Edward is coming tomorrow !!

Oh, I'm so excited. Tomorrow Edward is coming !!

I so wish both my boys could come visit at the same time, but that's virtually impossible these days.

Eddie will be here tomorrow. :D :D :D

Dial-Up

Our DSL was accidently turned off by either Earthlink or SBC (no one seems to want to take the blame...they really don't even know what happened) and we've been on Dial-up for several days now.

Earthlink and SBC have teamed up to torment me...not to mention that the SBC guys are going/or have gone on strike. Wonderful. All they friggin' have to do is go to a little room somewhere and flick a switch.

Now they say, definitely by Thursday the 27th. Great.

So...how spoiled have I become ?? People are dying all over the earth...people are suffering from horrendous diseases or they're suffering from man's neverending penchant toward violence...people are desperately lonely and craving affection or even attention.

I have become so damned spoiled and unappreciative.

Dial up at 49.2 suddenly doesn't seem like such a devastating thing.

Goofy

I'm so out of it and goofy today.

I finally was able to sleep (went to sleep about the same time that Johnny got up) and I woke up weeping about 10 this morning. I had just been dreaming about Sugar...

I was back at home standing in the front yard. Suddenly out of nowhere, Sugar came running up to me, barking crazily and she nearly took me down...oh, it was so good to see her again. I felt her cold nose and her hot breath on my face and hugged her so tightly. God, it was so good to see her again. I sat down on the grass and just held her and petted her. I had forgotten how deep brown her eyes were...how it felt to run my hand down her back...her hair was really curly along her back. It was wonderful. I want to cry right now. We got her when she was only six weeks old and she lived with us for ten years.

I wonder if I met her in my dream--I mean if my spirit connected with her spirit in my dream.

I've often dreamed of people and it was so real..unbelievably real.

Not long ago, I dreamed of being in a field talking with Daddy. We were just casually walking and talking...It was so -- there are no words.

I am almost certain that we really walked together in that field.

Can't Sleep Again

Well, I've been awake for almost 30 hours. Don't know what causes this insomnia, but it's an old friend. I can remember going to work with no sleep so many times. I've actually fallen asleep in front of the classroom a couple of times, but fortunately, caught myself before I actually fell out snoring.

Years ago when I had 5th hour Planning period, I can remember putting my head down on my desk to nap and then suddenly being awakened by the 6th hour bell. Talk about getting into action fast...then I would have to stay after school to do the work that I was supposed to be doing during Planning.

God, I hate the thought of going back to work. It isn't the teaching. It's the bullshit that teachers have to endure from everyone--students, principals, assistant principals, parents, counselors and the few obnoxious, odious teachers who always seem to be in every school...they're the brown-nosers who proudly walk the chalk line and feel superior to everyone else at the same time they're bending over to kiss butt. They kowtow to administrators no matter what new inane educational programs have come down from above--where the higher-ups have no idea of what really goes on in a classroom...or if they ever did know, they've long since forgotten.

Unfortunately, secondary administrators and superintendents are among the most pompous, empty-headed bunch of people with whom I've ever had to deal. Probably it is that very character trait that drove them from the classroom (because they could not relate to kids) in the first place. They often are quite proficient in the politics of stepping over dead bodies on the way up the ladder as well.

I wish, I wish... I wish I had gone on and studied for the English Master's that I was slated for twenty years ago. I would love teaching at a small community college or small university...even the lower level classes there have to be better than the crap I've endured over the years.

Johnny said that we could get along fine with my working only part-time. I'm certain that we could if he gets called back to work at Boeing. He made plenty of money there. Well, we'll just have to take it one day at a time until and if that happens, but my money is just about to peter out, and I can't have him paying my bills. He's already saved my hide more than once.

When I think of all the debt I've incurred over the years in the raising of my kids without benefit of child support, I just go ballistic. Not that I minded doing it (when I look back, they were the best days...the very best, except for the teen years...that was tough at times), but it did not have to be that way.

After all the years I studied and worked crappy jobs just to get my B.A. degree...and then...having to go back to take a year's worth of useless education classes just to become eligible to take the test to become accredited...

God, I need to chill. I'm getting myself worked up when I should be trying to calm down.

The beach

Johnny took me to the beach last night.

There's something about being at the beach that refreshes me...the salty air and the sound of the waves tell me that all this was here long before we were here. All of this will be here long after we are gone, but in the end, we and it are a part of everything... since everything is stardust.

