The India Arie songs that she identified as being for me and for my relationships were really accurate this time and I was surprised…I listed to one of the songs that she said was me and Craig and it brought me to tears.

So here I share “He Heals Me” By India Arie and dedicate it to Craig McCreath: My Love and Best Friend Forever.

He heals me
Told him my biggest secret
And he told me four.
He smiled at me and said that makes me love more
And then he made me laugh
And I knew it was a sign
That he was a man,
That I wanted in my life

And with every passing day
I feel more and more of that way

He heals me
He knows the real me
And he accepts me, he never hurts me
He heals me
He knows the real me
And he accepts me, he never hurts me
He heals me,
He heals me

I can play him songs, all through the night,
And he will listen to every line,
And even when I’m wrong, he is still kind
He chooses his words wisely when he tells me I’m not right.

And yes he is a beautiful man,
But he is also a beautiful friend

He heals me
He knows the real me
And he accepts me, he never hurts me
He heals me
He knows the real me
And he accepts me, he never hurts me
He heals me

The moment that we met, he made me smile.
He has so much compassion in his eyes
I have no idea, how long he’ll be here
A season or a lifetime, forever or a year
But for the first time in my life I’m not worried about the future
Because we have such a wonderful time when we’re together
However things turn out, it’s all right
Cause he’s already changed my life.

He heals me
He knows the real me
And he accepts me, he never hurts me
He heals me
He knows the real me
And he accepts me, he never hurts me
He heals me

I want to be in a place back in the city, I inquired about moving into a place with an old classmate of mine and a new friend who I feel I will be keeping for a long time. I’d like to find something in my life that is permanent and long term that also makes me happy.

I believe a transition to 3013 18th Ave may be a good step for me to take. I want to move to 3013 18th Avenue into a house bought by a handsome young man named Leo Kohorst. Leo is a friend of Tom Orbison a former high school classmate of mine and I had the opportunity to meet him when I was invited to Leo and Tom’s third housewarming party {funny and ironic because at the time the heat hadn’t been turned on yet.} Since that party I’ve seemed to have made really good friends in Leo and Tom. They have welcomed me into their home on many occasions these last few weeks since i’ve moved to Brooklyn Park and don’t like to commute.

While ‘crashing’ at their place they’ve made me feel like I have a family and a future and many memories to make around and involving them. Tom and I interact like brother and sister in a way that I only wish I could have a relationship with my own brothers. Leo is something of a subject of intrigue to me. At first I felt like I was like a mom and he was like a dad in the living house/ home involvement situation, together we have cooked, cleaned, and repaired much of Leo’s house. His maturity level is something that attracted me to his personality…for what other twenty one year old do I know that has decided to invest all his lifesavings to buy a house? He has since the party become someone who I feel I will be friends with for a hopefully long time, I have a great time talking to him and we have a lot of things in common. I like that he’s shared a lot of himself with me like his passion for music and his future goals. It scared me at first because Leo and my relationship reminded me of that of Craig and I while we’ve been friends these past six years. At the time I met Leo I had been fighting with Craig and It took a lot in me not to try to make a move on him in spite of Craig, because I have to admit that I was attracted to him and he was conveniently close and accessible unlike Craig who is 3000+ miles away. I’m happy that I got through my initial crush on Leo and that I am now able to communicate with him without feeling guilty that I’m being unfaithful to Craig. I feel that since meeting Leo we’ve had enough conversations to know that our relationship will remain strictly platonic as long as I am in a relationship with someone else. I feel that I need a friendship that is like Craig’s because the main reason that I feel Craig and I have been fighting recently is because our friendship has suffered because of our personal intimacy problems. Better said the compete lack there of… an intimate and physical relationship. I admire the dedication Leo and Tom put into their schoolwork; setting aside hours for studying in the house a day.

Study time in the house is like nap time in kindergarten and quiet reading time in fifth grade…or like being on the silent floor in the Hamline University Library, a peaceful experience that makes you feel like you’ve accomplished something. I hope my being around Leo and Tom in that kind of dedicated work environment will help me when I go back to Hamline University. I’ve already decided that ‘when’ not ‘if’ I do go back to Hamline that I will continue to live with Leo and Tom because Leo’s house and my living arrangement would be something that I’d have for a good 3 or 4 years if I decide to move in as long as I can make the rent payments on time.

The consistency and how long term the living situation will be is exactly what I need and want in my life right now. I’ve always been someone to think ahead and toward my future and I feel that my making this decision might be one of the best decisions I’m going to have made this year I’ve taken off of school. This room I’m renting now in Brooklyn Park hasn’t become any bit like somewhere that I’d like to call home. I feel that this house and living situation have so far felt completely temporary, that is until I was able to get back on my feet and find a job and a better place to stay.

The hardest thing about living in Brooklyn Park Minnesota has so far been the two hour bus ride to and from Brooklyn Park. The ride has begun to wear on my nerves and patience.
I’m getting tired of the situations and the people I am encountering on the bus and I want to deal with crazy Minnesotan bus riders a little less.

Just today Tuesday October 20th 2009 I was sitting on the 22 bus after having left Leo and Tom’s place. I was reading my book and trying to make my trip on the hour long bus ride go a little more smoothly. There was a family that got on with two twin girls and one of them was sitting and crying in her stroller and the other was fast asleep being held by her father. The baby in the stroller had come onto the bus crying and the mother seemed to at first be trying to calm the child down for the sake of the ears of everyone on the bus. I wasn’t sure why the child was crying but it seemed to have been wearing on her mother for sometime by the time they’d gotten on the bus. I felt terrible and ashamed to sit back and watch as the parents yelled at the baby to ‘be quiet’ and to ’shut up’ not a proper response to a child who just wants to be picked up and held. I do not think that a person should bring a child into the world just to neglect and raise them with no love and disrespect. After awhile the parents gave up on the child and decided to do the most immature and indecent thing in my book…they just let the child continue screaming and they sat there insulting it. They totally ignored the child and the screams continued to be heard by all who sat on the bus quietly waiting for their stop. I was on the bus till the end and I knew I had a good hour left till my stop. I was hoping that the child after being ignored by her parents would stop crying on her it’s own or that the parents would exit the bus whose confined space only seemed to just magnify the screams.

The bus rolled on and the baby continued crying and I felt that I was sitting back and ignoring the situation too much, everyone on the bus was uncomfortable by the scenerio and I watched as woman with children looked at the parents and shook their heads, I watched as men and woman alike covered their ears and sat back hoping that the parents would do their job in consoling their little bundle of joy… a baby on a bus crying for a half an hour is a ridiculous distraction from reading which I’d been doing.

I decided finally when the cries got deathly loud and exhausting to try to do something about the child and to take matters into my own hands since no one else was going to do anything I decided to get closer to the neglectful mother and her child for there was a seat that had cleared in the seat right behind them. I knew that since the mother was not a very good one that I could make the situation better and continue reading my book in peace and quiet. I love children and I had a feeling that sunk in my heart in looking at the little girl whaling and balling her little eyes out crying mama! mama! with her mother ignoring her.

I asked the young mother if I could pick the child up, a random act that I am surprised she allowed me to do as a stranger on a public bus. As soon as I picked the child up she stopped crying and became deathly silent. I asked her sweetly. “why are you crying cutie? What are we so upset about?” the little girl just stared at me in amazement, I felt that she was looking at someone who treated her politely and nicely for the first time ever. I instantly wanted to take her home with me and make her my own daughter.

I sat there on the bus holding the silent adorable little baby girl for the last thirty or so minutes of the ride, slowly rubbing her back and smiling at her as she stared at me and calmed down. She began to play with my shirt zipper…she looked to be just about two years old. I had an opportunity to continue reading my book with the child on my lap and I kept thinking to myself ‘was that so hard to do? Anybody can console a child! Why can’t these parents?!’

I feel that I relieved the tension on the bus for a lot of people including the driver who said ‘thank you to the girl who picked that baby up,’ into the bus’s microphone.
A man sitting behind me asked me if I had any children. I wasn’t sure if at the time I looked to be old enough to have bore children because I hadn’t done much to my hair and I was wearing a hat that I’d gotten while in Farming Minnesota with Leo and Tom that made me look kind of eccentric.

