Takin' it to the field

So here we go again. Same story as before where one of Olivia's "friends" gets jealous
that Liv's a better athlete and cops an attitude about it. Olivia is not an "in your face" type
of girl. I have a hard time getting her to stand up for herself when she is being mistreated. And, physically, she is a very slight girl who nobody expects to play softball as well
as she does, least of all windmill pitch. So now, this friend, who is really competitive, has been being mean to Liv and not speaking to her off and on because Olivia scored better than her in something in gym class.
So cut to last night, they are having an activity night at a field for the 6th graders. I volunteered
to chaperone. This girl suckers Olivia into playing this game(why the moms chose this for this
event is beyond me) but it's a blow-up sparring ring where kids stand on pedestals and wear helmets and bash each other with this 6 foot long padded cylinder and try to knock each other off the pedestal. So I see Olivia on the line with this brat and ask her why she is doing this with Brittany. She says Britt asked her to and I know exactly what is happening here. I said "you sure you want to do this?"
She says, "yes." Well Brittany is taller, weighs quite a bit more and if it were not for the fact
that she saw me stand there and watch, she probably would have bashed the heck out of my
kid. So, they play. Eventually, Brittany knocks Olivia off twice and their turn ends and then
the brat says "That's what I call domination," and stomps away from Olivia, obviously trying to settle the score from what she was still ticked about from gym class a month ago. Olivia realized then that she had just been had. She actually thought the girl was being her friend again. Well, it was a short lived victory. This morning at 9, we had our softball game against Britt's team.
Also on this team is our neighbors' kid who started these same kinds of problems with Olivia
2 years ago. There is a rivalry between these teams now especially since they could not beat the team Tim and I coached last year. I thought we were doomed. Their coach stacked the team with alot of the best hitters back when they did the draft and our other pitcher started the game and they were hitting off her like crazy. We were also short girls and playing with only 2 outfielders.
THEN, my head coach put Olivia in to pitch. She made 2 outs in her first inning, one strike out and one throw to first base and then Brittany came up with 2 outs. I had told Olivia previously, "listen, don't say anything mean(not that she would, just not her nature), but when she gets up, STRIKE her ass out!" So Olivia did just that. It was 3rd out and ended the inning. Next inning, our neighbors' brat gets up and she is usually a good hitter. She hits a hard drive to Olivia on the mound. It was so fast that Olivia went to get down to field it and the ball took a bounce and came right up into her mitt. Liv threw her out at first. Then, she pitched to Brittany again, again with 2 outs. Britt hit a short one right to Liv and Liv threw out the girl coming home, ending the inning. Olivia completely shut down their hitting and scoring. We play short games and Liv pitched the final 2 innings and helped to put our team into
position to win the game with a bases loaded triple in the last inning. Oh and they put Brittany
in to pitch one inning and she can't pitch so they had to pull her out before the inning ended cause she was walking our girls around the bases. So, while I try to always teach Liv to be the bigger person, I also try to teach her to stick up for herself. Our kid definitely took
it to the field today and showed this girl just who DOMINATES what. Again, worth every penny
of these expensive pitching lessons to watch your daughter shine like this and see folks compliment her. She is always so happy to know she helped her team win. She made 5 of the 6 outs in the 2 innings she pitched. At the end of each game,
the girls and the coaches line up and high five each other and say "good game." Brittany pulled her hand back when she got to Olivia and refused to congratulate her. I said, "Liv, if someone is gonna be pissed at ya 'cause they're jealous, well, that's their problem, not yours." After what this girl pulled last night, she got just what she deserved. Got news for ya honey, my kid ROCKS on the softball field!!!!! Oh I know I should not be getting such a kick outta this but when you have to sit back and watch some brat be so mean to your kid, it's hard not to fist pump for just a second when your kid dominates something like that and gives them a little "what for." Sometimes, nice guys do finish first and bullies get what's coming to them.

If snot were gold, we'd be RICH around here!

