On Being Hacked On eBay

May 16, 2008

On the 24th of April we were hanging out at the old homestead, doing nada.  I was probably trying to make my way back to the end of the internet again.  The telephone rings.  I didn’t recognize the number so I answered it.  Normally I don’t do that.  However I live on my instincts and this time something told me to see who it was. 

Some lady asked me if it was MDH’s residence.  I said yes it was.  She asked if he was selling anything on eBay.  I said not that I knew of but that he had a way of surprising me sometimes so I had better let her ask him about that.  I took him the telephone and went back to my e-travels.

Not long after that he comes into the room looking more bewildered than he has since Possum projectile vomited when she was two.  (THAT was a HOOT!)  He tells me I need to check our eBay account.  Sure enough, someone has listed some hoity toity crap on our account for sale!  The lady on the phone bid on it and won.  I’m not sure what happened on her end to raise her hackels, but she somehow got a hinky feeling and decided to check it out.

What to do?  Well, on the home page of eBay is a link that says “Live Chat” or something to that effect.  I clicked on that link. 

And here begins the saga of the eBay bogus seller fees.  For some reason they decided that I was responsible for the fees that the bogus seller incurred.  I decided I was not.  I decided that if it was necessary, I would close out my eBay account and just do my business on Craigs list if I had to.

Well, it just so happened that every time I had time to try to resolve this issue, it would be bad weather here.  And unfortunately my internet connection is through satellite.  *sigh*  I talked to three different people in ten minutes in one conversation one day because my connection kept going down. 

The last guy I talked to that day kept telling me that I had to pay the fees I incurred when I listed the items for sale.  I kept telling him that in the first conversation I had, which I had printed out, we had already established that my account had been subject to unauthorized activity.  Therefore I was not responsible for the fees.  I was getting dizzy going around in circles with this guy.  Thank God the connection went down again before I succumbed to apoplexy! 

So, tomorrow, the 17th, is the day the fees were to be charged to my bank account.  I decided to give them one last chance to rectify the situation before I called my bank to tell them not to pay the charges.  I click the Live Chat link on the eBay home page.  I got connected to the right person the first time.  She asked me what the problem was, referred back to the previous conversations I had had with all the other people there, read the messages and alerts that eBay had sent me in regards to the unauthorized use of my account, and fixed the problem in less than five minutes.

I was blissed out!  I gave that little darling about a thousand atta girls, wished her a raise, a wonderful life, a jump in Karma and just about every other good thing I could think of! 

All I could think of was how glad I was that I had been pleasant to all of those other people I had talked to before her!  Because it could have turned out so different if I had blessed out her best friend in the chat center the last time I was on!

I guess patience really IS a virtue.

 

But you know what?  I’ve been thinking about it today.  I know my side of this equation inside out.  They don’t know ME from Adam’s house cat.  I could be anybody.  I could be just trying to get out of paying fees that I really did incur.  I’m sure people do it all the time.    And it wasn’t their fault that the weather intervened the first few times I tried to get this done.  On their end, it must have looked like I was backing out of the conversation every time things got sticky. 

So, in the end, when I had a chance to stay on the conversation, it took eBay a full five minutes to fix a problem for me that could have been a disaster.  And they did it with good grace and were very pleasant about the whole matter.  Not bad for a place that you absolutely cannot contact on the telephone.

Now, if I could just figure out how on earth that lady got my phone number to call me in the first place I think I could lay this whole thing to rest.

 

Things I’ve learned: 

1. Change your passwords often.

2. Be pleasant to the people you want something from.

3. Change your passwords often.

4. Try to see the situation from the other point of view as well as your own.

5. Change your passwords often.

6. Don’t give up.

7. Change your passwords often.

It sure made my day when she said it was all taken care of and my account had been credited.  I just love it when something like that happens.  It just starts my day out right!

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Maria Lauterbach, Cesar Laurean, Christina Laurean Part 2

April 12, 2008

They caught Cesar Laurean in Mexico.  It’s been three months since he fled the U.S.  But here’s the thing:  This whole time his wife has been slithering over to a relative’s house to use a computer to contact him.  Big surprise, right?  Not exactly.  Especially when you consider that she was kind enough to give him a twenty-four hour head start on his escape to begin with. 

Unfortunately, in the state of North Carolina, it isn’t against the law to communicate with a fugitive.  It’s not against the law to know the whereabouts of a fugitive and refuse to reveal that information.  So, Christina Laurean once again gets away with helping out her husband. 