The man who asked me told me that he’d never seen such a sight in his life and that I’d make a wonderful mother. He pulled out his card and wrote his number on it and told me that I should call him and that we should get together for lunch sometime. I wasn’t sure if he was paying me a compliment for the sake of my random act of kindness or because he found me attractive and because he was trying to pick me up. It was interesting to read his card and to see that he was an admissions person for the University of Minnesota and that he had more than one degree and looked to be paid a lot of money. Surprising especially since he was riding a public transit bus.

When I got to the bus depot which was the last stop it hurt my heart to let the little girl go back to her neglectful parents. I asked the mother and father what the child’s name was and they told me that the girl was named Micah. I like the name Micah because it is the name of my pastor Matt Johnson’s new son. This situation brought a memory to my head of last Saturday morning the 17th when I’d held little Micah Johnson during a potluck breakfast for Life Group Micah Johnson is not in anyway neglected and he is completely silent and I have rarely heard him cry, it is amazing the two worlds these two Micah have to live in.
With me the baby girl Micah hadn’t made one peep. I felt with Little Micah like I do when I have Collin and Caylie I want to save them from the lifestyle that I know their parents are making them lead. No child should have to raise itself. This experience on the bus really made me feel obligated to the little girl and as her parents were leaving the bus depot I ran them down and gave them my number offering to babysit for them whenever they needed. I told them that I was good with children and that I’d love to watch little Micah and her twin sister anytime. I really hope they call me.

It is going through situations like that which depresses me and makes me want something new and more positive. While sitting in the Bus Depot waiting an hour for my second bus I watched as two men got into a fight over something ridiculous I watched as two men ganged up on the one and as a poor man lost four of his teeth in a bloody fist fight. I watched as the cops were called and arrived and as the men who had beat up the poor boy tried to get away from the cops by pretending to be like any other person waiting for the bus…only identified as the col prates by their bloody knuckles. Too much drama and stress for one day in my opinion.

so I’m done with the commute on the 22 and I’m looking for a place nearer to the city and a job that I can feel that I’ve accomplished something in…I’m hoping I can find it all in the next month before Leo finds someone else to fill the rooms of his new home.

The focus of the retreat and the topic of the weekend was ‘The Masks we hide behind’.

I am very familiar with a person’s so called masks because when I was growing up I had to change my mask to fit the people I was talking to in order to save my face.

>When I went home I had to put on my obedient black child in a over protective, over crowded yet educated world mask.
>When I went to school I had to focus on myself as an smart young African American Female in a primarily Caucasian world and I had a mask for that.
>When I talked to people in my church and the way I carried myself in church as well as the way I carried myself while around my parent’s coworkers and friends…

they were all different masks that I’d use to work and focus on different people. When people saw me in one place they’d see a different me in another.

Yet at the same time there were rules to my world of masks that had been set for me or that I’d learned through what I’d seen and experienced, for example:

Family business- Family “business” was anything that happened to me behind the closed doors of my childhood home such as spankings, financial trouble and health issues, fights and abuse. I was taught that family business stayed in the family.

When I was at church I was quiet because School work is always going well when you are asked by people at church because you didn’t want people to think that your parents weren’t reading you stories to bed every night (though they weren’t) also in church it was bad to talk about financial problems useless you were homeless and ungrateful so I never talked about my families lack of money while I was growing up.
In School- you don’t really talk about church because it causes a lot of debate and drama. Also family business was not talked about in school because of the fact that the teachers might call child services and have you taken away to foster care if you tell your teachers that you still have welps from spankings.

Drama that happens at school doesn’t come home with you for fear that your mother might go to school to have a ‘talk’ with the teacher….or my favorite example: while 7 months or so along in her pregnancy with my little brother Eric my mother tracked down a bus driver who had yelled at me for no reason and made me cry while I was in Kindergarten…The drama caused was appropriate but because of that drama the bus driver gave me an assigned seat and was rude to me for the rest of the year.

When it came to family business I know the most trouble comes in masks. I remember my father yelling and me and making me feel terrible while he drove me to school He used to tell me that I was going to become pregnant by the time I was eighteen and that I wasn’t his daughter.

I remember when I would get to school how I would have to change my whole being before entering the front doors of the school so that when I got to the classroom I looked like every other happy kid.
Or when my father would be mentally abusing me and my siblings right before a field trip and when he got inside how he would act like a ’super dad’ and put on a happy father face when I was hating him inside.
Or when my mother would be yelling at us kids and the phone would ring, she’d change everything from her tone of voice to her facial expression to make the house seem less chaotic to the person on the phone. It was a definite survival method.
I saw it many times when I was hanging around my black cousins or other family members of color…I noted how their voices would change to be more formal and less filled with slang and twang when they addressed white people verses people with their own skin color.
I remember being in an environment that was predominately white then changing to one that was predominately black and watching as people reacted when my voice didn’t change into twangs and slang…all of a sudden people called me an oreo and they said that I ‘didn’t act black’…I’ve never heard of a defined way that Black and white people should be acting but according to these people it was a matter of survival to know where you came from and stick to that.

My siblings and I seem to break many stereotypes and we wear many masks in order to get ahead in life.

I thought that masks were socially acceptable until I discovered how bad they can be. When my father was abusive to me I kept my mouth shut to the people who could have been helping me the most.

I’m writing this down because I found a picture from an exercise we did while we were at the retreat. We had a sheet of paper with 2 blanks masks on them…on one side we wrote down how people might see us, and on the other we wrote down how we want other to see us and what we really are inside. I found that sheet of paper, and I’d been keeping it for sentimentality reasons as a reminder to me that I have masks that I have to destroy.

Left is what I'm Not Right is what I want people to see...

I personally don’t want to have to carry that piece of paper around with me anymore and I am planning on throwing it away. Before I got rid of it though, I wanted to share it’s message and share some of the masks that I’ve hid behind and that I’ve noticed my family, friends and acquaintances hiding behind….I wanted to share the mask’s message.

My boyfriend and I got into a fight a little while back because I wasn’t considering how other people saw me when I decided what I wanted to share on the internet. I’ve decided that I want to be free of masks and I try to treat everyone in my world the same regardless of race and class. I will try to be true to my character and myself as an individual.

I’m done with hiding behind masks and I’m willing to be honest and open with everyone who asks me what’s going on.

My mother now says that I share every bodies “business” but I just feel like I am going to tell it like it is.

Personally I never celebrated Halloween when I was a child because it was against what my parent’s taught me to believe. To some people Halloween is just a day during the year that their children dress up in costumes and go door to door asking for candy in exchange for being targeted as a house to be pranked.To other families it is considered something much darker.

Growing up I was raised that Halloween was bad because it was a time when people would do witchcraft and worship the devil and demons and other evils in the world. Some children growing up with me thought that I was being brainwashed with a bad ideal but I was a obedient child to my parents and I never celebrated until I was 17.

I personally wondered sometimes if my parents didn’t want to celebrate Halloween because they had so many kids that they’d have to take out trick or treating or because they didn’t and couldn’t afford to make 6 kids Halloween costumes every year. I remember as a child having a lot of candy simply given to me around Halloween time because it was cheap, and my parents didn’t want me and my siblings to be left out.

There was one Halloween were I remember my father had put out a boombox and set up speakers on our front porch to blast “don’t want no monsters in my house tonight” a song written by a Christian Singer named Carman about demons and monsters.

On Halloween my siblings and I would skip school and remain at home…we said it was for religious reasons. I was really confused when kids at my own church would come to me and ask me how my trick or treating went…I knew a select amount of other families whose children grew up not celebrating Halloween but most of those families were against the idea of their children eating a lot of candy one day a year.

It was really interesting through the years my different experiences with Halloween it made me feel like the awkward kid…the one who could never relate. I was never invited to Halloween parties and I’ve never gone trick or treating.

When I got to the age where I began questioning my personal belief in Halloween I was too old for it to be acceptable for me to go door to door to trick or treat. All of my friends began saying that trick or treating was for babies and I felt that I’d missed out.