Ugh, did someone get the tag number of that truck?! Tim came down with a bad cold last week.
It went into a fever and I put him on Zithromax.(It was late at night and I didn't want to call
the doctor's service) I called in the a.m. though and the nurse told me, "good call, finish the course." So the fevers wrapped up but the cough still lingers. Then my little "Typhoid Tim"
took out me, Olivia and our employee Alan, all at the same time. Holy Toledo, this is not your
everyday cold. Olivia had 104 temp and I had 102. Our employee had one too and was out for
2 days. I've always said that warm weather colds are the WORST and this one certainly is.
Our living room turned into a sick bay with me and Livvy flat on our backs aching and feverish.
We have to make a miraculous recovery today. Our head coach is off tomorrow for his son's
communion and we have to coach the game ourselves. Not that big a deal but I am whooped
and Olivia will have to pitch if we stand any chance at all of winning. She is feeling better but
this cough will take a long time to go away and I'm betting the 3 of us will sound like we have
the plague tomorrow. Once you start, you can't stop. Cough meds are OUT of the question. For one, they don't work and for another thing, I had a bad reaction to it the last 2 times I took it. The last time it caused me to pass out and I got an ambulance ride to the ER where a plastic surgeon had to sew my eyelid back together. NOT one of my better days. I'll stuff my mouth full of Halls and make the best of it. So, in other news, my neighbors' house got 4 offers and went to contract within 2 days of going on the market.
The buyers want a really fast closing and we may be just a few short weeks away from wishing
them a hearty Bon Voyage!!!! Yeehaw! On the out-law front: as we both suspected, it seems Tim's family thinks this ousting his sis-in-law was all my doing. To be honest, we've always had a thing where Tim makes decisions concerning his side of the family(what events we go to etc.) and I make decisions for my side and the other abides. Though I did not want to be around her anymore, this was Tim's call and I would have sucked it up if he didn't want to do this. I am certainly not going
to be the one who seperates him from his family. So, we drop the bomb and his dad doesn't speak to me or even look at me the next 2 times we are around them(one being mother's day.)
Considering the amount of snide comments he's thrown my way over the years, I'm thinking
"heck, no big loss" right! 2 for 1. Then Tim tells me that he thinks his father is going to confront him about all this. I said, "I doubt it." He said, "he will." Well......he did. Tim was working at a job
the other day and his father was working with his friend at the same house and he spoke to Tim.
Says he doesn't want to get involved but wants him to keep communication open with his brother and call him. REALLY. Last time I checked, his brother's fingers weren't broken and I
believe the ball is in his court. So Tim starts getting into this with his dad who says he doesn't want to hear it and Tim says, "well you're gonna hear it. Mom doesn't tell you anything and you need to know what is really going on here." So yadda, yadda yadda and Tim gets it off his chest including the fact that this was his call and at
one point his father says, " I know sometimes me and Denise don't get along and I say some things to her that I shouldn't." Long story short, I am a smart woman who is not intimidated by him. I also have no patience for adults who throw temper tantrums and all that ruffles the man's feathers a bit. So Tim says, "And that is going to stop! I've had it with the crap she takes in this family. I want you to think about who was there for EVERYONE in this family, including your mother when she was alive, whenever they needed help or anything. It's always MY WIFE. So this
is going to stop now. It's stressing her out and that stresses me out and we don't want to put up with any of this anymore." So cut to Olivia's game that night, Tim's p's come and now his father is all smiles around me. So it seems the end result is that everyone realizes the s-i-l is a toxic
person who has caused a lot of aggravation in this family for many years. That's nothing new. They realize, though
they may not like it, that our putting her out of our loop is not shocking considering what she
did to us. They hope that Tim will have a relationship with his brother but we'll see how that works out. Considering no one has even apologized to us or called, we do feel it's his brother's move to make. I'm sure some of them may pooh pooh all this and try to say we're over-reacting but no one in this family is in our situation or had anything like this done to them and I've
never been all that swayed by hypothetical opinions. People believe what they want to and the truth is, I really don't care. They don't get to decide just how much we are willing to put up with.
True to form though, I have never met anyone whose own mouth shows people all her character flaws as well as this s-i-l. She really showed everyone how low she could stoop. We were told that Tim's brother told her "well, you really made your bed this time." Someone needs to slap a
muzzle on her. I've met five year olds who could edit themselves better than her. Gotta go. Got
a date with some gator-ade today.

Thanks y'all.

Thanks to all you folks for the kind words and support left on my last post. It means alot to me. The fallout may
not be over yet but I am more confident than ever that we did the right thing. Today's party
was much less stressful for me not having certain people here. To Lorna and Rebecca: what nice
words to read on Mother's Day morning. THANK YOU! As far as helping out goes, I think we
MM folks have to stick together. Noone understands us better than the rest of us walking this same path. When Tim was diagnosed, I lost so much control of things in my life but I still have
the power to offer support and help to someone else and it soothes my soul and broken heart to do so. It feels like I'm doing something worthwhile and positive and those good vibes always come back to me in spades. I read a quote once that said, "If you want
to be happy for a year, win the lottery. If you want to be happy for life, help someone."
Now what I'd really like to try is helping someone AND winning the lottery!!! ;o)
I'll bet that's pretty darn cool! Happy Mother's day everyone! And Happy 12th birthday to our Olivia Grace!!! She was born just hours before Mother's day, May 9, 1998 and we baptised her on Father's day 6 weeks later. What a great gift!!!

