My life has been an awesome adventure complete with its share of action, adventure, and drama. I have had many different roles in my life. First and foremost I am a disciple of Christ. Currently, I am a road-schooling mother of 6, author, blogger, traveler!
I gave up my dream to climb the corporate ladder and become CEO of a fortune 500 company to get married. I gave up my career when he wanted to have children. We then began homeschooling and grew our family. He took his life on Valentine's Day 2008 leaving me a widowed, homeschooling mother of our six beautiful children. God carried me through. I consider myself to be a disciple of Christ and now I'm just following where he leads me and the children.
I am a native Texan or as we prefer, Texian, gone rogue. I don’t like boxes. That is what I think every time there is some box I’m supposed to use to describe myself. I just don’t fit into people’s boxes. You want the nice little about the blogger she lives in state with her adorable children and 2 wonderful dogs and loving husband, she enjoys pottery and long walks. Yeah. Not gonna happen here. I’m sorry. Life’s rough. Sometimes it picks you up, kicks you around a bit and spits you out. You either learn to play the hand you’re dealt, as I often tell my children, or you give up. But…since that’s what you’re expecting we’ll give it a try.
I was born and raised in Texas. Born and bred I used to say, but now I’m trying to be more “refined”. Went to public school which is why I homeschool. Had one brother who disowned our family and changed his name he goes around wearing a kilt and a cat-n-the-hat hat, dyes his beard red and plays Rock Band calling himself the Red Rocker. Me, on the other hand, I always believed you could be pretty or smart and since pretty fades, I think I’ll choose smart. Love Star Trek. Everything Star Trek. Yep…that’s me with the Star Trek ring tones and the Samsung Gear watch with a Starfleet Emblem on it.
Decided to get married when my pen pal that I met on line, before there was an online, thought I was the girl for him. Tried hard to be the good wife but never fit that role the way thought I should. Tried to be the mom when he wanted children. Always thought I shouldn’t be a mom. So we had one child, then two then the third and he was done. But a girl should have a sister or so I thought so I wanted one more to even things out. He didn’t. But God decided to give us one more that pushed him over the edge and beyond. But this isn’t about him. We survived that tumultuous time in life. He rediscovered God or rather God knocked him upside the head really hard and he decided we were going to be the homeschool family, the church family, the ones who help others. That lasted about 5 years and then he killed himself on Valentine’s Day leaving me alone to raise our six kids then 14 months to 14 years! That was thirteen long years ago and a book happened in there from all the fiascos that came from it. Should be published this year if I ever do my approval of the final edits.
Sprinkled in all that family life was the fact that I choose being smart over being pretty, so I pursued a career in computers specifically IT and database development specializing in integrating systems, custom design, even helped teach clients how to use what they had. I’m not so much the if it ain’t broke don’t fix it type as I am the…I’ll bet there’s a better way we could to this type. I did study Industrial Engineering was planning to major in that and minor in Computer Science but again that pen pal decided I was his dream girl and convinced me to throw it all away for him. I did. I won’t say I regret that decision but let’s just say life sure would have been different. Would it have been better? Who knows.
If you know Star Trek then you know Tapestry where Jean Luc Picard wishes he hadn’t made one stupid mistake in his youth so the omnipotent Q grants his wish but then returns him to his life..his new life if he hadn’t made that one mistake. Jean Luc finds out that he is not the man he became. Somehow that one mistake or so he thought was part of who he was. It helped shape and define him and if he removed that incident he regretted he would have to remove more of who he was that would change who he became. My life is like that. When I meet people who eventually find out I’m a widowed mother of 6 raising them alone their first response is, “I’m sorry”. Why? What I say is. Although I wouldn’t have chosen that path, I would want to go through all those hard things again. Where I am now, who I am now is so much better than who I was. I’m stronger, more confident, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Oh wait I’m confusing myself with Superman again. No I’m not super anything. Super annoying at times. Maybe super lazy at others. I’m just human and I thankfully serve a powerful God who never left me no matter how bad things got. Yes, I am a Christian and raising my kids that way. I hope that shows in my life but I’m also flawed. I’m likely to use words I shouldn’t, and I make my homeschool friends shake their heads and “bless my heart” more often than they do with any other homeschoolers in our group. But hey…God knows I ain’t perfect yet. Still trying. Still failing but still believing. So although I wouldn’t wish for those things and I wouldn’t want to go through them again if I had to make the choice of going through it all just like it happened and not changing anything at all knowing that I would become who I am now, I don’t think I would change a thing.
My kids ask me at times. Mom if you could stop dad from killing himself, if you could go back into the past and change things would you? I have to look at them and say. “no”. It isn’t that I didn’t love him. I did even though many times he didn’t deserve it. It is that I look back on who that person was afraid of everything, terrified to leave home for very long, unable to have a conversation with anyone she didn’t know for a very long time, insecure, sometimes loud and obnoxious and no, I don’t want to be her and if stopping him from killing himself would make me go back to being her, I wouldn’t do it. Would I have still matured, grown, blossomed if he hadn’t died? I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. I’m not willing to pull that thread out of my life to find out. This is the hand I was dealt and I will play it until the dealing’s done. I will never fold.
