Growing Up Years

 This is what our stove looked like back in my growing-up days.  It isn't an actual picture of our stove.  I found this on the Internet.  It's the same exact one, though.  Ours was not in this good condition.

Below is my grandma.  That's her house in the background.  We loved going to Grandma's house.  It always smelled like chocolate chip cupcakes in her kitchen, and the place was warm and inviting.  

Below is our Christmas tree from back-in-the-day.  We always had a real tree.  The smells of Christmas were phenomenal back then.  

Below is a photo of 5-year old me with two of my older sisters.  I remember those dresses.  Soft, girly dresses.  We didn't have much, yet we were so very rich.  My sister has requested I write a memoir that includes our growing-up years.  I'm trying, and maybe once the holiday buzz is over ...  like maybe next week ...  I can resume.  

It will likely be boring to most.  But to me, to us, it will be fun. 

TRUTH or DARE

So I've started writing my next book.  Though it is 'based' on the true story of my mom's life, and mine too, it is FICTIONAL.  So readers will not know truth from fiction.  Haha!  Should name it TRUTH OR DARE.  

  I've been wanting to write my 'memoirs' but lets face it.  They would be quite boring to most readers.  So I will put my imagination to work and try and make the read more interesting.  Seriously, it's fun.  

The title so far is MY BLUE HEAVEN.  I've finished the first chapter but I have a long way to go.  It keeps my mind occupied and keeps me busy.  Meanwhile, my latest, BLINK is currently in production and will be an audiobook within the next month or so.  Excited!

Seventeen year-old Me:

 

An Army of Ants

Okay, so I'm not the best writer in the world. 

 I realize that as I go over my 'memoir' again and again.  I'm always changing it to make it better.  

My big reason for writing "Gracie's Diary" is for Gary, and what he's been through.  It's a story that needs to be told. AND> to share what I have learned in the past ten years about divorce and it's impact on our children.  

It will be published.  Though I don't expect it to be a best seller.  Still....  it's my story.  

See the ants on the floor below?

Yep.  We have ants. 

And now I'd like to share an excerpt of 

Chapter Nine  - The Money Pit.

Finally, peace swept over the Phillip household and April surprised us with scorching hot temperatures.  Windows were opened and fresh spring air circulated as I wiped down the living room walls.  I stopped abruptly to check on Gracie after her vexatious barks led me to believe there might be something alive in our bedroom walk-in closet.

     “What is it, girl?” I asked following her angry barks.  I found her agitated and standing erect, looking straight ahead into a dark corner of the closet.  After turning on the light, I pulled back the clothes hanging in front of me, and grabbed her collar.  “It’s too dark girl, I don’t see anything.  Let’s go get a flashlight.”  Seconds later I was back with light in hand and without the dog. I pulled back the clothes and shined the light into the blackness, keeping my right foot close to the door in case I had to make a run for it.

    “Oh my gosh!” I screamed.  “No!”

     I picked up my cell and called Gary whom was grocery shopping at Wal-Mart, a chore he volunteered to do in order to keep me from spending too much money. 

     “We have a huge problem!” I said.

     “What now?”    

     “You know the electrical outlet in our closet?” I said, my hands shaking.

     “Yeah, what about it?”   

     “Well, there are a billion ants around it, in it, on it, covering the wall, and crawling through the carpet.”   

     “I’ll get some ant traps while I’m here,” he said sounding way too calm.

     “We need to call Terminix.”  I said. 

     “We have bug spray,” he said.  “I’ll spray them.”

     “We’re calling Terminix!”  

     Like the battles with my teenagers, the ones fought with my husband were carefully thought out as well.  This was an argument that I had no intention of losing.

     “Oh, brother!  How much is that going to cost?” He asked.

     “I have no clue, but I have their number right here…” I said thumbing through the yellow pages.

     “I’m not paying hundreds of dollars for some guy to come in and spray stuff around when I can do the same job with a few ant traps and a couple bucks...” he said.

      The white Terminix truck pulled onto our dirt road the next day and a guy with my husbands exact first and second name,Gary Michael, sprayed our house inside and out.  He introduced us to an army of ants marching single file up the house, all heading for my bedroom closet.  I’m not sure what the attraction was, but I wasn’t about to spend my free time trying to get into the mind of an ant.  I just wanted them gone.  Terminix promised to rid our house of unwanted bugs.  They did a wonderful job and it was money well spent.  Gary wrote out the check.

Dear Diary,

My new mom and dad seem to have issues.  They are so up and down with their emotions.  One minute I’m cuddling on the couch with one of them thinking, life doesn’t get any better… the next they’re telling me I’m one bad pup!  

I’ve grown attached to them in spite of their abusive behavior.  Mom opened the door one day and insisted I go outside right in the middle of a downpour.  I just turned right around and said, ‘I’m not going out there.  It’s raining to beat the band.’  She pushed me out into the pouring rain anyway, and I came back inside all damp and cold and on the verge of being sick.

 And then there was the time I was playing keep-away with her, (I love that game) and we were playing with dad’s good sock.   She’s not a very good sport though… when I finally surrendered, she smacked my butt. 

Oh, and one more thing… who can forget the day everyone was mad at me, including Lindsey, and I spent the day in my cage.  I needed something to chew on, so I went for a shiny hard thing she had in her purse. Ahhh, it felt so good.  I’m still cutting teeth, you know!  It was for medicinal purposes. I must say… these people don’t have much compassion for a dog in pain.  It’s all about them.

