That Girl

 Today is my daughter’s last day in Texas. She’s moving to Colorado, a state safer for women than Texas.  I’m proud of her and happy for this new adventure. I’m sad that I won’t feel her here anymore.  I really need to get the fuck out of the southwest. I’m so over it. I need mountains and rivers that don’t run with red mud. I need lakes that don’t come with water moccasins and alligators. I need to wear a coat more than one or two days per year. I need clean air and water that doesn’t taste like shit, I mean, at least Texas has water that’s better than Arizona but not by a lot. I need green grass and red leaves and snow. I need to be somewhere where they think that 95 degrees is fucking hot instead of too cold to swim in. I want to go camping without it either being too hot or too dangerous because of the animals, snakes and spiders.  I don’t want these things. I need them. When my dad’s wife dies I’ll have several acres of land in Washington, Deer Park, to be exact...

 I have an upcoming video about the Columbine school massacre and it’s leaving me furious. That massacre happened close to 30 years ago and nothing has changed. One of the victims had said that she wanted to change the world, her death was fruitless. This many years later, school shooters still look up to those two boys, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. They want to be as famous or even more famous.  Our government has done exactly nothing to stop these shootings. No new gun laws. No mandatory school safety measures such as safe rooms or locks on doors requiring fingerprints, no bullet proof glass. Nothing. So, some schools might have a safety officer but in the case of of the Uvalde Texas shooter the safety officer ran away and the police department waited outside of the school for 77 minutes while the rampage carried on. They did arrest parents who were trying to break windows to get their children out which of course is an “obviously” when it comes to this country’s police fo...

 March 16 1968. That’s the day I was born…..FIFTY EIGHT years ago. Lord help me! On the 20th it’s a boys 60th birthday.  How is that possible? Seriously. That’s nuts! I feel like I’m in my 20’s but much wiser! I didn’t realize that our brain feels so much younger then we are.  Anyway! Do you know what that means? It means that it’s been almost, within a few weeks, 40 years since I heard a boy’s voice being proud of his new bomber jacket. It made my heart melt and I’d never even seen him. Just a voice that sounded like a little boy who was proud of his new Easter Clothes. Then I met him at the cash register where my mom told him that his mom had just hired me. He told me to come in the following Saturday so he could show me the ropes. I walked out of there and told my mother that I was gonna get him. I went that Saturday. The alarm must not have gone off because he didn’t come out of the kitchen. I could hear him with his girlfriend so I sat down and waited for her little ...

 This is going to be one of the most, if not the most, personal thing I’ve ever written which is pretty hard to do…. I’m writing to mark this time, before and after, I use this as a diary and a way to work through all the things. I can look back almost 24 years ago and read when I called Joshua “ Wee one” in my blogs.  He’s 23 years old. He’s not like my other kids. He’s the most open hearted, kind, Emotionally intelligent, loyal, protective, big brown eyed beauty who radiates a calm strength, always saying “I love you” and he literally thanks us for his meals. The gratefulness this child has is inspiring. He’s on the autism spectrum and aren’t we all? And I love him with the intensity of a thousand suns. This is the child that God told me that I was going to have. We knew from day one that he had a purpose for our lives and I believe that that purpose was a calm lake in a sea of pain.  This week he sat next to me at my desk and asked if we could talk. He was shaking so b...

 So let me fill you in on our little trip… A grand total of 43 hours in our truck.  I had a total of seven hours of sleep in the three days before we left and was feeling pretty off. Major panic attack territory. My husband had gotten four hours of sleep and went to work. I called him at like, 2:30 and asked if we could just go since sleep was not going to happen.  We got all packed up and ready to go and for the first of EIGHT times, I lost my AirPods. I finally gave up but found them 18 hours later… in my purse(?) I always take multiple earbuds and headphones so it was all good. At around 9 hours I fell asleep for an hour. Two hours later we stopped to sleep for 90 minutes.  We checked into the hotel around 12:00. Went to lunch in the hotel and went back up to the room. I took a HOT shower because right before we left for the trip I had jumped up from my desk chair, tripped on my pant leg and went horizontal. Every bone in my body felt like I’d been hit by a truck....

 You guys!!! I have sooo much to tell you. Our little trip was the best! From our kickass hotel to the food and coffee to the most beautiful mountains I’ve ever seen.  The airport was a bummer, I cried, because all of the creepy artwork is on storage because of construction. The Stanley hotel is fucking stunning. It’s in the mountains and I cried because of the beauty! We went to Columbine High School. I remember the day of the shooting. I was driving from my house to Fred Myers(sp?) when the news came over the radio. That shooting started it all. The school still looks the exact same with the exception of the color of the letters in its name. I got perfectly lined up photos from the ones online from that day. It’s stuck in time. It feels desperately heavy and at the same time the area is a sports center so there’s hundreds of people and children and joggers. We went to the memorial. I cried.  We’re starting to make plans to move to Denver. I felt the weight lift off my s...