So that’s a little about who I am, where I’m coming from and my view of life. Add to that a mistake marrying the guy who again told me that he thought I was God’s answer to his prayers who turned out to be according to his psychologist a misogynist, alcoholic with borderline personality disorder. Fortunately, God made him leave and I only had to suffer through living with him for about 1 year although we were married for 7. He finally filed for divorce making me one of a handful of divorced homeschoolers in my group. Remember those boxes. Yeah. I never fit in them.
Where are we now? Well after getting really angry over how this world is going to hell faster than you can shake a stick at it, (have you noticed the southern in me yet? Yeah, I was raised with a mom who said things like “cat fur to make a pair of kitchen britches which to this day I do not understand. And I like to use those silly southern things especially when I’m on a tech support call with someone from a foreign country whom I can’t understand. I figure fair is fair. One day I was so frustrated trying to figure out what the heck he was saying I told him I was busier than a one legged man in a butt kicking contest and I didn’t have time for all this bruhaha and I strung together as many of those phrases as I could before I politely demanded that he escalate this call to someone who spoke English because I didn’t understand a word he was saying.) Remember that I’m a Christian but not perfect. Yeah, Tech Support calls that is my weakness. No matter how many times I repeat, be nice to them, they are trying, they need a job, it’s not their fault, I lose it about 98% of the time when I’m on a tech support call and my poor kids…they know when it’s about to happen when I hear them say, “uh oh…I wouldn’t want to be working at XYZ company right now.” But I digress and I do that a lot because you know sometimes…humor is necessary and sometimes life is too difficult and people take themselves too seriously and sometimes you just gotta back off, step back, breathe and crack a joke because if you don’t well you might wind up being on the evening news going “postal” as it used to be called but now mass shootings seem to be much more common place.
Back to where we are now. I got ticked at the system and everything going on around me and didn’t want to pay the electric company any more and the HOA wouldn’t let me put up solar panels and I thought maybe a rain bucket to water the yard with would be better than paying the city for water that they got for FREE in the first place and paying a $100 a month water bill even when we didn’t use any water? and paying $8,800 in property taxes for a home that I owned and being told no I can’t park my RV in front of my house even for one hour while we’re loading it to leave for a trip and we should pack up 7 people into our car and all our stuff and drive an hour out of town across Dallas Fort Worth to put our stuff into the RV then drive back another hour to get another load of stuff because if you have 7 people in a car you can’t hold much stuff and I got so fed up of going to the fastest growing church in America and seeing pastors who sinned big time and their sins were hidden and swept under the rug and pastors were divorcing their wives and all the while we’re pretending we’re the best church out there and our pastors are great and some of them are and some of them are faking it and it just felt more and more like the church was taking a whole lot of money and spending it on fancy big screens and video productions and parties and they weren’t really doing what Jesus said to do. Yeah, they had a tv show that reaches the lost every week. But were they really reaching the lost? Were they really being Jesus or were they just doing what made them feel all churchy?
I always said I loved Texas. I love the Spirit of Texas but I hate the traffic, I hate the heat and it’s pretty dang flat. I like mountains! I always said when my dad dies I’m leaving. I don’t know where I’ll go but you couldn’t get my dad out of his house and I doubt he’d ever come to visit if I moved. But mom she would visit her grandkids anywhere. Well, Dad died in 2015 again in February so we have two wonderful memories in February each year and I asked the kids if they were ready to sell the house and hit the road and they all said YES. Well except that one but we never count his vote anyway because he’s that child if he were the first born…he’d be an only child. He’s that child God gave me so that when I think I’ve got this parenting thing figured out he proves I don’t. When I think all my kids are above average easy to homeschool he proves they aren’t. He’s just that one that God said…here let me stir this pot a little for you because you need a little more character building. That’s what we call it because well that’s what our homeschool group has taught us to call it. Difficulties are here for us to learn from and to grow and they give us an opportunity for our character to grow. Unfortunately, sometimes it winds up with me yelling at the top of my lungs stupid things because I’m totally in over my head with this parenting thing. This won’t be your “mom blog”. In fact, I’ve asked my children 4 of whom are already writing their own books about various things which one of them will write the “Mommy Dearest” book when they’re grown. I am the farthest thing from the perfect mom and my kids are not perfect. We are not bad but we could all be a lot better.
