way I could ever harm him was if I decided I didn't want to follow God because he wouldn't know who he wanted to be with--God or me, told me he had fallen for somebody else and didn't want me anymore. He sort of strung us both along for several more months until I finally grew a spine and said, "Enough. Choose." He chose me, at which point I mentally went, " <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" />! How dare you treat me this way?" and decided I didn't want him. I was a very lonely only child, where the other kids all had siblings to play with. Growing up, I felt like I was always on the outside looking in, and after being dumped by my fiance, and then sent away by MS, I was as thirsty for attention and affirmation as the Sahara desert is for water.

After a couple of years of working (and watching for Bonnevilles), I got a chance to go to WA state under a government program that paid for RNs to get their B.S. in nursing. I'd make a joke about not really needing any additional BS, having plenty of my own, but I don't want to get my checkin' fingers snipped. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /> The day I got there, I started checking out guys in the school funny book, and found a man with the same very odd name of one of my cousins. Figuring it was impossible that in this wide world there were TWO sets of parents who would've imposed this name on their baby, I walked over to the married students' housing and found out that it was, indeed, my relative living there with his family. We visited for awhile, then agreed that on Saturday night I would come to my his sister-in-law's house and watch a movie with them. I didn't know that HP lived in the basement apartment, or that they had a habit of bringing girls around for him to meet.

He was not entranced to find that they'd snared another one for him to check out, and when it was time for the movie, he went riding in his car instead. However, after showing that brief flair of rebellious independence he returned home,
came back upstairs, and sat down behind me. All the children were ecstatic at his arrival, and before I ever saw him, I was charmed by the sound of his laugh, and by how the little ones loved him. (How ironic, since now he laughs only occasionally, and noisy small children make him cranky.) He decided that night that he didn't like me. Two nights later, however, he came to my house to confirm his original assessment. The rest, as they say, is history.

He began to pursue me diligently. I was ripe for some attention, and after everything that had gone before it was flattering to be sought out so persistently. I don't know how long it was before he proposed, but it couldn't have been long, since we were married 3 months to the day after we met, and I spent at least a month back in CA "getting ready." I should've been warned when my collie, who, up to the day we were engaged was always taken on our outdoor trips, immediately had too much hair and shed too much to go in the car any longer, but I wasn't too good at reading "sign" back then. Besides, I had allowed him to pressure me into premarital sexual activity, and even if I felt worried, it was overridden by my need to make an "honest" woman of myself. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />

So my ambivalence was overcome by guilt, loneliness, and an insane desire to have children of my own. My parents were married 10 yrs. before I was born. When I was still small, my mother had a hysterectomy. From the time I was just a little girl, I knew that the only babies I would ever get to be around were the ones I would have myself, and my longing for one had been intense for years. He wanted me. I wanted children. A perfect match, don't you think? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

My parents were quite naturally alarmed that I was coming home to be married to a stranger such a short time after I left to go to school, but we nevertheless proceeded steadily towards a wedding. If I can figure how to post pictures, one of the ones I want to show you is a picture of my dad and me not too long before the wedding started. It's a nice, sweet daddy/daughter photo as we engage in deep conversation. Actually, what he was saying at that moment was, "Susan, your mother and I think you are making a big mistake here, but we want you to know that if you go through with this, we will do everything we possibly can to help you make your marriage a success." And to their eternal credit, they did just that. In fact, they tried so hard to help, bending over backwards to be fair to him, that I often groused that it was like I had 2 mothers-in-law, and no mother! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /> My mom always laughed. But I wasn't kidding!

The wedding had already started before my insanity (marrying one man while I was in love with another) finally hit home to me. The bridesmaids were starting down the aisle of the sanctuary. The groomsmen were walking out on the platform, behind my uncle who was to perform the ceremony. Music was playing. All the guests were there. My dad was waiting for me in the foyer, while I huddled behind the closed door of the mothers' room, watching the proceedings through the big glass window, and crying my fool head off--because I DIDN'T WANT TO DO THIS!! If MS had showed up at that moment and asked me to come with him, I would've walked right out the door without hesitating, and left my folks to deal with the radioactive fallout. But he didn't. Do you know how brave you have to be at 23 to stop your wedding once it has reached that point? Whatever I may be at 57, I certainly wasn't THAT brave at 23, and so when the time came I dried my eyes, left the room and marched down the aisle on my father's arm towards my doom, uh, DESTINY.

t&l

P.S Neaksis just read this before it was posted, and said, "You were charmed by something about Daddy?" Not that she was surprised that he had charm, just surprised that I thought so. She was also a little skeptical about the "infectious laugh." Apparently she hasn't heard it enough to remember. Guess he got that ground out of him pretty quickly!

