I'm a sucker, but it could be worse.

It's official. I am a grade A #1 sucker.
I have been dealing with this ongoing water damage claim with my insurance, with three questionable construction men of sorts, all of which I thought I could trust, all of which thought they could trust me as well, and we all secretly didn't trust each other was what it really boiled down to. It's not uncommon for humans to act on feelings. People often comment that women are more susceptible to acting out on feelings, which leaves men therefore less inclined to act on feelings, and even further less inclined to show emotion. So they say. I have found that to be totally false, unwarranted, lacking of merit, and undeniably misdiagnosed. And I owe it all to a few pipes that wanted to rebel against the unruly and unforgivable raw sewage that forces its path through them. I don't know, but if I was a pipe, I would probably do the same thing. Who wants to have urine running all over them, much less #2? There are people in this messed up world we live in who do, but thankfully and somewhat surprisingly, I do not know them.

To make a long, very boring, and confusing story, digestible (pun intended- get it? pipes, digest, you are laughing inside. I just know you are.)

My house had either a clog in the main line, or a root growing through the pipe or it was demon possessed. I'm fine with entering a plea of a combination of all three. The truth is, I don't know what the heck the problem is with the plumbing in my house. Whatever the issue, it is still unfortunately unknown to me, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was unknown by all interested parties, and I use the word interested very loosely here. What makes an object of desire intriguing to one person is entirely different to another. Essentially, I'm saying that my best interest was not at hand, although I was told repeatedly by all parties involved, the insurers, the fixer uppers, and the friends of the fixer uppers, that I was being carefully looked after. I even told myself that I was being diligent in hiring the right people. After all, all people who were hired were friends of someone I knew. That is scary in itself. It's scary that all three of the people that I hired knew someone I knew, and all three were clowns, untrustworthy, grimy fuckheads. I say that with only the purest of disdain and bitterness. You'll have to excuse my French, but if you were me, and lucky for you you are safely you, you would probably have thrown a chair through your 15th story high rise window while you were still seated on top of it. I have maintained composure somehow. God helps. A lot. I will probably have to sit an extra 32 hours on the white couch, which will match my new white hair when it's all said and done.

In all of this nightmare that has both snuffed out too many of my semi-precious cell phone minutes, and raped me of three hours of my morning routine work day, which accumulate to about a weeks worth of real work, I have learned that people, not all people, but people in general are assholes. People will lie to your face, they will tell you what you want to hear, and they will do it without the bat of an eyelash. People run on emotions and act on feelings. It's probably why we live in such a litigious society, and why we make threats that we don't intend on ever following up on. We want to protect ourselves from the likes of ourselves. It's scary. I hate this world sometimes. By the time I die, I will be either very bitter or truly enlightened, maybe both, but either way, I will hopefully be wise enough to know when someone is telling me the truth. And if I know by instinct, then I will act on intuition, and go with my gut feeling.

Final Thoughts

We don't trust our gut feelings enough, which I believe is really the Holy Spirit. If we listened more without asking the whys and hows and just know that He is in control of all things, we would all be better off, and have less worry, less anxiety, and less need for control. I, for one need to believe God to do the things that he says he will do more often and quit trying to figure out why He does what He does, and just be fine with knowing that He's in control, and everything will be fine. It will all be over soon enough, and these worries of drywall and laminate vs hardwood will be nothing more than a fart in the wind to put it eloquently. And thank God. I can't take much more of this.

Letter #6...The Real Deal, Unrepressed

This has been a particularly rough month for me. I have had a lot going on in my life, at home, at work, sometimes they seem to be in unison because, I guess, because  I am human, and it is sometimes hard for me to separate the two. When I walk out of work, I try to leave my work-related stress in that little squishy red ball sitting on my desk,  and I don't want to talk about work at all during my time off.

But there are times in your life that your home life will spill into your work life and vice versa. It's unavoidable. If something in your personal life is eating away at your very soul, you can count on being preoccupied at work. No amount of coffee, sleep or working out can counteract ongoing stress. It's not called the silent killer for nothing. But I realized that the times that I feel most stressed out are the times that I feel the need to be in control. And the clincher here is this. It's when I relinquish my control to God, and trust in Him, when I feel most relieved.

