Where do I start? Haven’t been trying to blog too much lately. I have left a few messages on a few blogs and I have receive some great responses. I really love blogstream and all the people I have met here. I have often said that if people got to know others, I mean really know them, they would be more tolerant and understanding of each other and maybe not so cruel, as some people can be. But anyway, I ain’t trying to bitch or complain, cuz the truth is I be getting mad love and respect from everyone on the stream and I want to make sure and give thanks to all those who took the time to reach out and send me some good vibes, cuz Goddess knows I needed it. I was feeling kinda low in my mind, but I didn’t want to lay that trip out on the web here. But I do know that you guys are out there for me and I appreciate it so much. Things have been so stressed for me. After trying for over a month to get my Mom’s furnace running, we got it done and all a-ok the day before Thanksgiving! We had much to be thankful for. My Mother lives next door to me in a brick ranch and there are also a couple of friends of mine, a guy and girl, who are boy-friend and girl-friend They are both 21 years old and very good kids. They are simply angels sent from heaven. I don’t know what I would do without them. I first met them about 4 years ago. Ashlyn and Chris would drive our friend Ken around in his brand new pick-up truck so he could get fucked up. They would bring him out to the house and sometimes he and Brian would play the card game, Magic the Gathering or maybe drink some beers and listen to some kick ass tunes. Ken died of a drug overdose in Dec. 2002. That night he wasn’t hanging with Ashlyn and Chris. Maybe if he was he would be alive today, I don’t know. I do know we all miss him very, very much. He was always pushing his limits just like my son did. I just didn’t know how bad he was. I mean after being with us and going through us losing Aaron, you’d think he would know better. I guess he did and he was just a rather tortured soul after all. I don’t think he ever knew how much and how many people loved him. I think the times in his life when there wasn’t much love coming his way took a toll on him that he could never seem to get past. I can kinda relate to that demon. But anyway, when he died, not only was I missing him but I didn’t know how to get in touch with Ashlyn and Chris, so I was afraid I might not get to hang out with them again. In Jan. 2003, Ashlyn calls to tell me her Mother can’t let her and Chris stay at her place any more, not enough room, sleep patterns were all off or whatever. So I said my Mom’s basement is free. It’s not real pretty but it does have a bedroom and a bathroom in it with heat too and I figured they could use Mom’s kitchen to cook. I told them I wouldn’t charge them any rent if they could help out around the house, keep it clean and maybe help Mom with some cooking or something. Well, right after they moved in Mom ended up in the hospital with several small strokes. She spent a month in a nursing home and then she came home. Every since then she has her good days and her bad days. Some days she is very hard to talk to. She seems to always be so mad at me or else she wants to try to make me mad or to stress me out. She used to call me 5 or 6 times a day and now she may call me 1 or 2 during a whole month. She is not herself any more and I doubt that she ever will be. Anyway, we had a nice thanksgiving and all but of course the turkey made us all so sleepy, we failed to wash the dishes or take needed showers. Then on Friday, we all get up and are getting ourselves ready to take showers and wash those dishes when we find out we got no water! I can’t call anyone until Monday morning, so Sunday I stayed up all night so I could be up to make phone calls to plumbers. Damn plumbers. I called 3 plumbers and only got a message machine, which I didn’t think would help that much. I called 3 other plumbers and they all said we don’t work on wells! But you can call James Walsh or Welch or something like that. I called him and got his wife who gives me his pager no. to call. Dude doesn’t call back. But one of the plumbers with the message machine called and said he would look at it tomorrow, he would call by 9:30 am and touch base with me to let me know what time he might be able to come out. So Monday night I stay up all night again so be able to get the phone call and guess what, he never called. I went to bed, I couldn’t take any more. While I was asleep, Brian got on the phone and got a hold of James. I felt better when I got up but things still were not fixed. James had said he would call Wednesday morning before he came out. So I stayed up all night again. At 7:26 am, the first guy calls. I could tell from his attitude he really didn’t want the work. He acted like he already knew I had called others, so what if I did, I just needed to get the job done. And then he started saying something about not getting a message from me yesterday and I’m thinking, what? You said you were going to call me, but I didn’t say all that, I just said well, have a nice day and I will call you if things change. I wanted to scream at him and then I wanted to hang up on him, but I didn’t. I sat here and ranted and raved for a few min.s when about 30 min.s later there is a knock at the door. It’s James, the plumber I wanted in the first place. Cool! 30 to 40 min.s and $180 later and we got water!!! Now I am too tired to take a shower but at least I got to brush my teeth. After all that, we were just sitting back chilling some this morning and Brian gets up and goes to the back of the trailer and Jerry, our brown lab runs after him like she always does. Only this time she ran into the wall and then she went down. She was having a seizure. This is the third one she has had that we know of. I hate to see her like this. I love that dog so much, the thought of losing her is hard to bare. Maybe I get a little too attached to my pets, but I can’t help it. We have been keeping an eye out on her all day. She seems to be doing better. We had some medication for the seizures and we gave her that. We will need to get some more or something. I was so tired and wiped out, I went and took a nap for a while. When I got up, I called Ashlyn and she came over and dyed my hair for me and then I went and took that shower! Man, that felt so good. There was some good news in all this, Mom asked to take a bath, a lot of the time we have to work hard to convince her it’s time for one, and then she asked Ashlyn if she could take her to have her hair done and she wanted to buy some boots cause she wants to get out more! Wow, this is such great news. So she went out to Wal-Mart and got her hair shampooed and cut and styled and she got to go do a little shopping. Ashlyn said she seemed to have a nice time and she wants to go out again soon. See, what did I tell you about Chris and Ashlyn being angels? They have worked so hard to take care of me and my Momma and they don’t mind taking her out and all. I am worried and sad about Jerry but I am so happy we got the heat on for my Momma and we got the water back on and now my Momma wants to go out and do some things. She has been going down hill every since Daddy died. I know that what she really wants is to be with her husband but she has to know it is not time yet. Shawn and I still need her in our lives even if she doesn’t want to talk to me much. That doesn’t really matter, I still need her and she still needs me.

