Fall--Beautiful Time of Year!

Fall has been a welcome change, especially since there has been rain lately!  Within a month's time, everything sprang back to life!  The grass greened up and grew a bunch; I may have to mow one more time.  I have more plants to move in before the end of the month, as I want to make sure that none of them freeze.  I also want to finish cleaning the ornamental garden before everything dies back for winter.  It has beautiful rain lilies and many other plants that are healthy.  I do miss that when the cold wind blows and it seems like spring will never get here.  However, spring tends to be a windiest time of year for us, so I would just love to skip over that part!  Then summer comes and it is too hot!  Last summer I didn't mow any from the end of May until the end of September.  Four long months of no rain, just watering whatever is really necessary.  That really was rough!

Mom is more generous now that she has had an epiphany, she claims.  That helps me to tolerate the job I have a little more.  She can be incorrigible at times, and my husband can too, only in a different way.  They are both pieces of work!  I just love them both so!  Sweet Jesus, give me strength! 

BACK TO DRINKING!

Well, my husband fell off the wagon...again!  I guess this is a sign; I am trying to decide what to do!  If he continues drinking heavily, I will be forced to leave.  I don't want to live with my mother but that may be the only way!  I won't be there long, however, as I have a plan to put her in an assisted living facility, if possible.  I want to move out of this God-forsaken place before the oil field sucks all the water out of the earth!  It is happening as we speak!  The oil boom is in full bloom!  I was raised in the oil field; many relatives did oil field-related jobs when I was growing up.  It was different then.  I wish it would bust, as the economy really is effected by all of this.  Our rent continues to go up, but we're on a fixed income and that doesn't increase much.  It isn't enough to cover a rent increase, which is already almost out of our range!  Electricity continues to go up; it is summer and the bill jumps way up!  I am depressed; I will have to make some changes!

The Non-Bathing Husband!

Does anyone out there in blog world have a husband that doesn't bathe anymore?  I have one!  Since he "retired" over 3 years ago, he has not bathed--not to my knowledge!  I am quite sure I would be able to tell if he did!  I have not slept with him in years either; I have my own room!  He really disgusts me and I feel like the only one in the world that has to put up with this behavior.  I wanted to ask his brother about it; I often wonder if he didn't want to bathe when he was a kid.  BUT...he used to bathe when he had to work, so I don't know what happened.  It is very disrespectful to me!  I hate living like this!

BUSY, BUSY!

WOW!  I have been so busy the last couple of weeks; I haven't seen my soap opera in that long either!  I do miss my hour of relaxation time when Y & R is on, but I haven't had the luxury of seeing it lately.  So much stuff has developed and the irony of it is that I was able to finally take a 2-night trip all the way to visit my friend-sister.  I stayed in a motel instead of with her as she has big dogs that like to steal my bed at night.  I was on my way back home when I got the foreboding message that Mom had a gas leak.  I don't know if we would have discovered that on our own, because the gas company insisted on changing out the 50-something year old meter.  My youngest sister actually came for a visit at the time of my trip, but she was not knowledgeable about plumbers to call, etc.  She hasn't lived here in decades, so....needless to say, I had to rush home to the rescue!  Back to reality!

Money Ain't Everything!