People are always saying, "Don't take it personally. It's business." While, true, it might be business related, we are not robots. I don't care how many ways you try to convince yourself that you are someone different while at work. You simply are not.  You are who you are when it's 8-5 and when it's 5-8.  And just because I was born with a vagina and not a penis (if I had one, it would be bigger than average, I hope), I do not think with my heart in all instances. But if you do something that tells me one thing while your lips tell me something totally different, I am going to notice. I was not born last night. You know how I know? I just learned back in August 2011 what time I was born- thanks to Debi. I don't remember right now though. I'm guessing it was morning though- somewhere around the witching hour, since I am admittedly feisty and witchlike (on Mondays and Wednesdays only).

Recently, I had an organizational switch in my role at work, which I had absolutely no control of. No planned out line of questioning or prodding for truths would prove anything nor confirm or deny anything that I didn't already know the answer to, but for some reason I needed affirmation that I was still worth it. Worth what? Worthy of being wanted I guess, of being needed, of being employed. I needed to know that my efforts to please my bosses were noticed, that my role was not in vain, that my place in the company was not faltering. So I asked. I cried when I did, which is most unprofessional. But you know what?  I am human. I am real. When I want to know something, I'm gonna ask it. And when I don't feel appreciated, I will move on. Maybe that's a vain approach to life. Maybe I put too much emphasis on something as fleeting as feelings. Maybe most people don't place enough value on others' feelings, and that's what really bothers me about the business world. People want robots these days. It's clear when you look at formerly booming industries such as manufacturing and agriculture. When they say they want computerized, standardized methods they mean it in more than one way.

I enjoy cutting up at work. Practical jokes and boisterous laughter are often emitting like UV rays from my cube.What's the point in being so serious all the time? Who says work should be dull?  Being humorous at work is very unfortunately frowned on in a lot of companies though. I think that's bullshit. I can remember working for my Dad, and reading to him a cover letter than I once wrote, and his reaction that irked me, prompting me to never ask his opinion again on that topic.  He said it wasn't professional, not serious enough. Since when did the world get so uptight. It wasn't just my Dad. It's corporate America.

Sure, the letter was a bit daring, could have been a bit forthright, maybe flirting with conceit, maybe quirky, and probably somewhat humorous. It was too honest, too obvious.  But here's the deal. It was me. Do we really want to start something out on a lie? Why in interviews do we have to make shit up? We have Q and A books that we pour over while we are prepping for interviews. Should I make something up that blatantly is not what I am- a perfectionist, consummately on-task, on-time, on point?  On a role is more like it. Lies, all lies. Now, I'm a multi-tasker who often takes on too much responsibility? That's complete bullshit. If I was like that I would be the CEO. I wouldn't be sitting here answering your lame questions about my so-called work habits that may or may not be true depending on how gullible you are.

Good habits are a result of happiness- in your personal life and in cube living. It's evident. Wouldn't you rather know if I'm a good person or not? Would I lie about task completion? Would I cover up a mistake? Would I narc out a co-worker who was doing something he's not supposed to be doing? The answer to that is easy- no. Honestly, I don't think that employers want to hire someone who would say yes to that question. Employers don't want to see your true colors obviously because they ask such unimportant, irrelevant questions quite frequently in interviews.

If I answer your questions the way some 1976 Harvard PhD grad who is now working as a business consultant for companies like Google and AT&T tells me to answer them, I am not only lying to you, but I am also unoriginal. I am not what you are probably looking for. I have my own mind, and I am actually intelligent despite the fact that I don't have a degree from an accredited university. I make up my own decisions on the fly because I like to think. It pleases me to please you Mr. Bossman Interviewer. I don't usually follow suite, which might make you uncomfortable because,  well I guess, because, I might take your job one day. No,  I don't fit your mold. I like to make my own mold. I think they call that thinking outside of the box. But really, it's thinking inside the box. When you are thinking inside the box you are using your own uniqueness, your own creativity, and utilizing your gifts. You are being yourself- what you were put here for.

What got me riled up tonight is the thought of interviewing. It's the thought that I have to pretend that I am not who I really am to get a job. I can't stand to be a fake. It drives me batty. Please don't ask me to lie; it will eat me up. I'm not saying I don't ever lie. I'm human. I lie. In fact, I lied to a friend about something totally ridiculous recently, that ended a twenty year friendship. It was coming anyway. We had grown apart. It was actually very innocent, and I lied because I took someone else's bad advice. But that's beside the point.