One thing about me is I’m R E A L. I don’t do fake. Ok…I can do fake. I was raised in the Southern Baptist Church so I know how to do fake and hypocritical. But I prefer not to. So my posts are going to sometimes be blunt. They might sting a little at times. They might make you laugh, might even make you cry. Probably not so much on the crying cause honestly this world has enough crap (that’s one of those words my homeschool friends would be saying “bless her heart” about because what else can you call it. Sometimes it’s just a big old pile of CRAP!) and enough sadness and we all need a little more love, encouragement, help, support, and humor.
I have no desire to build a following. I just want to be there for that one person that needs that one thing that I have that one day when they need it. You see in the end. All we can do is one thing at a time. And if I’m doing that one right thing that God wanted me to do that day them I’m good.
I love technology. It’s my weakness. Can’t wait to have a replicator and a transporter. The kids and I ask each other, yes my kids know every episode of Star Trek, we ask if you could only have one, replicator, transporter or holodeck which would you choose. Man, that’s a toughie. I’m hoping and praying those things come about before I die. Now that we can have watches on our wrist that are more powerful than the computer that launched a man to the moon, I think it’s possible. The question will be will we blow each other up before that happens or not. Only time will tell.
So, I hope you now know who is the person behind this blog. I have no agenda here. I don’t intend to blog about parenting. I don’t intend to blog about RVing or technology. My writing is as I am. Undefinable! It won’t fit into anyone’s box.
Before I go I should finish that thought I digressed from. So the kids said yes. I put the house on the market, sold everything we could, gave away the rest, put only photographs, a few personal papers we had to keep, two pieces of furniture my father built because the kids insisted, some camping equipment that wouldn’t fit into the RV and our Christmas ornaments (gave the tree away kept the babbles) and our sewing machine because my daughter wanted it and that was it. Moved it all to Texarkana where we can hop by and get things out if we need to on our way passing from East to West or back from West to East and we hit the road. Yep…38′ class A Fleetwood Expedition 38B to be precise, 6 kids aged 8 – 21, four cats and two dogs. Yes, FOUR cats, TWO, dogs, SIX kids and me. People say, “you’re brave” to which I reply, “you know brave and stupid there’s a real fine line between those two and I’m not always sure what side of the line I”m on.” That was May 1st, 2015. Thank the Lord in Heaven above the house finally sold and we escaped the $8,800 property taxes. So now we live on the road. We boondock, if you see an RV towing currently a red Chevrolet Tahoe with 6 or 7 bikes on it sitting in a Walmart parking lot somewhere in the US of A or maybe even in Canada. That’s most likely us. We haven’t met anyone else yet carrying that many bikes. We have met families full timing with more kids than we have but none with as many bikes. We stay in truck stops, Walmarts, sometimes rest stops and we became new members of Thousand Trails and Coast to Coast both I highly recommend if you want to full time RV so we can now camp in campgrounds with FULL hookups more often than we boon dock and it costs us nothing extra.
I will tell you up front the RV life is wonderful and not so wonderful. So far the wonderfulness has outweighed the $8,800 in property taxes. (Can you tell I really hated to pay that bill every year). It has its good days and bad days. It’s not an endless vacation and yet…it is. I will also tell you I am not the most disciplined person. Bedtime for us can be 2 am or 9 pm. It depends and some days we sleep till noon “bless her heart”. But the kids are learning. They are all happy. Ok..on any given day there are usually more of them happy than not. They are meeting people and getting an education that rivals nothing else in the world. I no longer concern myself with whether or not I have the smartest kids. I concern myself with whether or not my children are leaning how to live life and find some way to be a productive member of society. I want to equip them to make a choice about their life, where they want to live it and not just stay where they were born, not just take the first job that comes along because well that’s what we do and not get bogged down paying for things and being a slave to a 9-5 job or anyone else’s ideas of what they should be doing. I want them to be whom God wanted them to be and we still don’t know what that will look like. But if they are doing what they love and enjoying their life with the ups and downs and these kids have already had some downs but can still smile, then maybe I’m not the worst parent out there.
That’s who I am. Still developing, still being defined, still growing, still failing and still saying that I’m going to get up at 7 am and we’re all going to start our day off with prayer and Bible study and still failing to get that done just about every day. I encourage comments and debate and lively chatter but I will not allow mean, disrespectful or rude comments. I am a die hard Republican so my views will always be tainted towards that and I will vote Trump if I can figure out how to vote when I’m not in Texas in November. God help us but given the choices. I’d rather risk the loud mouth business man than the woman I don’t trust and can’t stand to listen to.
I hope and pray that if you stumbled upon this blog or if you’re one of my friends from back home that you will find something useful or entertaining and that it blesses you and when you get your knickers in a twit that you just say, “bless her heart” and say a prayer for me because I probably need one and don’t take anything too seriously because. Life is short and you don’t know how many days you’re going to get. Nothing is worth getting that angry about (except bad tech support) forgive, you will never forget but you can choose to love anyway and then keep moving forward. Play the hand you’re dealt and play it with your own style and grace regardless of what anyone else things. It’s your hand, not theirs!
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