Sleep

Well, I didn't sleep again last night, and I don't know why this happens to me. Now, I'll probably fall out late this morning and waste the entire day. I swear I'm governed by a different time than everyone else.

Edward arrives in nine days and I need to really get this place in shape.

I wish Sam could come with him. God, I miss him, too.

Reflection

I think I'll practice a little confessional writing tonight much like the confessional poetry that was all the rage a generation ago... and of which I was so adept at college.

Young people take so many things for granted...good health, good teeth and good hormones...just to name a few. They have spirit and hope and amazing self-confidence even if it's the disordered reflection of no self-esteem... for each of those is certain that he or she is among the toadiest.

I look back twenty years and cannot believe that the beautifully vibrant young woman I was... bears any resemblance to the me who sits here now. God, where did she go ??

Which dead dream suffocated her... choking off her energy ?? Or was it simply a slow progression of hopelessness. Perhaps it was all the many distressed years of mothering all alone while dodging insipid tyrants at work.

Or could it be the living dead who grasp at her still...over the hundreds of miles between here and there ??

Sitting here alone in the dark, I must be honest.

I know the one who was my undoing.

Et tu, Brute ??

My number one son is now an attorney

My oldest son Edward has always been such an enigma to me. He smiled at me the first time I held him. I saw it, and I know it.

The nurses told me that newborns cannot smile...that it was probably gas. Bullshit. He smiled at me as if to say, Hello.

I know he did.

Edward was also born old. When I look back now at photos of him as a child, it is so evident. It would be to anyone. Of course, I was aware of it even then, but it's especially apparent to me now after having also raised his little brother Sam.

Sam is a very new soul, and at 22, he is still quite immature and idealistic. He just got married so I'm sure that wifey will soon shape him up. She's definitely tougher on him than I was, and that's saying a lot. I had to raise him entirely alone. M_ got on a jet plane in 1984 and I haven't laid eyes on him since.

Back to Edward...he is a reader and credits me for that. I used to read to him every night, and ha...I also made him memorize poetry when he was small. He can still remember much of it, especially Poe's "Annabelle Lee." I was certain that Eddie would become an English professor since he is one of the best-read people I know. He's devoured everything and has read all the classics (that everyone is familiar with and that everyone says they've read...well, he actually has). He's always been a voracious reader since he was little and he has incredible insight.

Well, he majored in History for his Bachelor's Degree and taught classes at the university as a graduate assistant while he earned his Master's Degree. He took a year off to work and look for schools to consider for a doctorate degree.

Then one day he called me and said, "I'm going to Law School. I was accepted."

I was floored and extremely disappointed. I wanted a professor son, and that had always been the plan.

"Why ??" I asked.

"Well, I know that I can do it, and it will be the fastest way for me to be able to retire early." I couldn't argue with that reasoning, especially since he'd seen my closest friend Cathy F. go to law school. She never worries about money and plans to retire in just a few years.

Now after three long arduous years, he has graduated. Today. And I was unable to go as I had planned. (I had emergency surgery three weeks ago and had to cancel my plans to go home and see him receive his degree.) To say that I've been depressed the past few days would be an understatement.

He called me right after graduation and said that everyone was there. My mother and Sam, his little brother. His dad (my number One Hubby - Ugh) and Barbara, his paternal grandmother. (And I know, I just know that my daddy and Papa were there, too, in spirit.)

Anyway, he called and was elated. He also told me that he's coming on May 26 to stay with me for two weeks since I couldn't make the graduation.

I'm ecstatic.

I need to sleep

I need to go home. I want to see my kids and my mother and hug them.

I want to see the farm, the fields of cotton and soybeans. I want to visit Buddy and go riding like we used to...God, I wish I still had my horses.

I want to feel the pressure of humidity on my face.

Here we go

I have been wanting to write an online journal (or blog as it now seems to be called) for some time but, as usual, I have procrastinated...probably because that is what I do best. (It has always seemed much more enjoyable to me to savor the frenzied delirium of a last minute rush...rather than plodding along bit by tiresome bit --What silliness that is, considering the fact that the accumulated damage to one's nervous system all evens out in the end when you factor in the mind-numbing tedium of doing things orderly and properly.)

Anyway, I've named this place Southern Belle in Exile since that is always the manner in which I have regarded myself during those times that I've lived away from home.