The point here is this: Be yourself. But care for others as you are doing it. The letter that I wrote below is an honest depiction of how I feel about Colette on occasion, when I am thinking only about myself. Nevertheless, it is not something that I would ever convey in that manner to her because I am not that mean. But if people were as clear as day as we sometimes feel, we would all hate each other.

Jesus said in John 10: 18, "I have power to die, and I have power to live again." Sometimes we must mask, sometimes smother our true feelings so that we can get past pain. We do it because we know it's right. We lie sometimes to prevent heartbreak.

I feel like I need to be honest right now. And because honesty takes a toll sometimes, I wanted to give you fair warning that what you are about to read below is gritty, and not withholding. One would never know happiness if before, he didn't experience sadness. Most people never let this kind of truth out, but I don't mind, because I know that everyone hurts sometimes, and everyone hides it. You might hide in a bathroom at work when you cry. You might scream in your car when you are angry. You might punch a hole in your bedroom wall (an expensive method of expression I wouldn't recommend for some obvious reasons). However you express yourself behind closed doors is your choice. I choose to write. You choose to read it.

Dear Colette,

I am your birth daughter. You gave me away to total strangers when I was born. You kept me a secret as if I was never born. You stripped me of knowing where I came from all of my life. And I don't know if you have any remorse for it, because you have never tried to contact me to even let me know.
They say that I should be writing you nice words. I don't really give a shit right now what they say. They aren't me. They didn't grow up feeling like a missing link. They didn't have a million questions rolling around in their coconut that most normal people have definite answers to immediately when they are asked. They also didn't selfishly give away a baby like you did.
One might say it is a selfless thing to do. I might agree one day. One day I might vehemently disagree. At any rate, I'm not gonna sugar coat this. I'm pissed at you right now. I have made a few connections with you, and you again, have made no attempt at knowing me. Denied once again. How many times will you do this to me? Does it bother you that I'm hurt by your lack of care for me? Are you so far stuck up your own ass that you can't even look at me? Are you human? Do people love you? I wonder what it's like for you to live your life knowing that you had a perfectly good child and you gave her away. Because, why again?
I don't know you and frankly, right now, I could care less about you. I think very low of you right now, almost to the point that you did, when you signed the papers, when you didn't visit me in the hospital, when you didn't tell my birth father about me. You're dead to me. Just like I was to you 35 years ago, only I was an innocent baby, a sweet, healthy, pretty baby. You are old, probably haggard, and most likely unhappy. I don't want to write you any more sweet letters. This is it. I'm done writing your pathetic, weak ass. I don't care anymore. I don't know if I ever truly did.
This note will probably mean nothing to you. Just like I meant nothing to you when you gave me away. You bitch. You don't deserve to have children.
Why am I so pissed? I don't know. But I'm blaming it all on you right now. I've planted the seed that I wanted to meet you. You must be aware. You have to be aware. You should be ashamed of yourself. I hope you are. I hope you get some help because what you did to me is despicable. Anyone who has unprotected sex and gets pregnant should take responsibility for their own actions. Abortion is wrong. And giving your child away is a cop out. Grow a sack. Explain to me why you did that to me. Why you separated me from others who are like me, why you left me. I deserve to know. You owe me at least that much since you took everything else away from me that should have been my fucking birthright. I can't even imagine what it would be like to live your life knowing that you gave your own child away. I don't care how many "circumstances" surrounded you, I am a fucking person- a living, breathing, capable, wonderful person. I deserve to know why you did what you did.
I know who my Father is. So that makes it easier for me to forgive you, BUT, I still don't like you. This will be no different for you seeing as how you never knew me from the beginning, and you don't have to try now to make up for all those years. You can just curl this piece of paper up in your little fist and throw it away, just like you did to me when I was born that day- just toss this out like an old magazine. Have a nice life you cold hearted bitch.

No one,  who's a someone

The Voices that Brought me to 13

While lying under the soft, thick covers of the twin bed I was very uncomfortably and against my will, but insisted upon sharing with my daughter, Sarah, on Valentine's Day during a sleep over at my aunt and uncle's house, I had a great and wonderful feeling come over me from something that most people would find small and insignificant. I was lying there, straight as an arrow, blindly looking straight up at a seemingly never ending ceiling. Without vision correction, I am legally blind, I just recently learned at an optometrist visit. I laid there stiff as a board as if I was a corpse in a coffin six feet under with saddened family members stomping on the ground above me. There was no room for elbows or bent knees because of the impending little arms and legs that curled up beside me, leaving me practically dangling from the edge. As I laid there, thinking about the day that had ended and mentally preparing for the future 6:30am alarm, I was lucky enough to have a feeling come across me that many people probably wish they had more often.