Cesar had 10 pesos in his pocket when he was apprehended.  He was living in a two room wooden house outside of Tacambaro, Michoacan, Mexico.  Locals stated that he frequented an internet cafe there.  It will be interesting to hear what all they find on the computer they confiscated, which contained the email contacts between Christina and Cesar Laurean.  I will be glued to truTV when this one comes to trial.  I might just see if I can get down there to the courthouse and watch a little bit of it in person.  

The DNA test on Maria’s baby hasn’t been done yet.  According to NCIS, they are waiting until Laurean is returned to the U.S.  They want a reliable DNA sample from him when he is returned.   

Mary Lauterbach talked today about the last conversation she had with Maria.  It was only a few hours before she went missing.  Maria never said anything about leaving.  As a matter of fact Maria spoke to her about a get together they had planned in the near future.  She thinks it’s possible that Maria wrote the letter found in her apartment under duress.  She said the wording was awkward.  We talked about that before. 

They haven’t charged Christina Laurean with anything yet, however charges could be brought in the future depending on what they find on the computer.  I still have a hinky feeling about Christina Laurean’s involvement.  I think at minimum she knew a lot more than she admits to.  She certainly has been in contact with Cesar and I believe that they were making plans for him to come back to the states to visit. 

I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen next!

How about you?

 

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Maria Lauterbach, Cesar Laurean, Christina Laurean

January 20, 2008

Living in North Carolina gives me a front row seat to the circus on this one.  Amid the incessant round of repeat information today I suddenly had a thought.  I think Christina Laurean is lying about when Cesar Laurean told her about what happened to Maria Lauterbach in their house. 

She claims that it was during a drive to see lawyers about the rape.  I don’t think that’s true at all.  I think he told Christina the story about Maria cutting her own throat with a knife on the same day he beat her to death in his home.  I believe that Christina came home from where ever she had been and walked into a slaughter house.  The explanation that Maria cut her own throat with a knife was the only thing he could think of at the time that would explain the blood all over the ceiling and walls of the house without implicating himself in her death. 

It makes no sense that he could beat Maria Lauterbach to death, wash down the scene, grab a friend, go to Lowe’s, buy a bunch of stuff, then paint the walls and ceilings of several rooms in his house, all while his wife is at a party. 

And that is IF he told her that story at all.  You have to keep in mind that Maria Lauterbach had accused Christina’s husband and the father of her 17 month old child of rape.  There is some question as to whether or not the child Maria was carrying was Cesar’s.  It’s entirely possible that Christina didn’t need an explanation about what happened.  She might have been there when it happened.  That might be why she took an entire 24 hours to go to authorities with her information after Cesar left town. 

Maria Lauterbach’s rape accusation had put Christina’s life and the life of her child in jeopardy.  It’s possible that Christina went to her husband’s Christmas party without him in order to make his excuses and give him time to do what he had to do with Maria’s body and the house.  She could have been covering for him.  She had no reason to like Maria Lauterbach.  In her mind, Maria could very well have been the enemy.  If that was the case, she could very well have aided her husband knowingly in every part of what he did.  He obviously had help from at least one person if not several people along the way. 

He wasn’t alone in Lowe’s, he wasn’t alone at the ATM machine.  He probably wasn’t alone at the Microtel near the airport.  Who is the person he was with at Lowe’s?  Who was he with at the ATM?  Why haven’t we heard anything about these people or what they have to say?

Another thought that gives me a hinky feeling about this whole thing is this:  In the note he wrote to his wife, Cesar Laurean puts himself at the train station with Maria Lauterbach when she bought her ticket to El Paso, TX.  As far as I know, HE is the ONLY source of this particular bit of information.  The question is WHY did he put himself there with her?  Did he see someone he knew there?  Did he think he was seen BY someone who knew him?  Did he think there were cameras there?  Did he take Maria Lauterbach FROM the train station? 

He put himself AT the train station with Maria for some reason.  So far I’ve heard no explanation for why he did it, but he had to have had a very good reason for putting himself WITH her at the last place she was KNOWN to be alive on the day she disappeared.  I’m still waiting to hear about this one too.  Could it be that he kidnapped her from the train station?  Could he have taken her to the train station and somehow forced her to buy the ticket to El Paso? 

And for that matter, no one actually SAW her leave her residence.  All they have is a note supposedly from her.  He could have kidnapped her from her home.  He could have forced her to write the note she left.  He could have taken her to the train station and had her buy the ticket then taken her to his home.  It’s not as far fetched as it sounds.  You have to remember this is the man who beat her to death in his house then took her out in his back yard, burned her body up and then buried her there.  Then calmly proceeded to paint over the blood stains in the house his child would soon be walking around in.

