Changes.

I cannot believe March 27th was my last blog post. I used to keep up with my blog fairly often, but things have been crazy busy with me and mine.

Things have changed so much since my last blog post that I haven't had a proper and sufficient amount of time to adjust to everything. Before I share all of the events and happenings in my life...

And an early Happy Fourth of July! Here are some fireworks for you!

Happy Birthday America!

Time is really flying by at an alarming rate! I wish there was a way to slow it down. One minute it was my birthday, and the next it's July!

I can't believe it's July 4th weekend!

I'm exhausted and unable to focus today so I thought I'd compose a blog post.

This is how I feel 99% of the time.

Other than the trip to Washington DC and the brief visit to Delaware to see my mother and Arlene, March was fairly uneventful, so we'll move on to April. In April, I celebrated my 3?th birthday. My birthday also fell on Easter Sunday this year. That hasn't happened since my ninth year, so it was pretty cool. We didn't do anything special. I was exhausted, which is the story of my life. I ended up taking a nap around 6:30 PM. I told Doug not to wake me until 8:30 PM. The plan was to wake up, eat something, have a glass of Moscato, and watch a movie. Unfortunately several serious acts of drama occurred, which I do not feel like rehashing. They didn't involve us directly, but there were phone calls and text messages, so I didn't get to do what I wanted to do until after midnight. The result of one act of drama ended up changing my life and Doug's entirely.

Five days after I turned a year older, Doug and I became parents to a twenty year old young man. I know some of you are thinking maybe I got knocked up in high school and gave the baby up for adoption, and the kid tracked me down, but that's not the case.

We had planned to wait a little longer to become parents...

We've been involved in this boy's life since he was seven, and his mother has referred to us as his honorary parents. Now we're full time honorary parents. It's a bit of a long story, but it's my blog, and therefore I'm just going to be honest.

We have been supporting our honorary son since late February/early March. This young man's stepfather was starving him and verbally abusing him because he couldn't find a job.

 

The stepfather is a very sucky person.

The kid had a job that offered sporadic hours, but this greedy stepfather wanted money, and the boy was trying. I took him to put in applications, and to interviews over the past three years. I also redid his resume for him right before he graduated high school. This economy is bad. When I was job hunting, I had one interview in three years! That's why I started writing full time. I couldn't find a thing, even with my knowledge and experience. I know it's not the kid's fault. His stepfather, who desperately wanted him to get a job, denied him internet access. Most potential employers require potential employees to fill out an online application. This man took away my honorary son's ability to search for and to apply for jobs, yet he called him a lazy freeloader. When our honorary son stayed with us to watch our cats while we were in DC, he used our internet to apply for jobs. Does that sound like a lazy freeloader?

Like it's that easy...

Our honorary son had nowhere to go. His mother isn't in a position to take him in. After my year and a half of being homeless, I wasn't about to let that happen to him, so Doug and I agreed to taking him in. At the time, we lived in a three room cottage, which was a kitchen, a living room, a bedroom, and a loo, and it immediately turned into a three room cottage, which was a kitchen, a bedroom, a bedroom, and a loo. Since I didn't have an actual office outside of our bedroom, I could no longer work on my book series or Insomnia, which was supposed to be released on May 31st.

At this point, I was calling everyone I could think of to help him find a job and a place of his own, but the government is useless and offered absolutely no help. They would have just sent him to the city mission. I've been to a city mission before. Thankfully I lived in a small town, and there was no one else there, so I didn't have to worry about anyone bothering me or my stuff. I've heard stories about the city mission here in the city where I currently reside from people who stayed there. Other residents stole their things, and they had curfews, and lousy food. Doug and I couldn't let our honorary son go there. So our family grew, which meant we would have to find a bigger house.