I felt like I was again at home, not my current home I share with Sarah, but my parent's home that I grew up in- that home that they sold in 1999. That was the home that we grew up in. This feeling that was spreading throughout my body and mind was almost overwhelming. And what it stemmed from, was something routine and ordinary, but to me, was out of the ordinary, and felt extraordinary.

You know how sometimes when you are lying in bed and your eyes are open, but the room is pitch black, and you are somehow mentally transported to your childhood bedroom by just the way the light is hitting a wall? You lay there imagining your closet door hanging open with its built in blinds that as a child you always envisioned was concealing some form of monster or ghost. And you can picture your chest sitting there against the wall right beside your bed draped with your trinkets and childhood jewelry box or mementos that your grandfather who died when you were 13 had given you, but somehow during your lifetime you managed to regrettably lose. Perhaps they were stolen by a friend or worse, your brother's friend. Perhaps  misplaced in a move and unknowingly left in a dusty moving box in the attic, and had you known they were there, they might be currently sitting proudly atop your new dresser that you bought yourself with your first real paycheck from your first real salaried job. Whatever the scenario might be for you, you know that you will never forget your childhood bedroom no matter how many times you might paint it a disastrous orange or adorn it with unsightly hair band posters which rivaled a neighboring Kirk Cameron in a blue blazer and white t-shirt poster, all stuck to the walls with some yellow, greasy silly putty knock off that never really did the trick, so you resorted back to the old stand by- scotch tape. It worked every time.

As I was frozen, mentally trans juxtaposed in my alternate reality that now mostly provides me with fond memories, there was nothing I could do to get myself out of this state of mind. There was nothing I wanted to do. I enjoyed it. It was like I was 13 again, only I was happy.

My early teen years were particularly painful because of mean girls at school mostly, accompanied by the obvious hormonal changes that alter even the sweetest of little girls' demeanour, and there were days I felt like committing suicide. I would never do that, but the thought of being dead meant not having to deal with mean three-way calls and sitting down at the lunch table and having every single person at the table get up and walk away. I will never forget how painful that was. Those people who stood up with their brown lunch trays probably don't even remember doing it, maybe they don't even remember my name.

What brought me back to that awkward time of my life, minus the awkward, was something so trivial. I could hear from downstairs the voices of my Aunt Linda, my Mom, and my Uncle Neil. They were talking and the TV was almost drowning out their conversation. That's all it was- the sound of men and women talking that was traveling up the stairs to my room above. It's been almost fifteen years since I have been in an upstairs room and heard adults talking below me. The house that my parents bought after we moved from that house didn't have an upstairs room that I slept in. I mostly slept in the basement apartment or on the same level as they did.

Who would have thought that something so small, so insignificant, would have invoked such feeling. I would love to have that feeling everyday. But as it is, I don't think I will. It felt good to reminisce though. I love moments like that. You can't replicate the feeling of family. You can, however, appreciate what you have when you have it. It's in those moments that I feel most alive, most grateful.

Something came over me

I was sitting on my couch yesterday afternoon, friends on both sides of me, one with his hand on my knee, occasionally giving me the it's ok pat, an extremely nice gesture considering we had known eachother for less than 24 hours. We were reading one of the letters to my birthmom that I had online, but hadn't mailed.
Something struck me this time. For some reason, I couldn't read it aloud without my throat cracking, and tears welling in my eyes. I was overcome with emotion that I hadn't previously felt. It felt like something was crushing my heart capillary by capillary. It was somewhat reminiscent of what it feels like talking about my Dad now. He suddenly died two years ago of a heart attack while watching a movie with my Mom at home on the couch. It's hard for me to talk about without being flooded with emotion.
When Dad died initially I wasn't like what most people would imagine someone would be having lost a loving parent and at only 33 years young. I was not torn up and distraught, crying myself to sleep on my favorite childhood "lovie", nor withdrawn from society, and quietly drinking myself into oblivion. I have never been accused of being quiet in any way, shape or form.
I was somehow the strong one when Dad died.
I had to be. My mom, who is always the strong one had fallen short of her well-reknown motherly distinction. She is not a crier- never has been, never will be I suppose, at least not in front of me, nor anyone else for that matter. I may be able to count the number of times I've seen her cry on one hand. That's not to say that she doesn't cry. She just doesn't do it as often as most people who sit down to pee do.
And who knows how people handle pain without shedding tears? I can't understand it. Tears are a natural reaction to pain. Aren't they? Physically or emotionally, and they are in cahoots, it is evident one way or another that you experience pain.  It is true that when you have deep emotional trauma, better known as depression, you feel physical pain.
Am I going through a stage? This might be something I could consult a phychiatrist on, or even better, WebMD- that would be the cheaper route. I'm not sure it would be better though.