I think when this one’s finally over it’s going to be a stomach turner.  What do you think?

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Playing Taps For Jackal

January 10, 2008

I’ve been trying not to write this post since 3:oo pm this past Saturday.  That’s when the unthinkable happened. 

It had been an incredibly successful day up until then.  Rocky, The Buddha, Princess Bella and I had finally gone to find a house for Rocky to put on our land.  It was the first time we went to look for one in person.  We had previously looked on Craig’s list, on the internet, ect.  However, Christmas is over, everything has settled down and it was finally time.  We left with only about an hour to spend in the actual process of looking once we got to our destination.  This was to be a half assed attempt at best.

We got to the lot, saw a gorgeous place, went inside, Rocky fell in love, the rest of us fell in love, the kids picked out their sleeping quarters for when they spend the night, and it was on.  Rocky asked the price.  The guy left to find out and we slumped.  We knew it was going to be WAY out of her price range.  We steeled ourselves for the letdown. 

He came back with a lot of explanations about how it had just come onto the lot, they didn’t have it on the website yet, once people found out about it it would go fast, you know, salesman talk.  Rocky and I looked at each other thinking that the price was going to draw blood when he finally spit it out.  Then he asked his final question: are you planning to finance it or will this be cash?

Rocky says cash.  I swear I think the man had an organism right there on the spot.  Then he told us the price.  I think WE had organisms right there on the spot.  He recited exactly the price Rocky was wanting to pay for a place.  My game face went out the window on the spot.  Rocky lit up like a Christmas tree.  Rocky put down a deposit to hold it until we could get it checked out by My Dearest Husband who is versed in all things mechanical.  We left singing and doing the car seat dance all the way home.

And that’s when things got ugly.

As we pulled into the lane, all of the hill dogs came running to escort us up the driveway.  One of them was Jackal.  Jackal loved to ride in the truck.  He would jump in to go with you every time you got in the truck.  It broke his little heart if you left home without him. 

The dogs run circles around you when you’re driving up the driveway.  I was going about negative five miles an hour up the drive when I feel the right front wheel rise and fall.  At that point all hell broke loose.  Jackal started to scream.  All the other dogs broke and ran.  The kids started screaming from the backseat, “You ran over Jack!  You ran over Jack!”

I lost it.  I put the truck in park and jumped out.  I ran over to Jack, who is half sitting/half laying on the ground, squealing.  I started to check him out when I notice that one of his testicles is hanging out.  Nothing is broken, he can walk, all that seems to have happened to him is that his scrotum has split open and his testicle has squeezed out.  I’ll wait for a second while all the guys catch their breath.

I’m crying, I’m apologizing to him over and over for running over him, I’m afraid I’ve killed him, I drive a Suburban for God’s sake!  Jack is screaming, the hill dogs want to smell him and every time I push one away three more take it’s place.  MDH is sleeping, the door is locked, Rocky is trying to keep the dogs away, the kids are hysterical.  It was a mess.

Finally, The Buddha gets the keys out of the truck and goes to get MDH out of bed.  We bundle Jack up to the house in a towel, I give him Benedryl, (yes you can, by weight just like a kid) and aspirin for the pain, (again yes you can, it only kills cats) and start the vigil.  I don’t have the cash for an emergency visit to the vet.  Call me callous if you want I have a house payment and kids to feed, I’m not going into debt for an animal.

Jack spent the weekend watching all the pretty colors that the Benedryl showed him, sleeping when the aspirin kicked in, and crying.  It was horrible.  I spent the weekend laying on the floor of the laundry room with Jack petting him and giving him subliminal suggestions not to die while he was sleeping.  When he wasn’t sleeping, crying, or tripping he was running around outside like nothing ever happened.  I, on the other hand, spent the entire weekend crying. 

On Monday morning first thing Jack went to visit the vet.  The vet tells me, surprise surprise, that his testicle has squished out.  Um, DUH!  He said that he could take them both out if I wanted him to.  Now, I worked at a vet.  I was a surgical assistant for six months.  This ain’t my first rodeo.  But I’m flummoxed.  So, against my better judgement I feel compelled to ask.  “What other possibility is there?”  He informed me that he could remove just the one.  Or…….get this……we could just leave it like it is and he’ll eventually just chew it off.   That’s right!  Another moment for yall to catch your breath.