————

My understanding of how different age groups celebrate Halloween is this:

From Baby to toddler your parents buy you a cute and silly looking costume for them to put on you all of Halloween for people to ooww and aah over you.

When you become old enough to pick your own costume (out of a select few your mom or dad has deemed appropriate) you are also old enough to go trick or treating. You go trick or treating with your parents at this age and often the whole family will have a theme or some sort of matching costumes.

When you are a bit older I’m thinking 7-11 you get together with your school friends and you all go out in a group trick or treating around the neighborhood the costume you pick is probably of the cartoons and superhero comic book characters that you enjoy watching. (Power Rangers, Pokemon, Superman, Spider man, Disney Princesses..etc) When you go out to trick or treat you think you are alone fully but there is always a parent tailing you in a car or a few houses down the street from you hiding behind bushes and trees to make you feel like you are alone. You go back to one of your friends houses and count, sort and exchange your candy.

From ages 12-15 you either question if it is alright to still trick or treat and do it anyway picking your own costume, or making your own costume, or buying your own costume with allowance money. You head out either with a group of friend trick or treating and having a blast or you head to someone’s house for your first taste of a costumed Halloween party. Some of the luck ones go and attend a haunted house that is age appropriate that is parent chaperoned. Some kids stay home and hand out candy

from 16-17 you question the trick or treating and decide that you’d just like to go and buy some candy and maybe go over to a friend’s house and watch scary movies. You may not even dress in costume but it is likely that you do..and strangely enough the female costumes are getting a little less innocent and the male costumes aren’t as tame anymore.Some high school theatre clubs might have their opening night of a show on halloween and you may have the pit orchestra dress up or have the cast go out trick or caroling after the show the tunes etc. or a kid could stay home and hand out candy.

from 18-20 Trick or treating is for kids and unless you are taking your siblings or young cousins out you probably aren’t getting candy from anywhere but close friends. The costumes are a competition for who can dress the sluttiest and the punch at the costume parties may or may not be spiked depending on your crowd. You may still have a scary movie night or you might be putting on a haunted house at your local college campus in which you try to create as much gross guts and gore as you can to scare people. You are able to go to amusement parks and 18+ haunted houses or maybe a darker night club scene were you enter a costume competition for the grand prize of  a 300$ gift card somewhere. Or you could take over for your parents and watch your younger siblings and hand out candy.

At 21-25 Partying and getting drunk for Halloween is appropriate …maybe hooking up with the hot slutty dressed girl in the corner is the girl’s goal or scoring the hope of a future date is the girls. You may no longer celebrate and you might just stay home and watch a sci-fi marathon or you may still be busy with work. There is always handing out candy.

I’m not sure what it might be like when people get older but I assume alcohol and parties may be involved where people try to out scare other people with their cool special party effects. People might be lucky enough to have kids that they can dress up and take trick or treating…they could be chaperoning and spying. Also handing out candy.

———

When I was eighteen  I was working at a place called Bobby and Steve’s auto shop when I was invited to attend a Halloween party I at first had the feeling that I wanted to decline but being older and to the age that I could make up my own mind on if I wanted to celebrate Halloween I decided to accept the invitation. I had only known a few things about what it was like to celebrate Halloween and one of them was that the costumes for girls were slutty as they got older. I wanted to go as a nurse but my mother and I decided to make it a sexy nurse to spruce it up a bit.

I was surprised that my mother was being so supportive of my decision to celebrate since she’d raised me to not celebrate. But I now know that it was due to the fact that during that time my parents had been separated, their divorce was still in the beginning of its now finished stages. My father was trying to get back at my mother through my little sister . He allowed my Little sister Cynthia to dress up for Halloween to get at my mother who was against Halloween. Instead of being upset and not allowing my little sister to celebrate instead my mother let her and also that year let me.

I went to the party that my coworker was putting on and I felt a little out of place. The crowd I was with was much older and the woman I was around were much more experienced in dressing ’sexy’ for Halloween. I felt like I was a semi-sexy conservative nurse in a crowd of sexy ones. It was hard to explain what I was when my coworkers would ask me why I was wearing the scrubs and the lingerie top.

I remember that my coworkers who were my same age were drinking and I was surprised when I was offered a beer which I turned down…I was underage and my coworkers knew it…why were they offering me drinks? I remember that at that party there was a lot of playing ten cup, and that was my first time ever being introduced to the game. I didn’t drink but a threw for the guys a bit and I tried to pretend that I was used to being at a lot of parties…which I hadn’t been.

I was kind of scared but I found that I had to most fun on the dance floor with the DJ…when the floor was empty most of the night the DJ would dance with me. Now that I think about it he was flirting and trying to hit on me the entire time. I remember also that my coworkers were being strange around me and I discovered why because the next day I was fired from the position under the accusation that I’d stolen money.

After that I didn’t care much about Halloween because I felt that it was only a holiday for woman to act stupid and dress slutty and for men to get drunk and act stupid. I spent my 18th Halloween at home watching TV and I also went  to a movie and shopping with my mom in Edina. I saw a group of my high school friends all dressed up and going to a party while I sat at a corner stop light on my way to AMC…I longed to be with them in my heart a little.

My age 19 Halloween wasn’t going to be very special I spent it in my dorm room. I watched as all the other people in Drew dressed up and headed out to their respective parties and I watched as all the hot men got drunk and hooped and hollered down the hallways all night. I opted not to go to the Hamline Haunted house in Manor because I felt that I’d rather stay in my dorm room and watch wedding shows. I did lend one of my buckets to Emily my roommate so that she could make some fake blood to pour all over her room and her prom dress for the haunted house that she was a part of. While I was watching wedding shows i decided it would be nice to call Craig and see how he was doing. Craig at that point had already been deemed by best friend we talked almost every other day and I could go to him with anything!

It was in that conversation that Halloween night that I ended up bringing up a code that I had created a while back in which I had asked Craig if he could ever consider me as more than ‘JUST A FRIEND’. At that point I knew Craig liked me…I’d known ever since that Code night (which I think had been a little while earlier) … Craig and I had become so nervous with each other after having admitted that we liked each other that we had gone into a strange happy time where we talked ‘more’ but, we talk about the same stuff that we always had as ‘just friends’. Craig and My liking each other was deemed a small problem that we didn’t bring up. We didn’t bring it up because we thought that a long distance relationship would never work for us, we knew that if we tried something more our relationship would never be the same…but we both realized that our friendship had been a relationship for 4 or 5 years by then and that going deeper may be the only way we would ever feel good about our futures together. We could remain friends forever and wonder ‘what if’ or we could give it a try and make it official…so, instead of just acknowledging our crushes for each other we skipped the whole dating phase and we decided to become boyfriend and girlfriend that Halloween night over the phone.

Dating for us was not only impossible and extremely hard but it was also useless…dating is a time when a couple gets to know each other Craig and I at that point had no secrets, we were the closest of friends and we’d been close for years, it just seemed to me to be a step that made perfect sense…the love was there and the longing for more was there the getting to know each other phase was done and there wasn’t anyone else for either of us.

So Halloween 2008 became when I began being Craig McCreath’s girlfriend. This is funny because we had been listed as engaged on Facebook for almost a year and a half by then after high school and a certain rumor Ashley Thayer began that I ran with. I remember to this day how happy I was with Craig on that Halloween and how I didn’t mind the costumes and the candy people had…I was simply just happy to be someone’s girlfriend.

It will be almost a year to that date coming up next month and I not only want to make this next Halloween special because I’m giving it a try again but I am also happy to be celebrating my 1 year anniversary with Craig as my boyfriend. Craig and I have been through a lot his past year…(moves, deaths, births, arguments, visits, breakups and makeups etc.)…an awful amount of change.