VD is finally gone.

I unassumingly let VD (my humorous declaration of Valentine's day), pass by again, but not first without my sending cutesy cards to people I love first. In theory, I covered my bases, and did what I should have done, except one major thing. I didn't send the letter. It's still sitting in my free Columbia Management black faux leather zippered notebook that managed to end up somewhere in the middle of the heaping pile of junk mail and miscellaneous tax documents on my kitchen counter, amass all of the other random papers that should be filed away neatly in some labeled manila folder in a dusty, black fire-proof file cabinet that looks like it was born in the middle of WWII and sold at a general store somewhere in the back of the store near a bathroom.
I think I may have mentioned that because some pipe in my house has decided to have an upheaval and somehow roused all the other pipes to rebel again the rest of the house with him, my house is a wreck- more than normal. My peaceful chaos is now complete chaos, and the only real room in the house that I can find any peace is the bathroom- which I guess, in truth, is not too far from how it normally is anyway. Come to think of it, I'm not so sure why I've let this pipe and water issue rule my psyche the last few weeks, which is creeping into a month now, to think about it even further.
My toaster has come down off it's high horse atop the fridge, and is now meandering with the lowly appliances, like the broken microwave, and the clock radio. My 15 cookbooks which did nothing for me, but thin out my bank account- they were mostly impulse buys, are now scattered across counter space that normally would be reserved for the paper, and since the paper space is being used for that, the papers have made their way to the kitchen table, so the table, as of recently, has not been used for its original design. This whole thing has thrown off my life as I know it. Just one little angry pipe has caused this total disruption.
Anyone who says that life is not a byproduct of cause and effect is a fool. I think that guy with the crazy haircut and mustache was right when he laid out his theory of relativity. One doesn't have to be a scientist to discover that when one thing is broken it causes other things to be affected.
I'm not going to gripe anymore about this problem. The way I see it, and if I keep telling myself this out loud and online, I think it will finally soak in, and be true. If this is the worst problem that I have to worry about, I should be thankful. Yes, I am thankful that I was able to buy a house at at time when most others could not. I got the house that I wanted at the price that I wanted, and I have poured more money than Trump has in his ankle wallet at any given moment,  into said house to make it home.
I haven't been writing much lately either, but I don't know if that is a byproduct of my current housing disarray or of laziness. I'll choose the ladder to keep it honest.
I thought about mailing a letter to my birth mother as Karen suggested for VD. But it was a fleeting thought, just being honest again. I never put any real and quantitative effort into picking out a card and looking for the handwritten, on a piece of white printer card stock,  letter I wrote, than spans the front and back of the page, partially because I already knew where it was. I guess I can maintain that not all is unraveled through this temporary housing set-back. I might have to write another letter because thinking back now, it might be slightly accusatory, and against the proper rules of engagement as deemed by every adoption agency in the country and probably world. People are people no matter from which continent you find yourself breathing air. We all have hearts. We all have minds. We all hopefully have a heart mind connection and if we don't we should be locked up somewhere and labeled with a reactive attachment disorder diagnosis.
Back to the letter. I might have some free time tonight after I get home from this incredible night that I am lucky enough to embark on later today that involves lifting up teenage moms. I am very excited to learn from these young mothers. I was asked to be a mentor to one of them for the night, and possibly ongoing, I'm hoping anyway. And even though I'm supposed to be the one who is leading this young girl who I am paired up with, I have a strong feeling that I will learn more from her than I might be able to teach her. Just when you think you will be the one sharing with someone else, you find out they are sharing more with you. I have learned that lesson many times over. I am happy to be a part of something wonderful, and like I said a thousand times, and like you probably hate to read it, if you don't have a church that you are involved with and crave to go to, you need to find one. Don't let another day go by. People who love God are happy people, and people who are involved in making others happy, lead happy productive lives. We go back to the theory of relativity. Thank you Einstein for pointing out the obvious but making it more complex than DNA. We go back to my adoption. Ain't life grand?