You okay now?  Alright, so I tell the vet that I would prefer that he simply remove both testicles please.  Cripes almighty!  Like we weren’t all traumatized enough already.  Now I’ll forever have that image floating around in my head! 

Now Jackal, during the weekend, had to go outside to do his business at one point.  His stupendously large cojone was hanging out, but the Benedryl is doing it’s work and he’s moving around at a pretty good clip.  Our other dog, Sugar Plum is in heat.  Thaaat’s right.  Jack discovered his “special purpose in life” just as SugarPlum comes wandering by and, nut hanging, starts trying to hump her!!!!!!!

Jack is a MAN!  The boy had nuts the size of…..of….let’s just say they are HOOOGE!  Or at least they were.  And I didn’t get to bring them home in a jar.  I wish I could of because I’m pretty proud of him.  He hasn’t realized yet that he’s got no bullets in his gun.  He’s still trying to hump SugarPlum.  But we’re not playing Taps for Jackal. 

I sure was afraid we would be.  I keep having these horrible images of that huge suburban running over one foot tall Jack.  It makes me shudder.  I also keep having terrible images of Jack chewing off his nut.  Holy Crap I’m glad I’m not a dog! 

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So…How Did Your Christmas Go?

December 31, 2007

Well, it went according to plan!  Hell must have frozen over solid.  Which means now I have to do all those dumb ass things I said I’d do when hell froze over!  (insert OH SHIT face here)

We woke up when it was quarter to light, made a pot of coffee, positioned the sleeping children in photogenic areas of the living room, poured the coffee, put on our happy faces and woke them up.  At this point they turned into the Tasmanian Devil in stereo.  The entire living room was aswirl in wrapping paper, squeals of delight, boxes, OH MY GODs, ignored socks and underwear, tiny pieces of now unplayable games, the sounds of every kind of noise making device known to man, and the grown ups laughing our asses off. 

It’s really a good thing that The Buddha keeps these memories like photographs because the camera apparently decided to take Christmas off and went to Bocca for the Holidays.  I couldn’t find it anywhere.  So memories and eighteen bags of trash are all we have to remember it by. 

The Buddha promptly re-wrapped every single one of his gifts just so that he could re-open them.  Seems that he really likes Christmas a lot.  Princess Bella copies every move he makes so she did the same thing, not as neatly or as consistently but she tried. 

I got a painting the I’ve been jonesing for, for about 3 or 4 months now.  After it was wrapped and put under the tree The Buddha kept trying to get me to guess what it was.  I kept guessing it was an Ipod.  It’s about 15 x 20 inches.  I tried to wear it on my arm, I tried to plug ear buds into it, I looked for music on I tunes for it.  It cracked him and Bella up over and over.  Lucky for me their entertainment threshold is as low as mine.

So now my painting is forever named Ipod.  Do you ever name your inanimate objects?  Like, my vacuum is named Eric because it sucks so well and I knew a guy named Eric who sucked just as bad  good.  It’s good for a vacuum but bad for a person to suck like that.  “Of all my relations I like sex the best and Eric the least.”  I love that quote.  It’s not mine, it’s from a book, but every time I think of Eric (the person not the vacuum) I think of that quote. 

Intyways, as Princess Bella and The Buddha say, I hope your holidays have been wonderful so far. 

We’re cooking for New Years.  It will be an all day affair starting tomorrow and ending on the first.  Down here in the Carolinas you have to have black eyed peas and collard greens for New Year’s Day.  The collard greens are for dollars and the peas are for cents.  It’s good luck.  We’re having some country ham, squash, potato salad and cornbread too.  Yall Come With Us Now. 

That’s a North Carolina saying.  You say that when you’re leaving someones house.  Now, if you were going to be here with us on New Year’s Day, we would be trying to send you home some of the left over food.  Cuz you do that in the South too.  It’s just good manners to send some home.  My freezer is full of that stuff.  Hey!  Lightbulb moment!  We’ll have some of that good stuff for New Year’s Day too!  Yall best come on over here and help us eat it, now!

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The First Time Blackie Died…….

December 29, 2007

So My Dearest Husband, my mom Rocky, and me were sitting around the dining room table telling stories, which is what you do in the south in the evenings after dinner.  We had already discussed why MDH and Rocky didn’t ride horses: MDH because every time he had ever gotten on one there ended up being a bad story to tell afterwards, and Rocky because she had one when she was young and it had taken off running into the barn and knocked her off by slamming her head into a rafter.  (yikes!)