I want to make this Halloween extra special because it is my anniversary and it falls on a Saturday/Sunday for Craig and I in different parts of the world. I’d totally kill to see Craig on October 30th because I haven’t seen him physically for a long time. As for Halloween now that I am 20 years old I feel that I have missed out of my time to trick or treat until  I have children of my own..so I’m thinking of just dressing up and I have a hope deep inside that I will be invited to some Halloween party to celebrate the holiday for my 2nd time ever…hopefully with me now drinking I’ll be able to fit in better. It would be nice to have Craig around so if I decide to live by the tradition and stereotype of my age group and if I do decide to dress slutty I’ll have someone to dress slutty for…sadly Halloween is not a Holiday that gets its own school day or week off.

To make up for lost years I have decided to make a promise to myself to dress up every Halloween  until  have kids of my own to dress up.

This Year I’d like to dress as Judy Jetson because I love the color Pink and I’ve found some really cute costume options I could try to copy.

Judy Jetson

One involves a Vintage looking dress that looks like Judy’s I could try to copy and make myself:

Okay....I have no explanation for this dress. I couldn't resist but really..I do love it! It totally reminds me of Judy from "The Jetsons" Let's see, it has shoulder pads but they can always be removed. It's really bubblegum pink with a zipper up the back. Measurements: Fits like a modern size 6 regardless of it's actual size. Bust 34-36", Waist aprox 28" waist is sort of stretchy. Condition: Very Good, small stain I'm pretty sure I will be ably to get it out. *Actual colors may vary from those shown on your screen. Much more hot pink/bubblegum like in person. (Click on the picture for more pictures)

Another looking I could go for is the hippy  flower power Judy jetson look:

It is made of a pink polyester fabric and says to dry clean or hand wash only. The dress comes with a matching sash as well. Measurements: Bust 36", Waist 27", Length taken from top of shoulder aprox 50"

Or I could try a sexy Judy Look (Which I don’t think is me at all!)

um...no comment

Or I can Try a plain and simple innocent Judy:

Judy w/ Red Skirt

Or I could be Daring and copy one and make it out of pink duct tape

All very good options though..I’ll think about it. I’m getting way ahead of myself it isn’t even October yet!

I wonder what it would be like if CRAIG surprised me by showing up on Halloween all dressed up as a knight in shining armor come to take me back to Scotland with me…;D

Knight on Horseback lifesize

I like this...

THe Knight mug

Rudy was mainly set in place by my mother to help us children deal with all the terribly damaging things we’d experienced during our childhoods.

It was during one of Rudy’s family therapy sessions that I believe I first really thought of Craig as someone more than just a friend. I remember still living at our house at 32nd and DuPont Ave in South Minneapolis and standing in the kitchen  trying to explain to Rudy and my mother why I thought that I would one day be traveling the world. I told them that I wanted to see the different parts of the world because before I’d been to Greece I’d thought that the whole world was only what I was seeing in Edina, Minneapolis and St.Paul (occasionally). My Idea of a vacation at the time until going to Greece was the whole family piling into my mother’s dodge stratus and traveling to Chicago. I told my mom and Rudy that day while standing in that kitchen I especially wanted to visit my penpal and friend Craig who lived in Scotland. My little sister teasingly said “your boyfriend” and I went on and on about how Craig was ‘just a friend’. It is funny because to this day I can still remember the thoughts that were running through my mind…what if Craig was my boyfriend? If Craig isn’t my boyfriend why do I chat with him more than I did Jason? Why do we spend all night chatting about what feels like absolutely nothing and yet I feel so good being tired at school the next day? Why do I rush home to talk to Craig?

Rudy the family therapist is a person who I would consider a major father figure in my life. He encouraged me to go to Hamline and he has given me many speeches of wisdom over the past few years that have shown me that I should NEVER GIVE UP AS A SMART BLACK YOUNG WOMAN.

I remember him asking me: “If Craig isn’t your boyfriend, why are you blushing so much when we mention him?”…That’s when I knew and that’s when my goals and the way I talked to Craig first began changing. It changed from idol conversation to flirting. (Which I hope to cover a blog on later)

Anyway, The reason I share this is because therapy for me has helped me come to some of the most interesting and amazing discoveries that have helped shape my path toward a happy and stress free future.

Therapy was a place where I could focus on the good things in life and think about how I could make them better instead of dwelling on the bad things.

I’ve found healing in sharing my feelings with others confidentially and I discovered that I love being open and honest with people about how they make me feel and how I react to them.

If a person is bothering me I’ve found that because of therapy I’ve been able to voice my opinions to them in a appropriate and proper manner.

I don’t keep my feelings bottled up as much as I used to and I don’t become as depressed as I used to be because I get all of my feelings out and let them go.

Recently I’ve been going through a lot of problems physically, mentally and financially. I’ve been forced to move back home to my mother’s house after two years of living independent of rules made by a parental unit.

I’m not back in my childhood home because my family has moved from

>32nd & DuPont Ave South Minneapolis

to >1003 Olson Memorial Hwy North Minneapolis

to>6411 Olympia Street Golden Valley

to my families current address at >311 Penn Ave North Minneapolis

That makes the total amount of moves that my family has made in the last 3 years 4 moves in 3 years. Pretty much a move every summer three summers in a row during vital years of my development and educational transitions.

This is not including the moves I made personally from

Olympia Street to —> Camp in Annandale MN to —>My dorm room in St.Paul MN to —> Theta Chi Fraternity to —> 1901 Logan Ave Minneapolis MN back to a different home at —> 311 Penn Ave Mpls MN

meaning that I have to add four moves to the four moves I’d already made. Making 8 moves that I’ve made in 3 years. It is said that after 1 move a child can develop problems functioning…but after 8 a person can go Crazy.

Sadly this time around Rudy doesn’t come every week to give me and my family personal therapy. I see Rudy every once in a blue moon when my mother invites him over to talk to us kids about things that she knows she can’t talk to us personally about without creating more stress. Rudy being around for my family is like during circle time in elementary school and having the ‘talking ball’ Rudy is like the ball because when he is around people wait their turns and we are at peace with each other for a little while during the chaos. We respect each other.

This time around though since there was no Rudy I have found that I’ve needed to discover different outlets to get my feelings and emotions out…to tell MY SIDE OF THE STORY.

If you look at the title of this Blog which I have titled “Blogging Therapy” you can see that the main outlet I’ve discovered to help me vent and get things off my back has been my Blog. I use my blog like a journal and I share my thoughts and feelings. I know that unlike in therapy blogging is in no way confidential but, I feel that I want people to get to know the real honest me.

I think the blogging does all the same things that therapy does…it lets you have a place that is unbiased to talk about things and get them all cleared up in your head. It doesn’t rush you and it has no opinion for or against you. It simply lets you tell your side.

I like blogging better than therapy from a therapist sometimes because I feel that when I am typing my brain can keep up with what my mind is thinking. When I am trying to speak I think of brilliant things to say but they never come out the way I want them to because my mouth feels it can’t keep up with my brain. My voice online is often stronger than my voice in person..which many people have begun to learn and read about me.

I can type a heck of a story but ask me to tell you one and you’ll get a stuttering fool. Sometimes while I am typing I have trouble finding the right words like when I’m trying to communicate verbally but the problems are much fewer and farther between.

Blogs don’t talk back and give you advice…that can be a good thing and a bad thing. It is a good thing because sometimes I don’t want advice and I just want someone or ’something’ to just sit and take the time to listen…and if on blog someone else happens to come across it and read it, there is always the option for them to leave me their opinions which I do value and take into consideration. It is bad because the opinions I may get on a blog are not often expert opinions and they may lead me astray but also sometimes I might want help with something and not get it.

Blogging can be bad because a therapist may tell you something that you don’t want to hear but that you NEED TO HEAR. When with blogging a person can pick and choose what advice they want to take…self advice is not always good advice.

Blogging helps me find a platform and yell from the virtual rooftops when at home I might be yelling but with all the noise no one is bound to hear my cries for help over their own yelping.

I can say anything that I want on a blog…even though I try to practice digression and even though there are a lot of things that I know I wouldn’t be able to share on my blog without seeking permission from other parties involved…I still free enough on my blog to talk about things I want and need to talk about. Just like in therapy when my therapist asks me: So, how has you life been and where is it taking you? What are you doing with your life that makes you sad, happy, confused, etc.?

I was sitting and look at my boyfriend’s blogs and my blogs and I’ve found blogs to be a positive medium…it is said that if you write it they will read it.