Lately the sun has been shining and I feel

g-o-o-d!  There’s a dog that lives above us named Poncho.  He is one hot Shiatsu!  He liked me at first, I could tell, but then one day Mom took me to see Dr. Fox and a girl there put a needle in me and after I slept for a long time I woke up and my belly hurt.  I was groggy for days.  After that Poncho had attitude, glancing down at me when I was in the yard, then slinking back into his own house… playing hard to get.  My mom said it was ‘cause I was fixed.  But I seem more broken if you ask me.  Mom say’s Poncho’s my boyfriend.  I’m not exactly sure what that is, but when she says, ‘Gracie, there’s your boyfriend,’ I run to the window to look and by golly there he is standing up on the hill acting like he doesn’t care. 

Oh… and let me tell you about today!  Whoa, what a rush!  Bugs everywhere!  Then some guy came to our house with a big metal bottle hanging off his shoulder.  They locked me in my cage for the longest time and the guy invaded our house, he did.  I barked myself hoarse.  It sure smells funny in here now…

I told Gracie.  Don't expect much.  Mommy isn't the best writer in the world.

But Gracie has her paws crossed.

Divorce is Hard On Children

My weeks vacation time is almost over.  So what have I been doing with my time off, you say?
Well...  it started off with my bad back.  I was in agony for the first couple of days so that doesn't even count.

My main purpose for this week off was to work on my memoir and get it close to being finished.  Every day I lounged around with no makeup on  and and still in my pj's at noon, it was heavenly.

For those of you who don't know, my hubby Gary has been a victim of parental alienation and was drug through the most horrible four years worth of hell imaginable....  And I have been working on a book for almost that long.

Divorce is hard on children, but when one goes through what his daughter Athena went through - this is child abuse.    My  book is about divorce and it's sting on our children.  It's about mistakes made and lessons learned.  The Title: Gracie's Diary, A Memoir.  It is 76,000 + words.

My book will be published.  It may not be a best seller,  but it's the only thing I have to offer my hubby that even comes close to healing some of the hurt.  I've worked on it for the past 3+ years because after watching what was going on and not being able to help,  I needed to have some kind of an outlet.

 Through writing this book, I've discovered why divorce is wrong (in most cases)... including my own.    This book tells it like it is.

Enjoy a random excerpt:

Chapter Nine

How Much Is That Going to Cost?

     Gracie had been a member of our family for over six months and still didn’t get the house-training thing.  When she had to go, she mostly did it on the floor.  Knowing it was something that caused me to go into a soft rage, she started doing it secretly.  Random yellow spots were showing up mysteriously on the white carpet under the coffee table and behind the chairs in corners.  Every time we discovered a new stain Gary reminded me of the cost of the carpet.  

      The Money Pit with Tom Hanks and Shelley Long was one of my favorite comedies of all time.  But what I wasn’t finding amusing was the connection we were starting to make with that movie, as we began to fix what was broken in our new bargain home. 

     One of Gary’s biggest peeves was the mindless electrical wiring throughout the house and into the basement, apparently one of those West Virginia specials.  The kitchen switches turned the basement lights on and the living room switch turned the kitchen light on. After all this time we weren’t quite sure what the basement switches were for.  It was a real mess, and would have to be rewired.  Gary’s words were sounding like a broken record.   “I wonder how much all this is going to cost…”

      I tossed my right foot over the gate that separated the kitchen and living room, careful not to spill my hot tea, and down I went. You’d think Gracie would be used to us falling all over the place, but away she ran cowering into her cage in the far side of the kitchen.

     “Ouch!”  I muttered.  Trying to keep from crying, and pulling myself up off the floor, I bit my lip and said softly, “Darn gate.”  After locking Gracie in her cage I started to clean up the shattered glass and tea that had made its way throughout two thirds of the kitchen and part of the living room.  Gary walked out from the bedroom slowly with his hands in his pockets.

    “Are you okay?” he asked.

    “I’m fine.” 

    “You need to be more careful.”

    “Whatever.”

     Both of us were collecting bruises.   From the made-for-midgets carport to the makeshift gate that kept Gracie from destroying the house, our home had become a danger zone. 

     Early March winds lashed across the West Virginia hills causing spotted electrical outages around town. We were lucky that ours stayed on, but not so lucky when green shingles blew off the roof, scattering across the front yard, and rain was in the not too distant forecast.

     It seemed that no one was excited to tackle work in this wild and wonderful state, particularly in our location.  Whatever the case, good help was hard to find.  Gary made a few phone calls, then headed for the roof to put up a temporary covering before the bad weather hit.  He spent most of the night and early morning hours working through the howling winds and fierce raindrops, and when he finished, a blue tarp promised temporary safety from the nasty weather.  After four failed attempts at getting a roofer in, we were able to schedule one for three weeks.  We hoped the tarp would hold until then.   

     We had barely enough time to ask “What next?” when the heavy rains came and washed mounds of water and dirt down the hill and onto our cement porch. 

I Love To Read

I love to read.  I have a list of 'great books' in my head, one's that I couldn't put down- usually they're memoirs.  One of those books was 'The Glass Castle."

Sharon has written a series of blogs, a type of mini-memoir of her adventures 'back to the land' that are such a good read.  I've been 'between' books  for quite some time and can't seem to find anything I'm interested in reading.  These posts wet my appetite again for a good book... guess I'll have to be searching...
Be sure and check out Sharon's blog if you haven't already.