I've been out mowing the lawn, and coulda sworn it was at least 110 and hot enough to broil a beet, if my face was any indication. But HP says it's "only" 99.7, so now that I've had a break in front of the fan, ingested a cold caffeinated substance, and relaxed with MB for a few minutes, I guess I'll go back out and stand in the sprinkler long enough to get wet before I start on the side and the back. I heard goats are good at keeping the grass under control. Anybody got some hungry ones for sale? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

t&l

OK, no goats. How disappointing. Had to give up on lawn mowing and delegate the last little bit to a male type. NOT HP. HP doesn't DO lawns, although sometimes he'll cook lunch while I'm out there mowing. When I came upstairs to lie down in front of the fan it looked to me like the room was full of fog, or else like I was viewing everything through a thin white curtain. Very odd. So when HP came back from the store, he came upstairs with an ice-cold drink for me, which I ingested in front of the fan and now things don't look hazy anymore. Guess next time I'll mow in the morning! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" /> Maybe I can get a breakfast out of it! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

I'm going to have to start getting ready for work soon, which involves cutting my hair, taking a shower, blah, blah, blah. So there's nothing much I can really get into except this seemingly-extraneous detail, which will bear weight later on.

My parents were true believers, who lived out in their lives what they professed with their lips. My mother was the head of the English department for foreign students, and since it was a Christian school, Bible was a part of the curriculum, just as a matter of course. Her students were primarily from the Orient. Most were Buddhists. They didn't have to pass a test of faith. They just had to take the class. And for most of them, passing the class was all there was to it. However, every now and again, the story of Jesus and redemption would catch hold in somebody's heart, and they would decide they wanted to become a Christian. Without exception, when this happened, their American sponsors would threaten to withdraw their sponsorship the day they were baptized, and disgraced their families by doing this horrible thing. Without their sponsors they could not stay in the US, and whenever this happened my parents went to Imigration Services and agreed to become their legal sponsors so that they could stay here and have a chance to practice what they had come to believe.

I have a number of Japanese sisters, 2 Japanese brothers, and one Chinese sister. In fact, I'm the only white kid in my large family! My parents never legally adopted any of them, since after the age of 14, adoption wouldn't have changed their legal status. Since their families were already angry enough about the religion change, it seemed that a legal change like adoption would've only added fuel to the fire, without helping them immigration-wise. But they became true members of our family, nevertheless, and Aunties and Uncles to my kids as they came along. One sister has been with us 45 years. I know that because for some reason I remember that I was 12 when she arrived. Others have been part of the family for longer than that, but I was a little kid and didn't pay much attention to timing and sequences back then.

My folks sent us all to church college on their teachers' salaries, and in this group today we've got two nurses, a physical therapist, an occupational therapist, an accountant, a business executive, and a research physicist at a large university. There are others, but those are the ones that rise to my mind right now. We are closer now than when I was little, since back then I was just a kid and they were all in their teens and twenties, but at my mother's funeral those of us who could come had a wonderful, warm, bonding time together, and it was obvious that the ties were still there, and had not been broken.

So I grew up able to observe daily, practical Christianity in action. As a kid, the only downside I had with this was that they were all too big to play with for somebody who really want ed a BABY sibling. (Not that they weren't any fun at all.The Okinawan sister used to tell me Okinawan ghost stories that certainly livened up my attempts to go to sleep at night!!) As an adult, I see the downside to have been the fact that with so many young adult Japanese girls in the house, I was allowed to be much lazier than I ever should've gotten away with. I read books. They cooked. My food appeared at my place at the table. I read while I ate what they had fixed. When I was done, my plate disappeared to be washed and put away while I read some more. The mission worked my parents heavily, and it was just easier for my mother to let the grateful Oriental girls help her out with housework, than it was to spend precious and minimal time at home arguing with me about what I needed to do but didn't want to, because, BY GEORGE, I had a book!!! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" /> Need I say this was a poor preparation for adulthood, employment, or marriage? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> Didn't think so.