The call that got the ball rolling

After reading parts of my blog, those posts pertaining to my adoption, I realized that there are large volumes of information left out. While it has been fairly easy to document  my feelings on the matter, I realized I have failed at presenting the facts. So, in light of that, I will describe how it came about that I found out who my birth mother is. This is a story that is quite incredible.
 Let's go back to the night when I was at mom's house sitting down at her dining room table with a notepad and a pencil frantically taking down the words that rolled off of Debi's tongue.
Debi is the wonderful angel who took her time to find out who my birth mother is. She is the one who stayed up until 5am when she had to be at work at 8am on many occasions mind you. Risking losing her job, she allowed me to call her at work during our narrowing down sessions. Was it this school? Was it that school? What we didn't know in the beginning, until I found out an exact year anyway, was that the key for us finding out a name would be in the birth mother's fifth grade report card.
What a lot of people don't understand about closed adoption is the power of anonymity. When they say the records are sealed, they mean it. The amount of people that actually have names to go by is even smaller than the chances of having a story that ends happily ever after.
As Debi told me that I needed to sit down because she had a name, I was in shock and amazement as I recall. But once I had her name, I don't remember what I felt. Was it numbness? I don't know. But whatever it was, it wasn't what I had imagined. I didn't feel like a huge weight was lifted off. In fact, I felt more unsure- until I spoke to Barbara.
Barbara is the birth mother's best friend with whom she grew up. They lived in the same neighborhood, and pushed their baby dolls in their little baby doll strollers down the lane together when they were toddlers. They grew up to become women together, and knew each other probably like you know your best friend- complete with her idiosyncrasies, and  occasional irritating behaviors, both of which you patiently tolerate because in truth, you love your best friend. But as is with most best friends, there comes a time when you grow apart. There comes a time when you change and the other does not, when you move on, and the other stays. I have just recently come to a cold and stark realization that friendships do not last forever like some might say. In fact, they last for seasons, and with good right. No one stays the same, and if you do for a long amount of time, you're probably complacent, stagnant.  Someone said once, the only permanent thing is life is change. I concur.
They grew apart, Barb and Colette. One went to college at one school, the other, elsewhere. As many friends who live in different cities do, they slowly stopped talking on a  regular basis. They didn't know what was going on in each others lives. They didn't tell each other about the latest news around the dorm. What difference did that make now? By now, they were living in different dorms since the last time they spoke of it. Who was dating who was not a daily conversation, nor who in the family had done what to the other family member- both pretty common daily conversations,  but those weren't taking place anymore. They were living their lives now- separate, like many of us do these days. The grew up. They got married. They had kids. They got divorced, and moved on again.
So, what was so amazing to me besides the fact that Debi got lucky and just so happened to call Colette's best friend and point blank asked if she knew a girl who was 5'7, weighed 120, had thick dark brown hair, green eyes, had a sister who was a physical therapist, and a brother who was newly married (in 1976), and on and on, what amazed me even further, was that she knew about the pregnancy.
After all, they had gone their separate ways. Why would she know about it? How could she know? She wasn't a staple in her life anymore. She didn't have Saturday morning bike rides with Colette anymore, or bump into her at the gas station.
Colette told her a few years later, as I recall her telling me,  while they were on a beach trip. The wine got to flowing and so did the lips. I'm sure Colette felt the need to tell someone. It was a secret from most everyone, even her own brother from what I was told.
How could one keep a baby a secret? To me, that's like having a baby and throwing it in the trashcan. It's similar to having an abortion- no one knows except the ladies you share the waiting room with, and then you're done. It's like nothing ever happened. What baby? Huh? I'm not pregnant.
When Debi asked her the questions, she immediately said, "I know her. I know exactly who you're talking about."