This started us talking about pets.  MDH had a peculiar series of pets, so to speak.  They were Blackie.  Blackie were cows.  His stepdad ran a van conversion shop that MDH worked at when he was young.  They kept a black cow in the yard out back.  This was done because they spent long hours at the shop and they could care for Blackie better if he was at the same location they were at.  Every year Blackie was taken to the slaughter house and *gulp* dealt with.  He then resided in the deep freeze until such time as he became dinner.

At this point another black cow was purchased, named Blackie, deposited in the yard at the shop and they started all over again.  Rocky and I were horrified to say the least.  I asked MDH how he felt when they took Blackie off to the slaughter house.  His reply was, “The first time Blackie died I felt pretty bad, the second and third times I felt bad but not so much.  After that I got used to it.”

Holy Crap!  I envision this never ending line of Blackie dying and reappearing again over and over while I’m simultaneously eating him on a sesame seed bun with cheese and a dill pickle!  Talk about things that make you shudder! 

After that we got on the subject of how it’s getting to be hog killing time.  If you know anything about the subject you know that it has to be coldto accomplish this particular task.  MDH was describing his first big boy job in the hog killing field.  He was finally old enough to go outside and help the menfolk kill hogs.  This was a yearly happening because his uncle had a “hog parlor”.  That’s right.  A place where hogs are kept in large barns, that have a huge pond where the hog …..um…..crap is dumped to fester and ferment, a place that stinks enough to knock a buzzard off a shit wagon, is called a “hog parlor”.  Cute ain’t it? 

Anyway, his first big-boy job at the hog parlor was when he was about 12 years old.  The hog is ……I’m trying to find a way to put this delicately………de-lifed, then hefted aloft by a piece of heavy equipment and dumped unceremoniously into a huge vat of boiling water.  This is done in order to scald the hair off of the carcass.  MDH’s job was to use a large paddle that resembles a boat oar, and push and turn the hog carcass under the water in order to make sure all the hair was scalded off of the dead hog.

Yeah.

I just picked fruits and vegetables, sold stuff, you know, things like that.  I was a townie.  None of my first jobs involved carcasses of any kind.  As a matter of fact, only one of my jobs ever involved carcasses, and that was just incidentally.  That was when I worked at the vet.  My first job there was squeezing dog butts.  Yeah, you heard me.  I squeezed doggie and kitty butt-holes for a living.  And you thought Blackie and the hog parlor were bad!

When I first started working at the vet, my job was bathing the animals when they first came in.  One of the most important parts of bathing them was expressing their anal glands.  There is actually a reason for this.  The anal glands contain the pure essence of dog and kitty shit smell in its most concentrated form.  It’s where that ever so distinctive scent comes from.  If it is expressed when the animal comes in, their feces doesn’t smell so bad while they are there.  Considering the number of doggies and kitties at the vet, this is a good thing.  It’s the Martha Stewart kind of good thing in the vet biz.

So, my job was to accomplish this ever so desirable state of affairs with each and every creature that graced our doorstep each and every day!  Yippee!  A little secret you might not know about doggies and kitties.  They take deep exception to having their butt-holes squeezed!  Yep, it’s true.  They really didn’t think much about it when I put them in the bathtub to bathe them and dip them, it was nuttin but a thang to them.  When I lifted their tails they sort of cocked their heads sideways as curious animals are wont to do, but still it was only a little out of the ordinary.  But when I took hold of that butt-hole and started to squeeze that baby like half an orange on a juicer………about seventy different kinds of horrified came over them all at once.

For the most part, the dogs were willing to forget the whole thing as long as I was willing to agree not to tell anyone that they cried when it happened.  The cats on the other hand…….a totally different story.  They gave me the sad, crybaby eyes like Puss N Boots in Shreck.  Then they went for my eyes.  It was like being inside of a blender.  All spinning and blades and blood.(mine) 

Yep, after dinner in the south is story time!  Yall come! 

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And After I Regained Consciousness……..

November 29, 2007

Wednesday evening is Kid Nation night.  We try to watch that without fail.  It’s a good show that we can watch together as a family and the kids love to see other kids running a town on their own.  It’s a chance to hear how our children feel about what is being done in Bonanza City, what they would do differently, how they would handle different situations, and generally get inside their heads without having to ask all those pesky questions that seem to discombobulate them so badly.

During one commercial break there was a promo for the movie “The Golden Compass.”  I was telling My Dearest Husband that I had recently gotten an email stating the opinion that in this movie they were trying to kill God.  Princess Bella pops up with the following reply, “That’s stupid!  God’s already dead!  They can’t kill him if he’s already dead!  DUH!”