Yep, I got those after-Thanksgiving, now what the heck else is broke down around here now, can't wash the big dinner's dishes, can't take a shower, can't even wash my hands off blues! sigh, taking a deep breath now. I don't know what is up but yesterday, out of the blue, the water just guit running, no more water and the kitchen is a mess and I really need a shower!

I have been trying for over a month now to get my Mother's furnance to work, finally like the day before yesterday, we got it all straighten out. The rip-off motherfers that put it in there will not come out and look at it. I bought it from my soon to be Mother-in-Law's X-boyfriend, I say X now but he wasn't an X at the time. So now he won't do anything for her or me. I feel like cussing him out so much but he still rents a room from STBMIL and I don't want to cause any problems for her. He was telling me he would come out and take a look at it, but he never showed up.

I finally got another friend's Father to come out and take a look at it. Found out the ignitor had gone bad and then we thought the thermostat had also gone bad. Shawn looked on line and downloaded a copy of the manual that goes with it, of course I wasn't given one when we bought the thing. Anyway from that he was able to figure out how to wire the thing up, bought a new one for it and all. It still wouldn't work, the furnace would run but not with the thermostat on it. But ol'Shawn just kept on studying the diagrams and he finally got it fixed right.

That was the night before Thanksgiving! I was very thankful. It has been getting very cold around here and I hate knowing that my Mom is sitting next door in her house freezing her ass off. How can that MFer Jeff, sleep at night?

Yea, it starts snowing right after Shawn gets the thing working. So then we have our nice little T-day dinner on thursday and then when we get up on friday...NO WATER in either house, Mom's house or my house! See I live in a small trailer next door to my Mom, my water comes from her house, her well. Yes, I am trailer-trash, I will admit it. I even got a red-neck yard, honest I do and if I ever figger out how to post pictures, I can prove it.

Brian says we should wait until monday and call a pro plumber to come look at things. Man it just guit like to nothing, not even a drip. Can't even wash the dishes so we are eating on paper plates with plastic silverware and plastic cups. Just trying to keep it real. Bummer, I wish I could just sleep until monday morning and then get something done about it. We get one thing fixed and something else goes wrong! A never ending battle.

I got an email from a friend to go to this web site and check this out and well, lets just say, I had to share it with all you guys! It is really cool. Takes a while to download if you are like me and live out in the sticks and can't get any thing but dial-up, oh yea, I can get satelite for like $600! and $60 a month! I am just happy to have what I have, it's my son who wants it faster. Anyway, I don't know how to put in a link so here is the address:

http://media.putfile.com/wizardsofwinter-sm

I hope you all can get this, it is so cool.