Aloha oe for now.

t&l

I donno ... seems rather lovely to me. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

It seemed that way to me, too, all the while I was growing up. All that lovely Oriental food laid out before my admiring eyes... It was only afterwards, when I made the transition from pampered girlhood to allegedly-responsible adult, that I began to contemplate its drawbacks. And it was very abrupt, too. One day I was everybody's favorite baby pet, and the next day I, um, WASN'T. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" /> I married a man who was the only guy I'd ever met, who, when he wanted a meal, made himself an entree, a vegetable, a baked potato, and a salad. Trouble was, as soon as we got married, he abdicated the chef's throne and expected ME to carry on for him, in the manner to which he was accustomed. Who, me? I thought food appeared magically on the table at dinnertime all by itself. They say transition is the hardest part of labor. Well, in MY opinion, transition in other parts of life ain't all fun and games either. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

It shouldn't be necessary to say, although I'm going to say it anyway, that MY children were not catered to in that fashion when THEY were growing up. Even if I'd wanted to, there were too many of them, and only one of me! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> And as soon as Neak and Neaksis were old enough to cook, I abdicated the cook's throne myself posthaste, almost as fast as their dad had abandoned it to me in the beginning. They are all, boys and girls alike, able to cook and take care of themselves just fine, although they'd probably rather have lived my childhood than their own, when you come right down to it. Oh, well... Some of us are just lucky, kids, and guess what? This time around it wasn't you!! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" /> I'd pretend to be sorry but you wouldn't believe me anyway, so why even try?

t&l

We are partway to solving the (fully-clothed, fear not) picture problem. We might have been able to get it done yesterday but Neak and FWH took DS8 away to summer camp and were gone all day. In "honor" of his trip to Indian camp, as well as his own personal Native American heritage, his daddy dubbed him with an anticipatory Indian name yesterday and all day long, called him "Running Lips." Did I mention that this kid talks a lot? Hard to imagine, isn't it? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" /> Little brother tried to call him "Running Lips," too, but when DS4 said it, it came out as "Wunning Wipth." We start the deprecating humor early around this family! But I digress. I wish I could put up some pictures of MS, but it doesn't seem fair to do that without permission, and it's not like I can ask for it! Still, having said how good looking he was, it would have been nice to be able to provide some documentation. We certainly didn't use that terminology back in those faraway days, but in today's parlance he would be called "hot." How hot, you ask? Let me think. Hmm-m-m-m-m-m. I know. He could've stood at the North Pole in the dead of winter, dressed in nothing but his skivvies, and he still would've been hot.

And shriveled. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />

At any rate, let us proceed down the aisle and complete the marriage of two of the most incompatible people to ever appear before a preacher for matrimony. Obviously I started out the marriage with a giant secret, didn't I? Unbeknownst to me, HP had his own secrets, though, different from mine but every bit as deadly to the success of a marriage. In my defense, having once taken the plunge, I really meant to make it work, but it didn't take HP long to become disillusioned with the idea that I was going to be a solution for him...and in his resentment towards me for not doing what I had no idea I was supposed to do, he began to do mean, hostile things to me. I don't remember exactly what they were now. (That's the advantage of a bad memory. I truly have forgotten a lot of stuff that happened in the past. He's like an elephant, and remembers it all, but I can't see it's made him any happier to remember than it's made me to forget!) By the time we'd been married 4 months, I was pregnant with Neak, sick and tired of being a wife, ready to quit this whole stupid marriage idea and go home again. In fact, if we could ever have simultaneously agreed on a divorce in the last 3+ decades, I probably would've left. But because his possessive mindset hates to ANYTHING away (part pack rat), I could never get him to agree to a divorce at a time I was also ready to pack it in, so we kept limping along through the years. He eventually decided to see if he could drive me insane (literally). I didn't know this until he told me about it maybe 10 yrs. ago or so, although it did explain a lot in retrospect. However, he underestimated the strength of my flower, I guess, because not only did I refuse to go crazy for him (quit snorting, girls, it's not polite to laugh at your mother that way), but I got really, REALLY pissed off. I am not trying to excuse any of the things that I did in my anger, bitterness, and rage. I will only say, in what defense I can muster, that these acts started out as retaliation for what was being done to me. I'm not the one who initiated the war, although I certainly did my part in escalating it as time went by.