Sometimes you just have to "cut bait"

So, we dropped the bomb this week that our evil sis-in-law is no longer welcome in our home.
This Sunday we will be celebrating Olivia's b-day, as well as mother's day(she was the BEST mother's day gift EVER) and Tim's brother was informed that what his wife did to us on Christmas was the very last straw so he and the kids are welcome but she is not. The fallout has begun. Our other brother-in-law stopped by last night and tried to talk us out of it.
After hearing a bunch of things that have happened that he was not aware of as well as the
fact that our decision was made and final, he gave up. Not sure if he realized it was futile,
or maybe we had a point after hearing the whole story but this was never a decision we took
lightly and we knew it would not sit well. Here's the thing. Most people in this family are willing to live their lives by sis-in-law's rules, just as her own family has always done, for the purpose of shutting her up and not having to deal with her if they don't. We don't intend to live our lives by her rules. But when someone gets away with bad behavior all their life, they continue to push the envelope further and further. Kinda like a kid who doesn't get disciplined. Then one day, someone says, "enough is enough" and that person is totally shocked cause they've always gotten away with everything up to now. Their first response will
always be to try to blame the person who is finally taking a stand to take the attention off their own faux pas.ie. "I am not the problem, you are over-reacting." They have no viable excuse for their horrible behavior so their only option is (when they are not big enough to take responsibility for their actions) to try desperately to shift the attention to someone else.Well certain people with lower IQ's may fall for that. Those of us with half a brain know exactly what is going on and expected it all along. It's psychology 101, people. I did something this past Christmas to make it as joyful as I could for Tim, Olivia and myself which when living under the cloud of cancer, is not
an easy task. This sis-in-law simply cannot tolerate not being the center of attention so she
crapped all over it as soon as she walked in the door. There is only one possible reason for saying the
horrible thing that she said, and that was to hurt our feelings and tear this down however she could. We don't get a do-over. She ruined our special day and the damage was done. The fact that certain folks are not happy about the step we have taken obviously is more about THEM not wanting to be uncomfortable at family functions. It's inconvenient for them. Apparently, it doesn't matter how WE feel, what this did to us, and how stressful it would be for us to have to "break bread" with this person again. Despite my long time aggravation about how things work in this family, my husband has always let things roll off. While I was tired of being slapped in the face by people in his family, he kept turning the other cheek. It always seems to be my cheek that things land on though. What people didn't realize was that that changed when he got sick. His time, his holidays, his vacations are now a lot more precious to him and he is no longer willing to see them ruined by the tantrums of others. We do not want our daughter witnessing all this and she has already seen and heard too much. Your priorities shift when cancer walks in the door. Nothing is the same. YOU are not the same. And I've said it before, there
becomes 2 types of people in your world: those that are with you, wish you well and you know you can trust......and those that aren't. Anybody that thinks they are gonna jump in our boat and row against us.......well, all I can say is, they better be a strong swimmer.
MAN OVERBOARD!

We'll miss you La Cootina

I was just glancing at some blogs I follow and saw on "Margaret's corner" that one of her
myeloma buddies died. She did not mention the name but I thought, "oh no, could this
be Nancy?" I hate to do this cause it seems so morbid but I checked the obits online where
Nancy lives and it was indeed she that Margaret was speaking about. I'm so bummed. Last
year around Valentine's Day, Nancy had a little contest to see who could write the best "Love is...." quip. I think only 2 of us replied but she sent me a small heart pin that she had as
a prize and, knowing I had a little girl, some little printed cards for her to use and color.
This woman was good people. Truly one of the wittiest minds I've ever encountered and
I wish I had the chance to meet her in person. I love folks who are honest and tell it like
it is and Nancy was one of those people. I always checked her blog first. Her posts
made me laugh out loud and many times she would post pics and stories about her family
adventures from years ago. She was a single gal who lived alone and how she went through
all that she did amazes me. I know she got a lot of help from family and friends but I still can't imagine how tough it must be to be suffering chemo side-effects and other health related issues by yourself. She fought this beast hard but unfortunately, her MM seemed to be of the type that didn't respond very well and she made the decision to stop treatment. God, she was only 53. It's been a rough few months in MM blogland. Really sobering. I don't know what else to say. I'm just numb. When I tried to think of a "Love is....." saying to comment on her blog in Feb. '09, the only thing I could come up with was a really practical thing about love and what it meant to us since Tim's diagnosis. I wrote, "Love is......sticking around to shovel when the shit hits the fan." Not too romantic but when the chips are down,
you hope that you have someone in your life who is gonna have your back and not bolt at the first sign of trouble. I'm glad Nancy had a crew of shovelers in her life(and she did literally too with the brigades who came and did her yard work for her). I also know that
Nancy is up there ranting like crazy on our behalf and shovelling away for all of us MM folk now. I miss you already Nancy.You ARE unforgettable.