Well now, let’s see. We had a nice Thanksgiving dinner. Shawn cooked up a nice 18 lber, I peeled up a mess of potatoes, and Shawn cooked them and some green beans with little potatoes and some stove top stuffing. He mashed the potatoes. Then afterward, he baked up a couple of pumpkin pies. It was delicious and we are all stuffed like the proverbial Thanksgiving turkey. I have received several nice phone calls wishing us a Happy Thanksgiving. Bobs, LG, Rorey, Mother-in-Law, Zac from jail all called. Danelle, David, Amanda, and Chris all came by for visits. It was nice to see them all and nice to hear from the others. I got lots of good wishes from all my friends on the Blogstream.
I invited my Mother-in-Law to come and have dinner with us but she wasn’t feeling up to it and it is ball-freezing cold out side, so I dpn’t blame her. ‘Cause I ain’t going out there if I don’t have to. I’ve just been sitting here all day watching Comedy Central for codes. Shawn wants to win one of those X-Box 360 and you have to enter the codes from off the TV to enter into the drawing for one. They are giving away like 48 of them plus some other prizes as well. So I’ve been watching for clues and playing Texas Hold-em for fun, I don’t like to play with real money or nothing. Too much pressure on me, I can’t handle it, besides, I suck. Got no luck at all. Oh well, I am lucky at love and I am so glad for that. It’s better than being lucky in cards, I think. Anyway, other than that, it was a pretty quiet day. Shawn and Brian got into a little fight yesterday, which they both have been trying to make it worse every since. I asked Brian to please not wake me up today with a bunch of yelling and screaming and cussing, so he hasn’t been speaking to Shawn and Shawn ain’t saying much to him either. I know the problem is still there but I really don’t know what I can do about it. Shawn is a damn teenager and he thinks he knows everything and he can be very judgmental about how we live our lives and the things we like to do. I am very happy doing just what I am doing and so is Brian. I have no problem with what Brian does. He is here at home most of the time. He helps take care of me 24/7. He and Shawn take turns washing the dishes but Brian isn’t much of a cook so he doesn’t cook most of the dinners that we eat. Brian works whenever his Dad needs him at his hardware store, but mostly he takes care of me. Fixes me drinks and breakfasts and lunch and when we need to go grocery shopping or if I need stamps or anything, pills or whatever and if I need to go to the Dr. Or something he drives me and helps me with my scooter. Man, what a pain that thing can be. We have a bus that has a handicap lift on it, it is wonderful but right now it is not on the road. No insurance, no tags, no inspection sticker, no county sticker and it needs a new windshield installed. We had to put two in it last year. The first one was because it was cracked when we bought it and then last summer, on my birthday, the emergency brake failed with me in the back and it rolled into a tree. It was really fucked up. Jerry came up off her feet and hit the steering wheel and when she came down, she freaked and thought, I am getting out of here...out the side window, which was open, she went. I couldn’t get her to come back into the bus and then she ran off. I was so scared we were going to lose her. I didn’t know if she was hurt or anything. It’s just like when you are somewhere and your kid wanders off and you can’t find them, takes years off your life, you know. We looked everywhere for her for over an hour. Then our friend, Charlie found her down in the woods, near the river. Jerry hates water and will not go into it, so there she was all freaked out. She came back to the bus, and we checked her out and she was ok. The bus was not. We spent most of the rest of our summer on the road, trying to get the thing fixed so we could come home. Well we finally got it fixed enough to get her home. The accident messed up the front of the bus right much. It was fiberglass, so they tried to fix that some, got the head light in and the windshield in. It has a split windshield and when they put it in the right side cracked again. That’s why we are getting another windshield again. I hope we can get it back on the road for next summer. I love my bus, so much room and that lift really makes it rock. I got tapestries hanging up over all the windows for privacy and to keep the sun out when we are sleeping. It used to be one of those short, white handicap city buses. We also have a van, a Dodge Ram Van, named Godzilla. We got her back in 1998 from Brian’s Dad so we could go on tour with Phish. Brian’s friend, Ricky, had tickets to all their shows that summer, so he loaned us the money to get it and when Brian’s insurance money came in we paid him back. Godzilla is so cool. She needs a lot of body work, paint job, new side runners, new roof would be nice but that’s about it. Oh and the inside needs carpeting and I would like to put a better bed in the back and maybe some cabinets and maybe an xm radio too. But the engine runs great and we try to keep her maintenanced when she needs it and whenever anything breaks on her we usually fix her with new parts. She has never let me down, when she has broken down, she has always managed to do it somewhere where we have everything we need, both to get her going again and for our own needs. She is covered in hippy stickers. My son hates it. He is not a hippy like Brian and I are. We have a car too. It’s a 1988 Lincoln Continental. We bought this car from Brian’s Dad too right after the transmission went out on the Oldsmobile. And guess what? The transmission went out on the Lincoln right after we bought it! Ain’t life grand, yes it is.
Anyway, we have almost everything we could ever need, but still Shawn is not satisfied. I don’t know, he’s just never happy with just what he has. I don’t know whether to dread the day he turns 18 or wish he would hurry up and turn. So close and yet so far away...68 days to go. I think he has some nerve anyway. I mean Shawn is 17 and he rarely leaves the house. He spends most of his time in his bed room playing his x-box and his guitar. He is real good about getting me stuff and about cooking dinners and all. I guess he needs to go out and get a job soon. Why can’t money just grow on trees out in the backyard and why can’t Shawn be happy for me?

I have sad news to report. One of my goldfish, Midnight, the little black one with little gold flecks on his sides, passed away earlier today. I'm very sad about it. We had noticed a couple of days ago that his back fins were split apart and he seemed to have a hard time swimming. When we first got him, one of his side fins was split. We thought perhaps he was deformed and that it was no big deal. A few weeks later, we saw that his fin was no longer split. It healed up nicely. From then on he was a happy little camper, until a couple of days ago and now he is gone. Brian doesn't know about it yet, he will be very sad too. Shawn says what do you want to do with the body, throw him in the trash? But I said I would like to have a decent burial for him. Shawn's like but it's cold outside right now. So I said find a little box to put him in and we can bury him tomorrow when it is a little warmer out. Shawn's says it's just a fish, but I said, yea, and he has a name, Midnight! I asked him did his fish have names, he said no. Shawn has a corn snake he hasn't named yet either. So Midnight gets a real burial tomorrow. He's laying in state inside of a Pop Tart box for now, somewhere safe from cats and dogs and from getting eaten. I don't know what happened to Midnight, but I know he had a happy life here with us and he will always be remembered and missed. Goodbye for now sweet little Midnight, have fun in that big gold fishbowl in the sky, little buddy!