My head was swimming.  I got slightly dizzy with all the thoughts, fears, assumptions, and questions that were simultaneously vying for attention.  My delightfully reasonable reply to her statement was “Say what?”

“Oh yes!  You see when people start talking about God, I start listening!  I stop wiggling around, sit still with my hands in my lap and listen real careful when they start talking about God.”  I’m still waiting to hear the part where He’s dead.  It isn’t coming clear to me yet so, against my better judgement, I have to ask.  “Bella, what makes you think God is dead?”

(Long suffering sigh accompanied by rolling of the eyes)  “Because he is in Heaven.  You can’t get into Heaven unless you’re dead.  I heard this in church because I listen.  I pay attention.  Maybe if you went to church more and paid more attention YOU would know that God was already dead too, Gammie.”

I was at a total loss for words.  Her logic was stunning.  It didn’t faze her one bit to think that God was dead.  The fact that a dead God was in Heaven with all her dead loved ones, just waiting on her to get there one day was comforting for her.  It made perfect sense to her.

I’m sure we’ll discuss this more at a later date.  She will not suffer my ignorance for long.  In the meantime, I’ll have to talk to some of my friends with ministerial credentials, do some research,  knock back a few beers, and generally prepare myself for it.  Because to be completely honest with you, I’m not really sure I’m up for the task.  She might just take me down. 

In the realm that God inhabits, is there any difference between life and death?  For God they could just be a state of mind.  They could be different levels of thought, or place, or feeling.  Who knows?  I feel like I’m going into a battle of wits totally unarmed.  Maybe……..if she brings the subject up again I’ll just point up into the sky and shout, “LOOK!  It’s a flock of turtles!”  Then run away. 

That might work, right?

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Aftermath-California Wildfires

October 25, 2007

The fires in California send me into flashbacks.  They also send me into flashforwards.  Is that a word?  If it isn’t it should be.  For a good portion of those people who lost their homes, this is just the beginning of a long downhill slide. 

We were incredibly lucky when our house burned down.  We all survived.  Physically we were for the most part intact.  Our friends came together in a way that was incredible, unheard of, remarkable.  Our community was stellar in its’ response to our needs.  It humbled me and made me so proud of where I live. 

When the smoke clears (yes, I went there) and everyone goes home, you are left on your own to deal with what’s left.  And you’re really not exactly sure what that is.  It’s been over a year and I can’t finish telling you about the fire because I want to pluck my eyeballs out of my face and stomp them into my ears so that I don’t have to see what I saw or hear what I heard anymore.  Did you know that burning puppies can scream just like burning little girls? 

Did you know that little girls can scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream until you think that that is the only sound left in the whole entire universe?  And did you know that when that sound stops it’s like a vacuum that sucks at your eardrums and makes you think you’ve gone deaf, even though you can hear all the other sounds around you?  You can tell yourself that you can hear other things but because you can’t hear that, you must be deaf, and no matter how many times you explain it to yourself, you can’t quite convince yourself that you can hear? 

And did you know that little boys can be so silent at the same time that you think they might never ever make another sound again until time stops?  And did you know that little boys will then start talking and never seem to stop even in their sleep, so that they won’t have to hear puppies and little sisters scream? 

Did you know that a man who crawled out of a house already so thick with smoke that you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face while you were on the floor, still thinks he should have done more?  Did you know that that same man, who was the only one who could make the screaming little girl stop screaming for one second to take a breath, could think that he hadn’t done enough and could feel shame every time he looked at his wife?  Did you know that that could cause deep trouble in a marriage that was otherwise strong for many, many years?

It seems like, once your things have been replaced, that you should just be able to get over it.  But I won’t ever be able to replace the pictures of my dead grandson.  Or the lock of his hair that they cut off of his head for me at the funeral.  There will be no more of those.  They are forever gone.  I can’t ever get back the pictures we took on what His Highness The Buddha called his idea of the perfect day.  They were on the computer that melted. (public service announcement: copy all pictures to disk and keep it some place else, you won’t regret it)  My Dearest Husband’s clock, the only memory he has of his father who died in VietNam when MDH was three, was damaged.  That clock can also never be replaced. 

We live with what ifs.  We live with if onlys.  They are everlasting.  They are devastating.  They can make you go quietly insane.  No one wants to hear this for over a year.  It’s depressing.  It’s sad.  It’s maddening.  It’s frustrating.