It's all in the interpretation

So I made it through the talent show. Last year, Liv sang alone and was on near the
end of the program. I was nervous the whole time. This year, she sang with a friend and earlier
on in the show and it was much better on my nerves. They sounded great. She definitely didn't
get her pipes from me. They waited till almost the very end of the show to put the girl, Demi,
on to sing about her mom who'd died. What none of us expected who'd heard about Wednes-
day's rehearsal was that they were going to bring out a huge portrait of the woman and place
it on an easel as her daughter sang to the photo. Yup, I was tearing up before the music even
started. Her mom was an absolutely stunning blonde woman with a megawatt smile and in
the photo, she is hugging a large black and white "tuxedo" cat who bore an uncanny resemblance
to a certain "Buckwheat" some of you may remember. So of course, the tissues came out. The
audience was silent through the whole song and the girl got the only standing ovation of the night.
When the show ended, Olivia's friend came back by her mom, who was near me, and told me
Olivia got hysterical during that song. Then she said, "well not hysterical but she was crying bad."
The mom thing kicked in and all I could think about was finding Liv to see if she was OK. I turned
to go find her
and she was walking up the aisle with her eyes a bit teary but composed. So of course, my heart
is breaking thinking this poor, sweet kid was wondering if she could be in a similar position some
day because Tim has cancer. So we talk about the performance and it turns out, the cat reminded
her of when we lost our Sophie dog and apparently, that's what got her. Ya know, you just can't
assume anything with kids. They'll surprise you every time. I'm not sure yet if I have the whole
story of course. There's still a chance she would not come out and say it if she was thinking something else too but I don't want to push the issue. If it was all about Sophie, we'll go with that for sure. Luckily, they wrapped up the show with a
very funny act so we all didn't leave ready to off ourselves. 3 boys took the stage in black shirts,
tight black leggings, and black, lady's shoes and danced to Beyonce's "All the single ladies" doing the moves they do in the video. Flippin' hysterical. It was a fun night and these kids are so darn
brave. And this year, just like last year, a girl who you'd least expect got up and knocked everybody out with an unbelievable voice. Half of my softball team performed tonight. We
had to cancel our game because of this show. All I can say is, I wish to heck they could field
as well as they can sing. We'd be in good shape. Sigh.

She brought the house down

Tomorrow night, Olivia is singing with a friend in her school's talent show. Last night,
they had a 3 hour rehearsal. When I picked them up, they both told me that a 5th grade girl
got up and sang a song called "I miss you" that Miley Cyrus wrote about her grandfather
who died. Before this girl started singing, it was announced that she was singing it in memory
of her mother who died of breast cancer when this girl was only 2 years old. Well, with the exception of a few boys who toughed it out, the whole place went to pieces including the girl singing. Ugh! This damn cancer business touches so many people. We have girls in that school that have or had it. One girl that lost her dad to colon cancer over 2 yrs ago. Other kids whose
moms were treated for breast cancer. Suffice to say, there are gonna be a few of us families
there tomorrow that will find this performance hits WAY too close to home. My plan: sit in the
back, don't bother with eye make-up, and put lots of tissues in my purse. Just wish I knew a way
to delete the memory before it chars into my gray matter. I don't know what's worse. Losing a parent and having never really known them or losing a parent that you adored and knew and feeling the pain of that loss. There's a huge void and painful loss either way. Just,I suppose, a
little less mourning when you're a baby or too young to comprehend what's happened. I so
wish I didn't have any reason to even think about this. SO, on a brighter note. Tim is going golfing
with my dad today. I'm a little concerned about his back but he and my dad get along so great and
always have a fun time so I hope it goes well. I asked him to back off his swing a little but you know he doesn't listen to me. He can hit the ball a mile. He doesn't get out to play much cause
spring and summer are his busiest times at work but has won the "longest drive" award in 2 different golf tournaments beating out better golfers(and much bigger guys) by far. On an even
brighter note, it looks like my neighbors are already getting some action on their house. They had
at least one showing that I know of the first day the sign went up. There were people there yesterday and last night, when we got back from the rehearsal, I saw the realtor with them as he was leaving and CeCe, the wife,was holding paperwork in her hands. Could it be that they have an offer already? I hope, I hope. It dawned on me today that I may finally be able to open the shades
on that side of the house after years of having them drawn against Mr. "can't seem to get his eyes
above the neck when he talks to me." Don't ask me why. I suppose he does that to all women. I'm always afraid of seeing binocular lenses looking
back at me so I don't open any bedroom shades upstairs even during the day. He works
from home a lot so I never know if he's there or not. I think this place will go fast. I think it's a little underpriced and that's rare in these parts. I know I'm gonna do EVERYTHING I can to get
that place sold. I've already talked to some of my realtor friends and I'm going out today to spiff
up my back yard a little. Well, gotta get off this comp. and get to them income taxes. Double UGH!!!