Even though my blogs are gigantic and often spiritual and highly technical I feel that anyone who took the time to read them could get to know me as a person and could get to know the way I think and look at life.

Blogging for me has become the new therapy that is calming me down and relieving my stress. I can rant and rave on my blog and it will do nothing but just sit there and store it all in. The Blog has become my Rudy and I don’t have to worry about how I will refresh my spirits, vent and heal.

LONG BLOG SHORT…BLOGGING IS THERAPEUTIC.

I wasn’t allowed to complain about the work I had to do because the first time I’d said anything about the work I’d been “told on” by the nanny.

Funny enough though, every time I usually shared with the nanny it was her who was asking me something.
After that I was told that I wasn’t allowed to socialize or talk to anyone during the hours that I was work…which was 8 hours a day 5 days a week…40 hours a week of not talking to anyone could drive a person crazy.

I was told that if I was caught complaining that I’d be fired.

Well I was supposed to be put in charge of the meals. I was happy about this part of my job because cooking is something I enjoy doing that I do very well. Yet, when I was constantly shadowed by the lady of the house Janel Goff (which is quite annoying, stressful, and hard to deal with) I asked her politely if since cooking was in my job description and because they’d given me that responsibility, I asked that she let me be in charge of making the food and I asked that she give me control in the kitchen when it was my time to cook, instead of her thinking that I am not doing things right instead of doing them her way.

Asking her this must have made her feel that I was trying to overrule her command because the next day Brian came to me and told me that he and Janel didn’t want me making meals anymore, and they had discussed it before they went to bed. They had decided to punish me by taking away the one thing that I enjoyed during the day.

When I worked on Labor Day while the rest of America’s working population was off, I asked for time and a half which was fitting. But, my employer Brian Goff told me that I couldn’t get it because the day I moved into my small 2 bedroom apt and still worked a half a day in the house, I’d been paid for a full day.

When I told Brian that I might want to take up an afternoon job because what he was paying me was so low, he told me…okay sure since you aren’t doing dinner now you can work till 5:30pm and start you babysitting in the afternoons. I didn’t know that the hour that he’d decided to let me off early for would cost be my 2nd daily break time.

I got off an hour earlier because I sacrificed my own free time…like when a teacher takes away minutes at recess.

I heard that Brian was the kind of man to play tricks like that, not paying people, overworking people, creating contracts that practically enslaved people.

The main reason I was settling at the Goff’s place for only 100$ a week…not including food costs was because I needed a place to stay and I was technically working off my living expenses by working for the family.

I was given my own place to live while I worked for the family, this place was supposed to be treated like an apartment away from the main house. “My own place” I was given a house mate who was also working for the Goff family, their gardener Louie.

The problems that I encountered with this living situation was that Brian felt that even during my break time he could come onto my side of the house and give me orders for what I should be doing later. When I felt that my break time was the only time I could escape from my servitude and relax…that became extremely stressful. Not only that but when I was on break, because the Goff’s didn’t care about anyone but their own selves they had neglected to fix anything in our part of the house…we didn’t have internet, cable, a separate phone line, and for about a week and a half our main plumbing in our kitchen didn’t work and our sinks were clogged. I spent most of my nights going to the local coffee shop with my housemate to go get internet.

One thing that I was extremely grateful of were my weekend off. This was a time that I spent living the life I would be living if I hadn’t been working all the time. I bathed weekends, went and read, went home to visit my mother, attended church and was about to refresh and reset myself and my spirits for the following week. The weekends became a time that the Goff would leave me alone and I would leave them alone. Even though more than once I was called and ‘ordered’ to do something on a Saturday morning.

I am  surprised that it was the acts of this past weekend that got me fired and evicted from the Goff household.

My friend Jimmy was being evicted from his home. I am Jimmy’s primary babysitter of his two small children Collin who is age 4 and Caylie who just turned 2 on Sept 11th. I’ve watched over Collin and Caylie so much since before Collin was even walking that I feel like I have a major hand in how they’ve been raised. They aren’t people i babysit for and get paid for. I watch Collin and Caylie for free because I consider them to be family and like my own children.

Every time I watch the Hines children they have stayed at my place of residence, my mom’s house, my dorm, my friend’s house. I can barely count on two hands how many times I’ve watched the children in their own home.

My mother had agreed to watch the children at Jimmy’s request which usually meant Jimmy would be dropping the children off for me to watch them at my mother house overnight, and have them join us while we attended church the following day. This particular time though my mother did not want to have the kids at her house, my brothers Tyler and Eric this past week had been extremely sick and running high fevers.

Since Collin and Caylie are so young and susceptible to illness and since I’d watched them millions of times before in my places of residence outside of my mother’s house, I agreed to watch the kids at my place. I believed fully that the Goffs would have no problem with who I decided to invite over to “my own” apt and how I would be spending my day off. As a matter of fact, to my understanding the Goff family was out of town in Boston, along with the family nanny Information that I had learned while cleaning an empty house everyday for the week that they were gone (During which time I unpacked and put away the families belongings {belongings that i had no clue where to put}… which they’d left in randomly packed boxes).

Saturday went well, I spent most of it shopping and hanging out running Errands with my mother and the kids. Saturday night the kids slept over after we had tomato soup for dinner, I gave the kids a bath and we watched Ratatouille.

Sunday morning I got the kids dressed for church, fed them cereal for breakfast and got them ready to be picked up by my mother to go to church.

It was while we were standing in the driveway waiting for my mother to pull up that all the drama started Janel…attitude flaring came out of my door and Asked me in a yelling strict tone if I’d been watching kids overnight in “her house”. I said no, I’d been watching kids in my apt. And she says, you aren’t supposed to be allowed to watch children in my house. Then she stormed inside. I continued to wait for my mother in the driveway and  understood the memo that Janel had left as a warning for the future not to watch children at my own place.

Then Brian  stuck his head out the door and told me to come inside because he needed to “talk to me” he was speaking in his official scolding voice like he had when he’d told me that if I complained again I would be fired. I was thinking that maybe he had something to show me that I’d left undone from the previous week. Instead he asked me why I was watching children and i told him who they were and the situation about my mother and the eviction and how Collin and Caylie were my Godchildren and family and how it was my day off and I didn’t think it would be that big of a deal.

Everything that happened after that was a big blur…I remember Janel coming and joining Brian as they both yelled at me…and I remember janel slapping her hand and palm together threateningly and I remember telling them that I didn’t know they didn’t want me having anyone over EVER. And I remember Janel saying that she didn’t think I was “happy here” and that things just “weren’t working out” and that she thought I was a liar and that she thought that I had been bringing a lot of people over which made it seem like I was having parties. I told them honestly that I didn’t know anything about their policies and that I wasn’t lying and that I was being 100% honest like I try to be all the time.

At one point as I was explaining to Brian why I couldn’t watch the children my my mom’s place she told me that she didn’t want to be “associated with  people like Collin and Caylie’s parents” or “associated with the people I would be bringing around her house” and it made me feel like whoever I would be bringing around would be bringing with them the disease of being unfortunate and less wealthy and that maybe them being around would bring down her family’s good image.

WHAT A BITCH. It was just then that I began crying and telling them that Collin and Caylie were family…if They didn’t want to be associated with ‘those people’ then what was I for being just like them?!

It was my day off and I was not their slave. Brian hearing what his wife was saying tried to correct and take back her words by saying that it was a liability issue…I could understand liability but the words had been said and the REAL Issue was already out to be addressed.

THE WHOLE THING WAS AN ISSUE OF CLASS STATUS.

Rich vs Poor …Face and Self  Worth. I was poor and they were rich and I was paid to serve them.

Brian told me he wanted me out by Wednesday…I told him that I had no where else to go through my tears and I thought that the whole thing was ridiculous because they’d never told me I couldn’t have anyone over.

Since I was hysterical and confused Collin tried to defend me…he kept saying “Brian, Janel…we were just trying to take a nap” and “Janel, why are you being so angry?” and “Corinne, why are you crying like a baby?” I felt terrible because I wanted to run away. I’d never been teamed up on and yelled at by such rude and heartless people.

the children are 2 and 4…what kind of threat do they make?!