House hunting was not as successful as I expected it to be. Doug and I discussed how much rent we wanted to pay and the search was on. We found many prospective homes. One of them was perfect, but they only accepted one pet, and I wasn't about to choose who would go, Trinity or Moo Bear, so that was out. Many of the places we called did not accept pets, so we looked into purchasing a home. I didn't really want to buy a house here, because we don't plan on living in this state for the rest of our lives. I want to move closer to my family, but at the time, it looked like we were going to have to purchase a house in order to keep our cats. Moo Bear has been with me all but six months of his life. He's 16 and a half years old. He's on Enalapril (beta blocker) and Furosemide (diuretic). Trinity will be eight years old next month. I couldn't just get rid of them. They're not my pets. They're family.

I looked on Zillow for houses. I did look at houses for rent first, but that was a joke and a half. We found four houses that were in our price range, one that wasn't, and I contacted real estate agent on a house that Doug and I thought was perfect. It was in our price range, and it was two stories, had three bedrooms, and one and a half baths. I just wanted to LOOK AT the house, but the real estate agent insisted that I call some woman at the bank for financing information. I argued with her for ten minutes, telling her that I wanted to look at the house first before I made a decision about purchasing it. If it was falling apart or full of vermin, my answer was obviously going to be no, but she reiterated that I had to call the woman at the bank to discuss financing, and I told her that this wasn't going to work and hung up on her. Buying a house was now on our Anti-Bucket list. (It rhymes with bucket, I can tell you that.)

Just when I thought we were going to be crowded into a small cottage for the rest of our lives and that my career as an author was over...

Someone who had a house for rent that we had contacted actually contacted us. As if that wasn't awesome enough, pets were accepted! Doug and I met the landlord to look at the house. At first, we weren't sure it was going to work. It had been listed as a four bedroom, one and a half bath, but all we saw were two bedrooms and one bath, until the landlord said, "Check out the downstairs." We went down the steps and found the other two bedrooms and the half bath. We immediately decided to take it, which was a good idea, since only one other potential landlord contacted us. When we get everything unpacked, I'll post a blog with pictures. I have some of my new office, but they're on my phone and I'm on my lappy.

I was able to return to work once my office was set up. I'm happy to announce that Insomnia will be released Fall of 2015! I was so depressed and felt like I was dying during the time I was unable to work. Only other authors/writers would understand why. During the two and a half months I was unable to work, I learned something, or perhaps I presumed it rather than learned it. Everyone needs to have a purpose. As long as we have a purpose, we will wake up and see another day. I survived, but I wasn't a happy person. How I didn't just yell and scream at everyone with whom I interacted is beyond me.

I was so happy to get back to work!

So aside from becoming a parent and moving to a new and bigger house, there are other changes that resulted from having our honorary son coming to live with us. He's severely allergic to peanuts, which means I can't have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and plain chips for dinner. Comfort food is a staple during the warm months for me, because I have Reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder. I get depressed during spring and summer. Nobody takes that seriously, because "that's not possible." Come and ambulate in my shoes and you'll see I'm being honest. Also, I'm never alone, which is good, because if I have a migraine and can't get out of bed, I have someone who can help me and look after me while Doug's at work. If a giant wasp or other scary insect shows up, instead of shutting off the room and leaving to go panic in a safe room, I have someone who can defeat it for me. But the best part of being a parent to my honorary son is that I have someone who loves me and thinks I'm awesome, even though I know I'm nowhere near as awesome as he thinks I am. (When he meets my mother, I'll become chopped liver. He doesn't believe me, but it's true.)

In other news...

We've had a few problems with the new house. For starters, I hate, abhor, and detest the kitchen. It's deplorable. It's just an ugly color, and it's about as small as the kitchen was in the cottage, only slightly longer. The light fixture needs repaired in there, but the handy man just had surgery, so Doug's probably going to have to do it himself. We also haven't set up the kitchen because the landlord gave us two fridges that didn't work properly. He finally broke down and got a new one. The former tenants took the fridge and stove when they vacated the premises.

The deck is unsafe for anyone to step on. The holes between the boards are large enough for me to simply slip through. The former tenants of the house trashed it, but the deck got the worst of it. They had animals tied up out there, and the dog house and leashes and stuff like that are still on the deck, but it's not safe for anyone to go remove those things. Once those things get repaired, all will be right with the world. Until then...