When we went on our honeymoon (<img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" />) he decided we should go camping. Bad idea. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" /> Really, REALLY bad idea. He loves to camp. My idea of roughing it is having to climb to the second floor of the motel, dragging my own bag. He became angry when I didn't help him put up the tent and cook over the camp stove. Flash back to my teen years, please. Cook? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /> I'm sure there's a book around here somewhere. Put up a tent? That's what fathers were for, on the very few occasions I'd gone somewhere where a tent was involved. Or some other strapping testicular being. Very early on, I was weighed in the balances and found wanting. Except the fertility department. Holy cow. I certainly atoned for my parents difficulty in having children. Turns out I could get pregnant if a 2nd grade class studying science in a neighboring county discussed cetaceans and mentioned sperm whales. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

When Neak was born we both loved her dearly, but having a baby together didn't actually make us get along any better. We tried marriage counseling with a very nice man whom we used to make laugh (during our sessions) till he cried. A stand-up comedy team, we were. He told us he felt so guilty for laughing at our problems when he couldn't help us, but he laughed anyway. And then we'd go home and turn into the gingham dog and the calico cat. (You can google that poem, if you've never heard of it before.) There was plenty of misery to go around, and if I thought I was getting married to get attention, I was certainly disabused of THAT notion by then.

I lost a lot of weight after Neak, and by the time I got down to 111# I was starting to feel pretty good about the way I looked. I got a job as a nurse in the state penitentiary, working in the prison hospital, and there I found attention by the buckets, both from guards and inmates. I didn't have to wear a regular white uniform. Instead I had a little purple dress that came halfway between my knees and my thighs, and the only sexy nursing shoes I've ever seen, before or since. It was SO gratifying to me, given my life to that point, to have hundreds of men stop what they were doing and watch me walk into the prison en route to the hospital. NO BEATING UP ON THE DOOFUS!!!!!!!!!!!!! I know that was stupid, but I was 26, for Pete's sake. It's not like I was born 57, you know! Do I have to paint the whole picture from here on out? Extrapolation, anyone? Sigh.

All righty, then. I was very popular with the inmates, and to a certain extent, with the guards. I was NOT popular with the other nurses, most of whom were at least 20 years older and 100# heavier than I was. There were 2 inmates who especially singled me out for attention, and when I succumbed to the lures of one of them, the other one went to the authorities and reported the budding "romance" that was going on under the guards' noses. Can't remember how long this all took, but I eventually lost my job due to the exposure. HP, taking a page from the MB book that hadn't even been written yet, exposed me to my parents. Boy, was I mad about that! But my parents told him, "Don't worry about Susan. She'll do the right thing. She's not going anywhere."

By the time I decided to stay in my marriage, I was left with a life-long, very deeply-ingrained dislike of men who hit on married women. I say this not to excuse myself, but there was even less excuse for him. He knew I was married when he started his pursuit and his attentions. Of course he could be attentive. What else did he have to do but think up ways to stroke my ego and feed my needs?

The jealous inmate who turned us in had earlier offered to "get rid" of HP in exchange for part of his life insurance money. I turned him down, but only after due consideration of the offer. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> And I didn't turn him down because I was the offspring of Christian missionary parents, and would never consider having such an evil thing committed on my behalf. Nope. I turned him down because all my life I'd kept getting caught whenever I did something naughty, and I just knew if I did this I'd get busted one way or another, I simply didn't want to get caught, and punished.

But when HP would leave to run errands, I would often sit on the living room couch holding Baby Neakie in my arms, and watch him drive away while I repeated this mantra over and over until he returned home, "I hate you and I hope you never come back." When she was about 18 months old or so, HP's brother and his wife decided to go back to the midWest to visit HP's grandparents, and asked HP to go along with them. HP's brother flew small planes and it was decided that HP would go with them and take Neak along to see her great-grandparents. HP and Neak went from WA state down to southern California and from there the group set out by private plane for their visit. I stayed behind in WA to work, and while they were gone, I succumbed so completely to my anger against my husband that I decided that I would offer to sell my soul to the devil if he would "fix" things so HP didn't come back from this trip. Please bear in mind that I knew that if he died in a plane crash, his brother and sister-in-law would also likely be killed. Add to this the fact that Neak, my own beautiful baby, who would also die, was the wonderful fulfillment of my life-long dream for a child of my own. None of that mattered to me. I wanted him gone, no matter what happened to anybody else. After all, I could always have another child when this was over. You want FOG? There you have it. That's fog. So I had a conversation with the devil, during which I offered him my soul, in exchange for the death of my husband, and had settled down to wait for my freedom to materialize, when the phone rang...

To Be Continued:

t&l

Oh fine... leave us just when my heart is racing! humph..

I see where Neak got her story telling skills from.