I told them that it was all too much for me and that I needed to get to church…Brian said that they’d give me a week and that they’d see where we sat at the end of the next week because he realized that I had dirt against him and his family now that he didn’t want me to share with the world at risk of ruining their perfect image…opps.

I went out to the driveway again still crying and hoping that my mom would show up soon…she was already a half an hour late.

Collin and Caylie were both really upset and crying too because they’d been standing during all the yelling the whole time.

Brian came back outside and told me he didn’t want me waiting for my mother in his driveway and that he wanted me to wait inside for my mother…wait inside and be invisible like all good servants are…I kept thinking to myself. Was I fired? What was going on? Why were they so evil?

I ended up going upstairs to try to call my mom and see where she was it was then that Louie came out to the hallway with the intention to walk his dog Chip. I felt terrible and he asked me what was going on. Louie could barely understand or hear me because he had trouble with his hearing. That was one of the reasons Why I felt so alone during the whole situation…there was no one to be on my side and defend me because Louie was upstairs and couldn’t hear and Collin was just 4 and Caylie was crying and my mom wasn’t around yet.

It was so hard trying to explain the situation through my tears to Louie until finally I hear my mom pull up and told Louie I had to go.

I walked out to the car crying hysterically and my mom saw me and asked already with defenses up what was going on…I tried to tell her and she told me that I should be happy…I felt so hurt and damaged inside because of the way and what Brian and Janel had been saying to me.

Money has Corrupted their hearts to the point where they are not humanly good but simply selfish and rude.

My mom gave me tough love all through church and my crying got so bad that I had to sit out of singing and I had to calm down by watching Collin in the playroom during the service. It was a relief when I finally got to talk to Craig after church and try to explain everything because he made me smile the way he always does. I was kind of in shock and I didn’t want to go back to the house Sunday afternoon. So my mom took me and the kids to the park at Kenwood. It gave me time to think and I was convinced that I needed to get out of that environment as soon as possible…mom took Collin and Caylie from me, instructed me to pack and Jimmy and Sheena Collin and Caylie’s parents came by to help me move everything. They’d finished their unpacking and still had the trailer that they’d been using. I’d tried to explain the situation to them and it only took me telling them that it was my babysitting the kids that started it all that made them hate the Goff’s spirit.

The Goffs are heartless, selfless and arrogant  I have never met anybody like them before and I pray to never encounter or have to work for people Like them ever again.

The Hines helped me move all my things out of the apt and over to my mom’s house. I moved everything into my mom’s house with help of my sister and my mom’s neighbor John. It was 10:30pm when we finished and I looked almost dead from all my exhaustion…I took a shower and joined my mom and CJ as they watched “the state of Play” in the livingroom.

I then went to bed, waking every now and then thinking that I was back in the apartment and that I might have something I still need to get done…work. I thought of all the things I’d left behind and decided to go back to the apartment later today with my mother in tow for support.

I am going to ask for my last week’s check and one weeks severance pay…a total of 200$ I plan to hold my house key hostage until they pay me what they owe me.

And I plan to empty out my fridge.

My mom has set up for me to move into a house with her friend Rhonda and I’m looking for another job. For now I am living at home until Rhonda and I have a meeting to determine my rent. I am happy to have my mother to support me along with many others.

I am truly blessed… At first I thought that my finding a job and a place to live would be my ultimate blessing but now that everything has come crashing down I realize that my moral is that family will always come first and that a little bit of change…can be good.

The hospital

The first thing I’d like to discuss is a conversation I had with my Pastor Matt Johnson. I had asked Matt if tomorrow I could testify in front of my church congregation. Technically it isn’t my congregation because I am not a member…but I have found a family among the members these last few years. Matt and I talked about why I wanted to testify and what is important when thinking about God and a testimony. Many people want to just talk about how God has blessed them but they fail to mention that struggles they are still going to God about. For example: I was blessed with a new job…but I’d like prayer because -I am making less than Minimum wage at my job -I am unhappy not being able to start school like everyone else I know. -I am having trouble communicating with people I love because of my lack of a cellphone, the internet. -how it is hard to be on my own and independent when I only really have my mother and Craig to talk to no consistant friends.

Another event that has happened in my life was my choice to wait to go to Scotland for a couple of months. Putting Scotland off till after the holidays will allow Craig a time to meet and get to know my mother so my mother will trust him to be my main emergency contact if anything happens to me while I’m overseas.

My third event is that yesterday was September 11th, eight years after the towers fell. I was 12 years old when it happened and like many others I remember where I was when the towers were hit. I was sitting in Ms. Wilcek’s sixth grade classroom during quiet reading time when my teacher got a phone call from her fiance now husband. I remember I was sitting across from Derek S. and that we were quietly chatting to each other over our books…my teacher left after the phone call and came back crying. She and other teachers chatted quietly in the corner of the room until they decided to turn on the TV and they all sat watching the news as we children sat reading. We wondered what was going on because my teacher was crying and it finally came on the intercom that America had been attacked earlier in the morning in New York City I remember wondering where New York was and if it was anywhere near us. We were told that we were being sent home early and that our parents would be informed of our early release. When I got home my mom arrived a little later and she explained everything to me…I was really sad because I thought we were under attack in MN. I remember going home and watching as they showed footage of it on every channel…I watched the footage of people committing suicide after deciding that it was either jumping out the window with a plastic bag parachute or burning to death. I remember after 9/11 I went to my church and asked if the people who had commited suicide were going to hell…my youth ministers said no…because it was God’s will.

I’ve moved inside because it is extremely hot so I’m sitting now in the emergency room lobby at HCMC and just a few minutes ago there was a young girl who discovered that her father had died…she started yelling histerically about how her dad was dead…the kind of screams that make your heart skip a beat…like true pain. I was thinking in my heart about what may have happened to the girl and the man…was there a car accident? Was it a heart attack? Had the girl herself commited the crime? and being in the emergency room I’m thinking about what’s going on…I was raised and shown on tv that when you are in the emergency room you should expect the worst. I wanted to go swarm the girl to see what she looks like and comfort her…hug her and sooth her so that she will stop yelling and frightening the babies and making them cry. I’ve decided to stay where I am…because out of sight for me is out of mind. My mother on the other hand has gotten up to investigate. The girl was yelling and was taken back into a different room wondering and asking if anyone could help her dad. It makes me think about what Craig is doing this weekend and what I may have to do with my mother having cancer that is slowly getting worse. Letting go of loved ones is very difficult…but even though my mother says that she has “too much to do” to die…it still scares me to think about losing her. While some people like Craig don’t yell and scream histerically when they learn that they have lost their loved ones …people who stay strong and keep their composure to keep their family strong there are people like this young girl whose live are totally shaken and with them everyone around them are shaken as well. My brother has stopped complaining about his burned wrist…the reason we are at HCMC anyway…he burned it on a pan at work and it looks painful..but not as painful as losing someone you love. It might be a third or forth degree burn but he no longer complains of the pain as he was before the girl was screaming…I wonder if he realizes that it could be worse and that the pain he feels now isn’t so bad. Or maybe his pain reliever kicked in.

Now that the girl has been taken away the heavy heart I am feeling remains…the people who also sit in the lobby with my have continued their lives as soon I will continue mine…I think about Craig and his mother and death. This weekend Craig and his family are releasing his mother’s ashes in Elie Scotland…a beautiful place full of many family memories I can tell. I wonder if I was cremated where they’re place me. Or, if it was my mother…where I’d put her…I would never want to think about anyone I love as ashes or in a wooden box to rot in the ground. I do not pray for a fate like that to befall anyone.

“oh my god! oh my god my dad’s dead…no! OH MY DAD! OH MY GOD…NO i DON’T WANT anything I want my dad”…I can hear the girl in my head ringing still.

I need to get my mind off of death because it depresses me…so on a lighter note: my roommate Louie is allowing me to use his laptop. it is nice because i am sitting in HCMC and they have guest wifi. Before when I was sitting outside in the car I was thinking about how nice it would be to just loiter outside the hospital to get wifi…but then I felt bad about not being able to get on facebook because it is blocked.