Why is it that some people think they can just throw money at you and make everything better?  I used to think that it was important to have plenty of money; it seemed that in the old days there was never enough.  I have gone through some pretty lean times in my life and now I have no money worries whatsoever.  But...I am not happy with my life right now.  I would rather be as poor as a church mouse, but be somewhere that I would just love to live.  Some place where rivers, lakes and streams are plentiful and rain comes more than just occasionally.  My sister-friend lives in a great place by a lake; a small but rustic cabin just barely big enough for her and her dogs.  She is barely making an existence, much less a living wage, but she is where I would give anything to be.  I want that for me right now; I want to spend my autumn years in a place where I can feel at peace with the world.  Right now, I am up super-early because of my weekly stomach ache.  I feel like I am under duress most all the time.  I pray for things to be better; I ask God for help with this daily.  I know I don't deserve the blessings that God has given me, but I need some peace of mind.  Instead of feeling blessed that my mother needs me to care for her, I just feel resentment.  I feel more like a slave than a caregiver, because my mother disrespects me on a daily basis.  She has been paying for my services, but I don't think that gives her the right to be condescending.  I am the only one she sees most of the time.  I finally took my friend who has been my neighbor for years over to Mom's to introduce them, as they had never met before now.  The few friends that did come over to visit at Mom's no longer have the time or whatever to drop in these days.  I sometimes feel isolated because of this; I often times feel guilty because I think that they don't want to be around me, rather than Mom.  My own sister is coming to visit less and less since my middle sister passed away.  That definitely makes me like I have been abandoned; all the weight of my mother's care falls on me basically.  My husband is not sympathetic to my situation; I cannot vent to him about my feelings of resentment.  He doesn't want to hear any "bitching".  His brother takes responsibility for their mom; he doesn't want anything to do with his own family.  Sometimes I wonder if our marriage is going to last, but I feel like I am too old to consider getting a divorce.  I am so tired of this life that I just don't have the strength to break away from all this.  I sometimes wish that I could be with my middle sister; I guess you could say I am depressed.   

The Wind Never Stops!

This is one of those years that the wind goes on and on; you think that it will never stop!  Also, no rain for quite some time and what little we did have was of no consequence.  Although, the rain barrel must have caught a lot as I am still using it to water some of my plants outdoors and indoors.  The oil field is going to use up all our underground water because they are "fracking", a more modern type of drilling.  They can drill a well in no time and move on to the next location within days of starting one.  This is not like the old days!  The oil field has always been someone in our family's livelihood, either directly or indirectly, ever since I can remember.  My father worked for a refinery and so did my husband.  One uncle owned his own pumping company and another owned an oil company!  My husband can no longer work for the refinery, as his health became so bad that he had to get on disability.  Isn't it ironic that the very thing that made a good living for many family members is now the very bane of our existence.  It doesn't benefit us at all now to have an oil boom going on; it doesn't make my husband's disability check get any bigger.  Our rent is going up regularly; everything we have to buy now is very expensive, including gasoline!  We have to eat and we need gasoline for our vehicles, so we are basically a slave to the oil industry.  Virtually everything around here depends on that!  I don't like this millennium at all!

The Burden Named "Mom"

Why is it that I became the chosen one to be Mom's caregiver?  I came back home in 2004; Mom wanted me here after the horrible experience with my middle sister and brother-in-law living in her home.  I was gone for 6 years and during that time my dad passed away (2000).  Mom had been living with my youngest sister as nanny for my nephew in another city.  She still didn't come back home until the next year; my middle sister and hubby had already started remodeling the house and were living there, best I can recollect.  My mom called me a lot and told me things that I didn't like.  Although, my sister and brother-in-law finally moved to their own home after some big blow-up between all of them, Mom still wanted me here.  I came back, got a really good job, found a new boyfriend!  However, things were not harmonious for me living with Mom.  Finally, my now-husband insisted that I come live with him and I considered it for months before I actually moved in with him.  Now my husband is the persona non grata around these parts.  My middle sister passed away and my youngest sister has the only good husband in the bunch, according to Mom!  And this brother-in-law is not my nephew's father; his real father is a jerk!!!  Anyway, my youngest sister has lived in another city for years and she is truly blessed that she never moved back here.  I, on the other hand, am itching to get out of here, once again!  This time I want to be really close to water, especially the ocean!  I want to be able to enjoy my autumn years without having to wait on somebody and clean their ass!  I am now thinking that by the time the Lord takes my mom, I will be too old to enjoy the yard, as it is too big!  That is my only salvation right now and I am slowly losing interest in it.  Without rain, we are in dire straits!  I have half a mind to just let everything go back to its natural state, but I can't stand weeds!  I dig them for therapy and burn them when I am able.