The good news is that the washer and dryer are now in a separate room! They were in the cottage kitchen before. Also, we have a dining room! I love dining rooms. There are some people who don't, but I like the idea of the dining table being in another room by itself. It's not a huge dining room, but there are three of us. That's not all, we have an actual wood burning fireplace! I may be doing a lot of writing in front of a roaring fire this winter. (I can't wait for fall and winter now!) We'll have to hire a chimney sweep to make sure it's cleaned and usable. It's difficult to say whether or not the former tenants trashed it. Stockings can be hung by the chimney this coming Christmas! (And not that I believe in Santa, but now he can actually come down the chimney and deliver gifts! *LOL*)

Not only did the space and the fireplace entice Doug, we also have our own carport and driveway! When we lived at the cottage, we had to fight for parking. Most of the time we lost, so we would have to walk a long way from the car to the cottage. It got ridiculous. We also had neighbors who refused to use their driveway. They would park one of their cars on the street and they would leave nasty notes on our car telling us that we had no right to park there when it was a public street! *smh* Thankfully I never found any of the notes, or I would have marched over there and it would not have been pretty. I also would have called the police and asked them to please tell our hateful neighbors that it's a public street and anyone with a car could park there.

I'm starting to fall in love with the house. The problem is that I loved the cottage so much that I don't know if I can give this house the love it deserves. Still, it's nice to have space, a fireplace, a dining room, an office, and our own carport and driveway. I'm not complaining. It's just that the cottage was where I published Dormiveglia, my first published book. I had hoped it would become my office where I would go and write when Doug and I visited family here, once we move somewhere else. Our landlady was awesome too. She's in her nineties and as sharp as a tack! (I want to be like that when I'm her age!) I should give my new landlord a chance. I don't know him yet. I'm just not much of a nonfictional people person.

Now that I'm finished talking about the huge changes in our lives, I need to stop and share some sad events that have taken place along the way.

On Good Friday (April 3rd), Doug's aunt (my aunt-in-law) Jo Kimble passed away. She was 86 years old. I'm not exactly sure of her cause of death, but she simply got sick and died. She still had her wits about her, which was awesome. I've seen and heard of too many people dying from dementia, and I hate it! I could listen to Jo talk all day. She had this amazing life. She got to see the world change dramatically before her very eyes as she grew up. She got to witness the birth of technology. Jo is with her husband George now, and while I'm thrilled to know that, I'm also still sad. She left her possessions to her family in her will, including me and Doug. She left us her van. We were not expecting that. I was under the impression that she was going to sell it, but we now have her van. I have a difficult time thinking about it as our van. To me, it's still her van. I cried the first time I drove it. While I'm thankful that we have a second vehicle, I'd rather have her here instead, but I know she's in a better place with her husband.

On May 19th, one of my new found loved ones that Doug and I had the privilege of meeting when we went to Washington DC, Mark Vandersluis passed away. He was 51. We found out that he was battling cancer during our visit. Mark was this amazing person. He was eighties music video cool. He was bright, and colourful, and funny, and intelligent, and random. He was devoted to his wife, his mother-in-law, and his church. I'm so glad I got the chance to meet him. Please pray for his wife, Amie, his mother-in-law, Charlene (he called her Charlie), his step-daughters, and the rest of his family, friends, and loved ones.

Now we'll move on to happier news. Doug and I had the most spectacular weekend last weekend. My niece Zoey, who was born on Doug's birthday last year, turned one this past Saturday! We were able to go to her birthday party and we visited my brother and sister-in-law. We got to spend time with them and our adorable niece and nephew.

Pauly is four now. He's gorgeous, and he's really well behaved too. He reminds me of my brother, but he's starting to look a lot more like my sister-in-law. (This is mostly his facial features.) He has my brother's hands (they're eerily identical), his build, and his facial expressions. And some of the things he does is like going back in time and watching my brother do them all over again. He's such a sweetheart!