In back of me are some giant tropical fish…they are like I’ve never seen before and they have huge eyes. I wonder if these fish could be the last things a person might ever see in the world if they were to die in this hospital as the girls father had.

My brother used sweet corn to cool his burn…it reminds me that I am hungry and I reach into my bag and grab one of the boxes of museli bars I won from the slogan contest…there’s a really loud annoying woman calling people to the counter…

there is a girl here with two boys and I wonder if they are here for a maternity test. They look like they might be.

I wonder what the hospitals will be like in Scotland if or when i ever have a child and need to give birth in one.

I wonder why they are butchering a man’s name over the loud speaker…and when they are going to call for my brother.

Wow it has been 5 hours…

wait, my brother Tyler just arrived with a really high fever…they are going to take them in together, I’m going to call Sean and see if I can get a ride home…laters.

Mom and Tyler waiting for the Doctor in room C5

cynthia: leave the country, we do not want you here, only mom wants you here, you are just an inconvenience.

Eric Salone: Die you fat bitch…

Tyler: Why don’t you just go home and stop strewing up things here, you never listen crazy bitch why don’t you just fucking die and go fucking kill yourself leave my fucking things alone you fucking bitch. Why don’t you just fucking throw yourself in front of a fucking car you fuckin bitch.

The only thing Evan ever says to me: Be Quiet.

or for example look at my photo comments and what Eric and Tyler say to me:

So tonight like many other nights before it…I’m up late/ early morning surfing the web at my mom’s house. I wanted to watch the JK wedding dance again and I was hoping that it would stream smoothly for me this time.

After watching it a couple of times and the rendition of it that was on the Today show I decided that I’d look at more funny wedding videos.

I kept looking through them until I got to one that made me think…

it was a father daughter dance,a father daughter dance is a dance that symbolizes a father’s transition from the predominate male figure in his child’s life to the man who simply raised the child. The father is losing a child and letting her become a woman with her husband. A father daughter dance is used to show that the father is handing over his daughter to his new son in law and it is important that during the course of this dance the new husband is supposed to ask to cut in…and the father is supposed to give him his approval and let him take his daughter this actions shows her step from his house to her husband’s. Now in a lot of weddings it is reversed to the groom dancing first and then the father. Either way it is a nice and festive way to demonstrate that both are the most important men in the bride’s life and they both strive to keep her happy.

It made me think about my current relationship with my father and whether or not he deserves to have that right as my parent and the one who created me.Yes, my father raised me and was in my life until I was 13 but during the vital years of my childhood and all of my teen years my father wasn’t around and wasn’t a very good figure to me.

During the years that my mother was separated and after the year of having a restraining order out against my father my mother became almost like my everything.

During that time my father did try to keep in touch with me and tried to get back into a relationship with me, but I didn’t really want to have anything to do with him since I’d been in the middle of a lot of shit that went down, I didn’t want anything to do with my father after I experienced what my mother went through because of the way he took care of us.

My Dad(Papa) Eric and Cynthia

Life totally changed after my father left for the better and I feel that it was to best way for everyone in my family to survive…after he left my mother and us children struggled to make ends meet and came down on hard times but we persevered.

It seemed when I needed a male figure in my life I would look to my teachers at school or the men in my church or to the boyfriends and male friends that I decided to make. It was like I filled my life with men in order to compensate for my lack of a positive male figure.

We once had a happy life...Mom, dad, Tiffany, Evan and Me...

I have three brothers but they became three different kinds of men. One my older brother Evan doesn’t want to have anything to do with me and hates me and hasn’t talked to me in years he blames me and my mom for everything that happened. My little brother Tyler became much like my father and used his body and his power to abuse and hurt me…he doesn’t like me because I’m a lot like my mother and because he struggles with what kind of my man he wants to be…he seems to be becoming more and more like my father everyday and he resents it. My little brother Eric being young and trapped between the two households at first was upset with everyone who only took my mother’s side on the issues, but he is a quiet observer and he doesn’t want to create any opinions…over the years he’s slowly begun to understand the way my father is behind his many masks and he’s become closer and closer to my mother’s home…though he is in my mother’s home he still blames my mother and I for creating problems with my father, when i try to bond with him he pushes me away.

My Dad and I

So when I think of the father daughter dance in a wedding I can’t help but to think of the men I want there to replace my father.

Not REPLACE my father completely I think it would be rude though ifthere were some things that are traditional in a marriage that were not completed such as:

A) My future fiance didn’t ask my mother AND my father’s permission to marry me to be polite.

or if when it came to a wedding

B) If I were to decide that I do not want my father in my wedding.

or

C) If I didn’t invite him to attend at all.

I feel that having my father at my wedding is much like having him at my graduation…he contributed at one point to the creation of who I am today…and I can still faintly remember the good times, so I feel that it is his right to be a part of it…if he chooses not to attend that is his choice but I have to offer.

So when it comes to a “father” daughter dance I have in my head created a list of men who I would like to dance with me. I’m not sure how I’d go about choreographing it, but I know that it would involve me dancing with one man after the other and being passed off until I ended up with my husband cutting in and asking for my hand. If my father did decided to attend, or if he did decide to participate in my wedding reception I’d either put him as the first man I dance with before being handed off to the other men…or as the last man I’d want to dance with.

My Dad the Last Time I saw him

I read this in an article about the history of the father daughter dance:

Whether your father cannot dance, or maybe it is you that has the two left feet or the father of the bride will not be attending the wedding it is not the end of the world and no reason to completely drop the tradition of dancing into your new life. There are several alternatives that are just as fun as they are festive.

One of the most beautiful and heart warming bride dances I have seen was at my friend’s wedding. Her father had passed away and she thought there would not be a dance at all. Secretly the groom brought roses and had a friend pass them out to all male guests. When it came time the best man lead the bride on the floor and commenced dancing quickly being replaced by all the men one by one each handing her a rose as they danced. At the end the groom cut in and finished the song holding his happy bride holding a great big bouquet of roses and tears of joy in her eyes.

It’s interesting because the tradition would make it the last man but I feel that my dad would need to have earned it. I might put my mother in the last position and my father in the first to show where I place them in who raised me.

I feel that I would want to improve my relationship with my father just for the mere fact that when the time comes I want to be comfortable enough with my dad to ask him to be a part of it and not JUST FEEL OBLIGATED.

Till then these are the names of the men who came to my head when I thought of influential men in my life that I feel I respect and who I can imagine myself dancing with at my wedding: (Not in any particular order)

• Sean Phillips
• Kenneth Parsons
• Kenny McReynolds
• Eric Salone
• Tyler Salone
• Evan Salone
• Ian Morris
• Daniel Slanger
• Todd Wilson
• Mikey Boosalis
• Kyle Parsons
• Tony Matthes
• Some of the Men from Theta Chi (not listed)
• Ron McCreath
• Bob Sedoff
• Reggie Salone
• Jacob Babcock
• Adam Warmansenn
• Alex Jeffery
• Owen Nelson
• Mike Miller
• Michael Von Gross
• Matt Miller
• Taylor Listul
• Matt Johnson
• Dean Weimer
• Doug McQuarrie
• Erik Lundstrom
• Jacque Blackamore
• Jacob Davison-Horwath
• Jacob Long
• Joe Redhead
• Jerry Peterson
• Jon Cushing
• Jevon Barnes
• Jonathon Guter
• Ted Kramer
• Matthew Hill
• Jonny Hoffner
• Kevin Heesen
• Chris Tromley
• Seth Maxon
• Scott Haiden
• Jason Blatz
• Steven Draisey
• Tom Orbison

• >>>>>Craig McCreath (Even though I feel that he will have a different role here)

(Along with any other man who feels like they contributed in making me a better person)

These men listed have a special place in my heart :D!

Here may be something else I can do…

Another way to signalize the step of leaving father’s house and moving on to live with the groom is by having a friendly and humorous competition between father of the bride and groom. It could be a quiz about who knows the bride better, a race or arm wrestling for that matter. The important thing is that the father of the bride is properly cued in to lose at all cost. The winner gets the bride!