It’s hard when you’re riding down the road and someone is burning leaves and you slam on brakes and you become nauseous.  It difficult when you’re at someone else’s house and a smell catches your attention and you suddenly start to breathe hard and sweat and all you want to do is find a door and run.  You catch each other’s eye.  You want to cry.  You don’t want to leave home.  It feels shameful.  It’s embarrassing.  It’s painful.  It hurts.

The nighttime is bad.  When you wake up in the middle of the night and you don’t know if you’ve dreamed the sound or the smell or whatever woke you up, if you even KNOW what woke you up.  You’re terrified to open your eyes, but you know you have to because seconds are hours in a fire.  I’ve noticed at night that it’s always smokey looking to me now.  I never see clearly at night anymore, so when I wake up I have to walk the entire house and check everything in every room because I never know if the smoke is real or just my imagination.

I feel terrible guilt because our friends went so above and beyond the call of duty that no matter what I ever do there is no way I can ever repay them for what they did.  I feel inferior and not up to the challenge.  I feel so discouraged and unable that it’s difficult to even face them anymore.  As a result, we rarely ever even see any of them anymore.  That is the most heartbreaking thing of all.  We owe them so much and yet I can’t meet their eye.  I want to hug them and spend every waking moment with them, but I’m afraid that if I touch them I will smother them with my continuing need. 

I want to cry every moment I’m awake and I’m so sick to death of my crybaby ass that I want to beat myself to death just to shut me up. 

So I don’t talk about it anymore.  I pretend that everything is okay.  I laugh, I joke.  And I’m quietly losing my mind. 

I feel for the people in California.  I heard this morning that so far fifteen hundred housed have burned.  That’s fifteen hundred families who are going to begin a descent into a nightmare once the fires are out and the cameras turn off and everyone goes home.

Then those poor people are going to feel like every nerve ending in their bodies have been scraped with sandpaper, salted down and dosed with hot pepper sauce.  And they will be grinning like idiots during the whole thing because they won’t know what else to do.

1 Comment | news, Random, Self realization, Thoughts, True Story, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
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Court Ordered Child Abuse

October 4, 2007

I watched the news today and saw a story about a foster child being sent into court ordered risk of child abuse.  I have first hand experience with exactly this issue.  It is both astonishing and sickening how many people will blindly send a defenceless child into danger simply because the letter of the law says to do so.  It sounds eerily similar to the Nazi’s claiming that they were only following orders. 

In the case of the foster child, he is 2 years old and has lived with the foster parents virtually his entire life.  His parents have lost all parental rights and the foster parents want to adopt him.  The birth father, a convicted pedophile who is a Mexican national, stated in court that when released from prison he intends to return to Mexico to live with his mother.  His birth mother never showed up for the hearing. 

However, before the foster parents can adopt him the state must try to find a blood relative who is willing to take him.  After a 2 year search, the mother of the pedophile finally agreeed to take the child.  Yes, this is the same woman that the pedophile father will be living with when he gets out of prison.  In another country.  Where the United States, the birth country of this 2 year old child, will have no jurisdiction.  And the state is actually defending their position of sending this AMERICAN child there and not letting him be adopted here by the only family he has ever known. 

He will be taken away from the only parents he has ever known and sent to a country he has never seen to live with people he doesn’t know, who speak a language he doesn’t understand.  And why are they even thinking about doing this?  Because the stated goal of Social Services Departments in this country is to keep families together.  NOT……I repeat NOT the welfare of children.  Look it up.

If this isn’t a case of court ordered child abuse I’ll kiss your ass on the courthouse square at high noon.

Did you know that if you have a child crossing a county line for visitation and they are abused, if you do not see the abuse yourself, and there is no physical proof of abuse, you cannot report it in your county?  Because YOUR county doesn’t have jurisdiction in any other county.  Think about that for a second.  This means that you have to literally stand outside the windows on the sidewalk peeking in and witness the abuse yourself in order to report your child being abused in another county.  Scary isn’t it?

Can you imagine what it would be like for a child to be sent into another country?  No offense to Mexico, I happen to love that country.  The fact that it’s another country just makes it exponentially more likely that he’ll be lost.   

We wonder why people are so much more violent than they were in the past.  It isn’t the availability of guns.  It isn’t violence in movies and on TV.  (although it might have something to do with the JackAss movies and Bam, but that’s another blog)  It isn’t even drugs.  For the most part those things are all symptoms and tools.  Until children are big enough to DO the things that catch our attention, we allow the most atrocious things to happen to them and we hide behind the letter of the law like that makes it alright.