Zoey is a lot louder and more opinionated than her big brother. We have no idea who she looks like yet, but she's beautiful. In some pictures, I see my sister-in-law. In others, I see my brother. This will continue to change until she's five or six I'm sure. She's definitely got my brother's face shape and eye colour. The jury is still out on whose nose she inherited. It might be my brother's. (Pauly's nose looks more like my sister-in-law's these days, but when he was smaller, he was an exact replica of my brother.)

While we were there, we went to the pool. The kids had a spectacular time. Doug did too. He would live in the water if he could. He got sunburned despite putting on sunscreen. I surprisingly did not burn, unlike when I went to King's Island water park with Crystal, Amos, and Yolanda, and I put on sunscreen twice and got one of the worst sunburns ever.

It was tough having to leave and go home. We live too far away from each other. I'm hoping one day that will change. Doug's more fortunate in this aspect. The majority of his family lives fifteen to twenty minutes away, including his mother. We're going to have to go back and visit soon, and if we can't get away during the warmer months, there's always October.

I think I've covered all of the events and happenings. A belated Happy Easter, a belated Happy Mother's Day, and a belated Happy Father's Day to my readers. Happy Fourth of July! Have a safe and happy holiday weekend.








Cheers...

It's Been A Long Time...

It's been so long since I posted a blog. I feel like I owe everyone an apology. I'm sure some of you wondered if I was still blogging here. But I'm back, and I'm sorry for being absent for such a long time, and I hope each of you are doing well.

There's not a whole lot of new going on at Chateau De Townsend. We did get a few new things, like a washer and dryer. The dryer was free, courtesy of Aunt Freda and Uncle Bill, and the washer was a very good price. I'm chuffed to bits to be able to do laundry again! It's such a blessing! I'm able to sit on my couch and fold clothes! No more trips to the laundromat!

Doug also bought me a Keurig. We found one at a good price, and I've been enjoying Italian Roast Coffee in my KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON London Flag mug, and my THANK GOD FOR GIRLFRIENDS mug that's pink with high heels on it that Jodi got for me for Christmas! It's such a blessing having a Keurig, too. I like my coffee au lait, and I actually sit and enjoy it, unlike the prepackaged bottles of vanilla frappy I used to drink.

Doug became the same age as me in June.

I'm up to twenty-two books now. I've never had writer's block, but I have writer's tackle. *groan* Sorry. I can't take credit for that. One of my doctor friends came up with the whole "writer's tackle" thing. *lol*

I started a new blog, but I'm not leaving this one. It's a blog composed of short stories that are inspired by dreams...well nightmares I've had. You can check it out by clicking here. The stories are both written in the first person and they are sort of from the horror genre, not supernatural ghosts and vampires, and emo girls who date them, or werewolves, or Frankenstein's monster and his family. They are about real things that could happen. So perhaps realistic horror. *shrugs* I don't know. Read them with caution. That's all I ask.

I've been sick. Story of my life, I know. I went on a trip and brought bronchitis back as a souvenir. I was nice enough to give it to Doug. He's doing much better now, but he was really sick. Unfortunately, I still don't feel well. Again, story of my life. So things around here have looked like this:





I wouldn't use real pics of us sick. That would give people nightmares! *lol*

My father-in-law went into the hospital while I was out of town. He seems to do that a lot. It's almost like he knows! "Hey, Shellye and/or Shellye and Doug are out of town. Time for me to get sick and go to the hospital!" He actually improved for a short period of time. To give you a little background, two days after Father's Day, my father-in-law pulled out his trache. The staff at the nursing home noticed that he was breathing on his own without the trache and the "breathing machine that was apparently not a ventilator". And he lived without it until the third day of my trip. He was talking and everything. I don't know if he ever got to eat by mouth during the time that the trache was out, and I assume that my mother-in-law would have said so if he had, but now the trache and the ventilator are back in place, and he was finally sent to Cornerstone, in St. Mary's Hospital. He's usually at CHH. Unfortunately, he can only stay there until September 1st, and if he's not weaned off of the ventilator, he will have to be shipped to a facility two hours away. *sighs* I really hope that doesn't happen.