If groom and father of the bride are in decent shape you can combine the dance with another old tradition. Take a sheet and cut out a huge heart ( big enough for two) out of the middle. Have several people hold the heart sheet up. The father carries his little girl to the sheet and then hands her off to the groom who carries her through the heart. Sometimes the heart is just drawn on and the young couple has to cut it out with small scissors as a test of compatibility in working through problems before the groom can actually carry his love through.

So if my father Ronnie Bracy Salone is reading this blog right now…which in the past he’s done before I’m turning this into an open invitation to dance with me…I’d like to see if our foot steps will ever be in sync again.

The reason I wanted to get them something special is because for the last few years my family hasn’t been able to afford Christmas and birthday presents. It seemed that every year I (Eric and Cynthia’s old sister) was the only one ever getting them anything. This past Christmas my mother had informed me that she couldn’t afford to get the kids anything but that instead she bought a lot of family games in hopes that everyone would be happy in playing them together.

I’d been out of the country at the time so I was unable to get them anything…though I did try to give them each a gift when I got back. This birthday for the kids is especially special because we were all recently told that my mother has cancer. My mother’s doctors appointment at the Mayo clinic was actually the same week as my siblings birthdays(the 21st and 22nd of July) . It is hard to think about having fun when your relative isn’t in their best health. Personally I was depressed on my birthday and I didn’t want the same to happen to my siblings.

My friend Heidi Winter a friend that I’ve had since Middle school had just had a hamster that had give birth to about 20 babies. She wanted to get rid of them an advertised that the Hamsters needed a new home on facebook one day. That was around the time that I was thinking about what I’d be getting my siblings…when the time came I ask Heidi if the offer to get the Dwarf Hamsters was still on the table.

Heidi

She said yes and I made arrangements to pick them up. Well, I’d never taken care of a hamster so when the time came for me to get the supplies I was happy to have my friend Alex Jeffrey along to help me out in getting everything. He was so nice that while we were out he even paid for most of it…and let me use his Target discount! He’s a great friend and put up with me well as we drove around looking for supplies. We ended up buying make shift cages, baskets for shelters, hamster water bottles, food, pine litter and a food dish for both the cages.

I knew that I would be getting both male and female hamsters so I knew I had to separate the sexes. When we went to pick the Hamsters up Heidi was shocked because she felt that the cages we had for the hamsters were not sufficient and up to her standards. I personally felt that the cages were great and I was surprised at how small the hamsters were and how much space the hamsters would have.

I was please with everything and I felt that what Heidi was saying about my cage picking was kind of rude. I understand though now…if I was giving something away to someone after taking care of it from birth I think I’d be picky about where it would be staying too.

Heidi insisted that I get the hamsters proper cages and even took one of the hamsters back because she felt bad leaving it with me. “You act like a kid Corinne…” I remember her telling me when I told her to trust me. As a friend having known me for years I was hoping that she would be able to simply do that. Heidi didn’t let Alex and I leave her house until I promised her that I would get proper cages and go shopping with her for hamster supplies.

After leaving Heidi’s house Alex and I drove to his house where we watched Ratatouille one of my new favorite animated films (because I like the way the animators made the actions of the human characters so natural and realistic.) While at Alex’s I was really worried because of Alex’s dog Sarah…totally innocent Sarah with a totally huge doggy heart! I was worried because Sarah kept staring at the hamsters…Sarah is a huge Black lab I think and she was making me feel really weird…the whole movie I found myself having a hard time relaxing and staring at Sarah and calling for over to get her away from the case.

the make shift cage

hamster

I breathed a huge sigh of relief when we were able to leave after the movie was over and take the hamsters to my mom’s house where they would be residing.

They have been here now for a couple of weeks and it was only the other day that I began to feel like they were unsafe in their environment…when the girls started looking for ways to escape the cage. I was sitting on the couch up late at night chatting with Craig at like 4am my time and 10am his…we were doing our usual flirting when I noticed out of the corner of my eye my Cat Emmy walking past.

my smart cat Emmy

now my cat Emmy is a brilliant cat…she is sly and smart and loves to play fetch with a ball…like a dog does. She usually walks around after playing fetch with her bright blue, green and pink balls in her mouth…like she’s showing off her catch. This particular night I was surprised because It wasn’t a bright ball that I saw in her mouth it was a fuzz ball…I remember thinking ‘we don’t have mice’ and then I ran after her to get the hamster out of her mouth. The hamster who I found out was one of the baby girls was only a little shocked and a but injured in the eye after it’s encounter with my cat after having figured out a way to escape our make shift Hamster cage. I put the little baby girl back and I thought to myself…I have GOT to get a new cage soon…this will teach the little hamster not to try to leave again…it will be so traumatized that it will not…I ended up checking on the hamster every hour just to see how it was doing until I saw it was looking fine and back to normal.

This was the last straw…

Over the time I had had the hamsters Heidi had been constantly emailing and writing on my wall on facebook asking me how they were…I’d told the truth that they’d been doing fine. In one of her messages Heidi had told me that she’d gotten me a cage because she had found an extra one and that she wanted to give it to me. I had agreed to take the cage in hopes that Heidi would stop nagging me… After the run in with the cat I felt that It was more important for me to meet up and get the proper cage soon. The other day on Michelle’s birthday (Thursday) I was at the Gay 90s and I ended up meeting up with Heidi…I asked her if she had the cage with her and she informed me that she didn’t…which makes sence…who takes a hamster cage clubbing?

I was a bit disappointed but I was determined that before I left for Scotland I would get my sibling’s Hamsters a proper home.

Just earlier today after my mom had picked me up as we were walking down the walkway she decided to break some tragic news to me… “Emmy my brilliant cat had gotten on the counter where the Hamsters cage was and had managed to knock the hamster cage over and have dinner” she told me…

“How many hamsters did she get?” I asked my mother hoping that even 1 of them survived and thinking that it was a bad idea for me to bring hamsters into a house full of cats. “Omg my gosh Heidi’s going to kill me!” I thought to myself…’I hope none of them died of shock after seeing a giant cat’ I was thinking.

I ran into the bathroom of my mom’s house in total shock passing the empty make shift cages and supplies that i’d taken so much time picking out that one day with Alex. My mom stood at the door and knocked and told me that I should come out…I wanted to cry and I told my mom to leave me alone because I felt overwhelmed that she ‘hadn’t told me’ …”let me explain” my mother began as I opened the door to the bathroom…just then I went off “MOM! DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH i PROMISED HEIDI HER HAMSTERS WOULD BE SAFE WITH ME?!” I yelled “I WAS SUPPOSED TO MEET HER AND GET THEM A PROPER CAGE H OW MANY OF THEM DIED? MAYBE DID ANY OF THEM LIVE?! MOM I’M SUPPOSED TO GET A CAGE FOR THEM FROM HEIDI ONE THAT LOOKS….JUST LIKE THAT….one.”

Right in front of me there sat 2 brand spanking new and proper cages…and inside I watched as six hamsters scurred around enjoying themselves and having fun…in my rage, sadness, anger and confusion I’d ran right past them and into the bathroom.

“That’s not a good joke mom…why did you have to play that?” I ask my mother as she and my brother laughed at my realization.

“It is….When you get upset you are totally blind to the world around you…did you even see them at all as you ran to the bathroom? You ran right past them.”

“No,” I said “I was too busy thinking about what Heidi would do to me if her hamsters died in my care”

“Do you really think i’d let something like that happen in my own house?” my mother asked

“No.” I said “But what motivated you to get a new cage”

“Well,” my mom said ” I came home from work on Thursday and I heard squealing coming from the girl’s cage and a noticed the biggest one trying to get out, She was stuck and I thought that it was only a matter of time before all the hamsters figure their way out of that thing. So I bought a proper cage…You owe me 50 bucks by the way”

“Thanks mom” was all I could say….

So that was my Hamster Surprise and just to set the record straight…as of today I still have all six hamsters I was given that day a few weeks ago. :D

They’d been fine all along and they had enjoyed they were enjoying their new cage.