It took My Dearest Husband and I years of anguish and pain, along with the help of an incredibly wonderful counselor who was willing to actually DO something, to finally get our daughter out of a sentence of court ordered child abuse.  And now we are seeing all the unfortunate effects of the time she spent in that hell.  She will never be who she could have been if there had been more people like her counselor.  She will never be the happy, light hearted little munchkin she was the first time I saw her.  With alot of hard work, she CAN be a fantastic, wonderful, caring, happy woman.  Unfortunately, she will have to fight a fight she had no business having to fight.  She should have been protected.  She wasn’t.  She was tossed under the wheels of the bus by the Social Services system who believes that the law is more important than the well being of children and that blood is more meaningful than love to a child.

What the hell are we thinking?

3 Comments | Abuse, America, Blog, Blogging, Blogroll, Child Abuse, Children, Court, Crazy, Daily Life, Family, Guilty, Help, Home, Kids, Law, Legal, life, Random, Reminiscences, Rights, Seeing Red, Teenagers, Thoughts, Trial, True Story, Uncategorized, Whining | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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Random Thoughts October 3, 2007

October 4, 2007

Life is perception.  How we perceive an event is our reality of it.  One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor.  One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.  What you perceive as meaningless, someone else might perceive as the most meaningful thing in their life.  Pay attention to how those important to you perceive the events in your lives.  It counts.

Inaction is an action all by itself.  It indicates indifference on a massive scale. 

Why in the hell would anyone in this country with even ONE functioning brain cell think that Hillary Clinton would make a good president?  This is a woman whose self esteem is so low that she stayed with a man who cheated on her in front of the entire world on more than one occasion.  This can only mean one thing:  He will pay in front of the entire world, and he will pay big!  So, let’s put her in the White House?????  Is she planning on giving her VP a BJ on TV during a State of the Nation Address?  (Do you think I used enough acronyms in that sentence?)  Women who stick around after being treated that way have one thing in mind: revenge.  If Bill is smart (I know, I know, but it’s only a figure of speech) he would do something searingly outrageous and destroy her chances.  It might save his life.  And speaking as a woman myself, I can tell you this: Hillary remembers every one of you who have screwed her over.  You might not even be aware that you did. *see paragraph one*  And you will not get away unscathed either.  Kenneth Star, I’m especially talking to YOU!  She will smile for the cameras while she is listening in her earpiece to them tell her that the “package” has been deposited.  That will be you in the East River wearing a pair of cement overshoes, going to sleep with the fishes.  But only after she has caused them to make you scream like a girl.  Think about it guys.  Women are by far more vicious than men will ever be.  And we never forget a slight.  We certainly never forgive one.  Putting Hillary Clinton in the White House is like dressing up Brittney Spears and putting HER in the White House.  Sounds good, don’t it?

I wonder if the people that Blackwater were hired to guard and protect in Iraq want them gone?  I haven’t heard anyone ask them.  I haven’t heard any of them say.  I would love to hear the answer to those questions.  I also wonder who it was that Blackwater had with them at the time of the last big incident that caused all this hooohaaa.  I hate magicians because I feel like misdirection is inherently dishonest.  So this last big deal over Blackwater makes me wonder who was there and why all the fingers are pointing in so many different directions, but no one is saying who was with them. 

Why are children always at their most obnoxious when my head hurts?#$%^&*

What parents say and what kids hear are two completely different things.  example: Me-“Hi Honey, how was your day?”

Them-“Why R U gettin all up in my KoolAid?”  That wasn’t a good exchange at all was it?  We had no exchange of information, no exchange of pleasantries at all.  That’s because what they hear is not what we said.

Me-how was your day       translation:  What did you do that was wrong or that I’m going to get a call from your school about before the day is through?

No wonder the response is so vehement!  I have no solution for this distortion as yet, however I am working on it and as soon as I perfect the formula, I will put it on a paid programming commercial at 4:45am and you too can have it for 6 easy payments of JUST $19.95 plus shipping and handling! 

When we were kids our dad used to wake us up every morning and whip us before he went to work.  He did this because he knew that before he got home that night we would have done something to deserve it.  He was right.  I’m thinking about reviving that old tradition.  Either that, or take up drinking.  I’m not really sure which way I’m going to go yet.  I’m leaning towards the whipping, but I’m not sure I could stand all that whining and crying.  But after the first time or two, I’d probably cowboy up and stop doing that.  On the other hand, drinking would be so much less work for me.  *sigh*  decisions, decisions

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