Debi had a picture of me that she had copied from my FB page, and emailed it to Barb while she was still on the phone with her. Her jaw dropped and she said, "Oh my God, that is Colette, revamped. If I didn't know it, I would have thought that was her."
Can you imagine what this felt like to me? Just hearing someone say that someone else looked like me, was amazing. My daughter, I'm told by many people doesn't look like me. Occasionally, I'll meet some saint who tells me that we look just alike, and I hug that person, and they probably think I'm weird. So to hear someone say that I look exactly like someone else made me ecstatic. It brought tears to my eyes, and I lost my breathe again. I had to look around the room for some kind of sign that maybe God was at work in my life in that moment. Maybe, just maybe, that feeling that I had, was His sign. This is such a small part of the grand story, but had such profound impact on me, that I had to tell you.
Barb agreed to speak with me on the phone. I called her, and what did I say you're thinking. I told her,  "thank you so much for letting me call you." Then the probing began. What is she like? What does she look like? Do you have a picture of her that you could send to me? She did, but it was too fuzzy, and I couldn't see it. And the other one she sent was one of them as little girls with their strollers. We could have been twins.
I immediately felt like I knew Barb. She was very easy to talk to, but I think she was extremely unsure if what she was doing was right or justified. She told me that Colette was, "easy to know, fun, but serious when the time came to be serious, professional at work, laid-back, etc" And she said some thing that Colette  had remarked on that sounded eerily like something I would have blurted out a time or two, that she was "living in sin." She was referring to her live-in boyfriend. Before the Lord, I think I have said that about myself before, when I was living with Justin, and clearly, we were and still are, both single, and at the time marriage didn't play a role in the consideration of living together for either one of us. My views have since changed. I know how hard relationships are, and I'm not willing to live with someone and go through that hard work until I meet that man who wants to cram a ring on my fat little Vienna sausage finger because it's not until then that I will know that he is serious about making it work, and I'm not settling for less.
Since our conversation that night, we have had a few more on the phone, and a few via Facebook. She even sent me some handmade, by her, Swarovsky crystal earrings for Christmas that are quite stunning. I was happy to receive them. I tried to ask for her address to send a thank you card, but she hasn't responded to my texts or Facebook messages until yesterday. And it was not a good response.
I had just asked her what was going on. She had told me that her and her husband had some issues, well mostly her husband did, and she put up with abusive behavior. Frankly, I was worried that he had hurt her physically. When she responded she said, she didn't know anything, that it was out of her hands, and that it was up to me, and that a lot was going on with her life. The way she said it was very frazzled and upset. I hope she is OK. I reminded her that Jesus wants to help us all, even when we feel like he doesn't or when we feel like we aren't worthy.  I'm sure that hearing some 35 year old's advice on dealing with problems is the last thing she wanted to hear. But it was probably the best thing she needed to hear, so I don't mind offending her on God's behalf, as if He needs me to root for Him. Nevertheless, I wanted to let her know that there is something much bigger than her current problem. I need to remind myself that in a lot of instances, practically everyday. And it is practical for everyday thinking and living.
That's the beauty of being a Christian for me. I can't do anything to make God love me any more than he already does. It's by His grace that we all are saved, not by anything that we did to earn it. It's not an easy concept to grasp and believe for many people because we live in such a merit based society. I partially blame our excessive need for control and understanding, for if you don't understand, you can not have control. Faith comes into play heavily here. If you do not have it, you will never reach the kingdom of heaven.
I think she is not telling me the whole truth. I guess she probably got an earful from Colette, when she told her that she had spoken to me, when they met at that funeral last month. We all know how funerals run a gamut of  out of the ordinary conversation, mostly stemming from the obvious life shattering events that brought people together in the first place. I don't know it all, but we'll see. More to come.

Writing takes a back seat

I had a fractional hiccup in my day to day routine, if you dare call anything in life routine. It's nothing that prayer and cussing can't heal. I just wanted to let you know that I am still contemplating the actual snail mail drop (of the letter). I am pretty sure that Colette knows about my knowing. The cat has been let out of the bag. I feel certain. She is probably freaking out about now, just like I was when I found out about her. It's taken me a quarter of a year to decide whether or not I even want to involve her in my life. Who's to say that she doesn't have equally amounted hesitation and some initially, I'm imagining, denial.

I need to read more on the topic. So, I just wanted to put it out there, that I am still in cold pursuit, because it's definitely not hot at this point, still in pursuit of finding some people like me in the world, people who resemble me, and are obnoxious like me. Wait, let me think about that one. I don't like obnoxious people. That's funny isn't it. I think I just realized something about myself.

I have an interesting story to divulge. It involves another reunion. For some great reason, I am constantly put in front of people who have stories to tell of reunions. Maybe God wants me to write a book about reunions. Hmmmmm....I will write it later tonight, provided I get my laptop from my house. It's an eye-opener. And who doesn't like those?