On the second day of my trip out of town, Doug was in a car accident in the company car. He was unharmed. He was making a left hand turn, and a guy sped past another car and hit him as he was turning. The guy was speeding, but that's okay for him to do apparently because according to the police report, it was Doug's fault. No mention of the speeding was on the report of course. But ultimately, what the report is saying is that my husband is powerful enough to cause someone to speed past another car and hit him. He had plenty of time and room to turn until the car came flying around the other car and hit him. *shrugs* So we're going to be broke for a while because Doug has to pay the $1,000 deductible, which means he will be paying the company to work there for a while. We're both concerned that his job is in jeopardy. Since the accident, he has been stuck at the shop all day. And if they do put him back on the road, and he's the victim of someone else's stupidity behind the wheel, he will automatically be sacked.

I lost a few people who I thought were my friends along the way.









One of them I have made amends with, but it will never be the same. The other one was no big loss. I hate to be that way, but she has hurt me before. I knew that I didn't need her or her drama in my life. Unfortunately, that doesn't change the fact that it still hurts. I was there when she had nobody. But that doesn't matter. She actually told me that I was going to have nobody but my fictional characters and that I would die cold and alone. Maybe she's right. Just maybe. With friends like that, why should I want non-fictional people in my life?
























There's rarely any real loyalty in this world anymore. Loyalty is becoming extinct. That's why the whole "us four and no more" principle exists. People get hurt. They make the mistake of thinking they have people who love them and care about them in their lives.



I have several really good friends, one I've known for eighteen years, and one I've know for sixteen, and several that I've known for almost ten years. I've even had one person really surprise me by being a friend, and let me tell you, she is a hidden treasure. I don't know what I would have done without her this past year.

Anyway, I'm not going to name names or rehash the situation, but I am going to share my feelings because it is my blog and I can. And once I have shared these, I'm going to belt up about it and move on.





Below are the things I wanted to say...














And now I will move on.

The truth is...



It's difficult to forget anything with my eidetic memory, but like the quote says that I shared on my fan page yesterday:

"When your past calls, don't answer. It has nothing new to say."

True story.

Maybe some of the pictures were a little mean, but I've been pushed too far. As John Pinnette would say, "I lost my cherub like demeanor." It doesn't mean that I don't love the people who have really stood by me, because I do. I'm just hurt by what the fake friends have done to me, and I have every right to be hurt. Am I going to stay there? No. I'll get over it.

I am contemplating whether or not I have room for new people in my life in light of everything that's happened. I just don't want to invest my time and my whole self into something that isn't going to last. If someone can wad up the friendship after ten years (give or take), and almost throw it away in a fit of anger over something so beyond the valley of asinine, is a twenty, or thirty, or forty year friendship really and truly stable? The answer is no. Nothing is stable. That's why you have to be careful.

Here's some helpful tips for a happier life.

• Don't share anything you don't want shared with the world. Secrets aren't really secret.
• Never vent to anyone. If you're having a problem, find a someone with a solution, or ask Google.
• Get rid of the drama lovers. Those who love drama love to drag the innocent bystanders around them into the middle of it. It's like a Broadway production to them. They don't care who gets hurt in the process as long as the world revolves around them.
• Never let someone stay in your home for more than three days. They will use up all of your things and drain you of every cent you have, and never replace what they've used or apologize for it.
• Don't get angry with your family. They have to love you, but they don't have to like you.
• If you want something done right, do it yourself. If you want something done right now. You have to do it yourself.
• If you make a promise, keep it. If you make an appointment, keep it. If you make a commitment, keep it. It is better not to make a vow than to break a vow.
• Feelings are temporary, even love. They say that love conquers all, but even love isn't enough.
• Unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. Forgive. It may take a while, but it's worth it, not for them but for you.
• Forgiving is one thing, but forgetting is another. Don't forget what you've been through so you won't make the same mistake over and over. Original mistakes only.

And that concludes this post! Doug is on his way home, and I'm going to find something to munch.

Have a great day, everyone!