Terry's 3M's
Meditations, Mutterings, Madness
I'm sleepy. But, that's okay, I'll go back to bed as soon as I get the kids off to school about 3 and a half hours from now.
As Canada has recently celebrated it's Thanksgiving, and we Americans are soon to celebrate our Thanksgiving, I am contemplating what has happened in our family in the last year.
My brother Frankie and his wife, Jewell were newlyweds.
In this house, the computer was a 486 that was locked in the "computer room" upstairs. It has no internet connection. I had shown Faye how to access the internet from mom's computer in September. She fell in love with it and spent as much free time as possible over at mom's.
This was upsetting to my brothers who wanted to play games on the computer. Before Thanksgiving, we got this computer and Delton ran a telephone line from the garage, through the downstairs closet and across the ceiling down to where the computer is located. [For a house with 2 stories and 5 bedrooms, it has the strangest phone set up--a connection in the kitchen, the master bedroom, and the garage--that's it!]
We got hooked up to an ISP and lo and behold, my sister was coming home again after work!
We've lost a monitor and video card during the last year, so the computer upstairs is still for now.
Last year at this time, Carrie was a struggling and poor reader. Now she loves to read and is a better reader than any of the other kids. Bryan still loves Goosebumps and at least it's a way to get him to open a book.
At this time last year, the new school that the kids are attending wasn't finished. They were going to another school, and the kids were on split schedules. The kids who would remain in the other school went to school from 6:30AM until noon. The kids who would be attending the new school (our kids) caught the school bus at 12:30 and got home around 6:45. By the time dinner and dishes were over, it was bedtime. Then I had to spend the morning getting them to do their homework. It was a rough time.
At this time last year, my son was still eating as though every meal was his last. You see, my ex and I were sharing custody before July of '96. Well, we were sharing physical custody--I have always had legal custody. Because of x's work schedule, he would not be able to see John very often because he worked weekends. So, I let him send John to school from his house and had John from Sunday night until Friday night. It broke my heart, but, I wanted Johnny to be with his daddy some of the time, too.
X got remarried in February of '96. It's a long story that is not mine to tell, but, in May, X had a nervous breakdown and when his new wife called to tell me of x's behavior, I immediately took complete custody of my son.
Two months later, they were being evicted for non-payment of the rent. When I went to remove the last of John's things from the apartment, x tried to kidnap John and scared John half to death. That was the end of visitations until last December. To this day, Johnny loves his dad but is too afraid to be alone with him. So, visitations are in a public place and usually with at least one male member of my family present, just in case. John keeps in contact with dad through almost daily phone calls.
I cried a lot when I found out why Johnny was hungry all the time and why he is petrified at missing a meal. After he was certain that he wasn't going to be seeing his dad overnight again, he told me that if they didn't eat out or couldn't afford to buy fast food to bring home, they didn't eat. Johnny ate breakfast and lunch at school, but, often went to bed hungry. He doesn't EVER want to be that hungry again.
I am thankful that my son is well and is living with me.
for the border background.