. . . . And sometimes, life is great!

As some of you may know, or may have guessed, I struggle with depression at times. Then, when I am out of it, I realize how blessed I am.



I have a wonderful family:

(me, J., my sister, M., my nephew, my niece, her husband and daughter, and my mom and dad)










I have great in-laws:

(Father in law, M., J., Step-mother in law, and my hubby - C.)



I have a husband (who just got a great promotion at work - way to go honey!!) who loves me and will dress up to go to my high school reunion with me even though he most likely won't know anyone there:







I have a daughter who finally got past a mental block on her giants on bars:








I have a teenager who is silly:





I have an 11 year old who is not afraid to drive the 4-wheeler anymore:






I have kids who are silly when they see the camera:

I have the privilege of getting to go to my parents cabin with my family quite often. We get to do things like sit on the porch and enjoy the peace and quiet:

While at the cabin, we sometimes get to have unusual encounters with wildlife:
















We have fun friends. We were able to take some to the cabin with us this summer. While at the cabin with them, we got to enjoy the "twinnage" look of the two teenage girls:





How cool are they?





Their son seemed to read my mind and decided to relax:



However, don't let his sweet innocent face fool you. He's a stinker. He got my younger daughter to hide behind a tree when I was driving toward them on the 4-wheeler. When I got close, they jumped out and scared me. I almost crashed. I almost wet my pants. I almost wet my pants while crashing. They found it hilarious. I did too. Later. After my heart started beating again. I still think he's a great kid - I just want to keep him in my sights. :-)




We got to enjoy watching the kids play in the creek:

















While there, we kept seeing strange creatures that resembled our children, except kinda mushed together:

This strange creature metamorphed into a mixture of different kids:

Then, the metamorphosis continued, with the new creature appearing to sometimes be missing a head or torso:

The creature then began to slowly separate until it became two separate kids again:

When I see my youngest walking with her hands like this, it usually means she has caught some critter and wants to show it to me:

Getting closer:

Ah - a crawdad. I think.

Then, of course, there was the wonderful event on M's birthday, witnessed by many many friends and loved ones. Some of who are pictured here:

(My Mom, MD & his dad RD, C., myself, KG holding little KG, and JC with M. and one of her bestest friends - SE.)

I hope you all enjoyed the pictures and a post that was not so whiny. Please leave a comment! If you do, please remember to leave your name if you sign in as "anonymous." Also, I know it is probably annoying that I use all initials instead of names. I do this for security reasons. When you sign the guestbook, please use initials as well.

Thanks!!!

Sometimes, life just stinks . . . . .

Do you ever sometimes feel like you will never be able to get it together? To get ahead?

This weekend was one of those weekends.

A little history for those of you that don’t know us, C. and I had 2 cats ever since we started our lives together, their names were Oreo and Mocha. Mocha lived for 15 years, Oreo for 17. After Mocha died, Oreo kept sitting on the steps crying. So, C. and I found a pair of Ragdoll cats that were available. We had always wanted one of those cats, so C. went and picked them up. So, then, we had Oreo, Molasses, and Ginger. This last year, Oreo died and we had just Ginger and Molasses. Well, this weekend, we had to have Molasses put to sleep. What stunk so much about this one was that we had to make the decision. We did not have to do that with our others, they died at home.

Last week, Molasses peed on J.’s bed and then on ours. We assumed that he was just wanting more attention because we had started back to school. We started giving him more attention and he did not do it anymore. What we did not know was that he had a urinary tract infection. On Thursday night, he started crying like he was hurt and hissing when he went into the litter box. We took him to the vet on Friday, thinking he was constipated. They said a UTI and that he was having a hard time going. The pulled some urine and relieved his pain. He got a shot to help as well as some antibiotics. Saturday night, we had to take him to the emergency room because he was crying again and not moving around much. He was blocked again. They cathed him and we took him home. We were back at the vet Sunday afternoon for yet another blockage. He was a completely different looking animal by this point. He was raggedy looking and sad looking. The vet said that they could do surgery but that there was no guarantee that he would survive the surgery, that the surgery would work long term, or that he would not suffer long term permanent damage. This non-guarantee would cost us well over $1000. If we did nothing, his bladder would rupture and he would die in excruciating pain. We decided to euthanize him. However, having to look at my girls hearts break as they told him good bye was devastating.

I will forever wonder if we made the right decision. Will my kids be upset at a later date and think that we thought their pet was not worth spending the money on? Will they be angry that we did not try the surgery?

For someone that struggles with depression at times, this is threatening to pull me in. It seems like every time we start to get it together, something else is thrown into the mix. I know that God is good and that there is a reason for everything. I also know that I am so very strong in some ways and so very weak in others. Things seem to keep finding my weak spot.

In the past 5 years, we have:

- moved into a new house
- had the sale of our old house fall through several times, which put us paying 2 house payments for several months
- C. got laid off
- C. was out of a job for 10 months
- Old house finally sold
- Mortgage co. got mad that our payments would be late periodically during layoff period – depending on if we had money or not – so they decided to make us pay 1 ½ payments a month by money order for a year.
- C . finds another job – a definite pay cut – but a job, nonetheless
- I have a hysterectomy
- C. gets a corporate AMEX to pay for travel expenses and supplies, however, expense checks do not come in as quickly as the bills do. We have to pay for expenses with our own money and then use a credit card to pay our bills, which puts us in debt.
- The siding on our house starts to rot and we have to get replaced
- M. gets diagnosed with ADHD
- We have a different type of health insurance for a year. Of course, during that year, mine and M’s meds are not covered, neither are J’s x-rays, physical therapies, MRI’s, orthopedic appointments, etc.
- Lost 3 cats
- We have (obviously) had to ask for financial help quite a few times, which embarrasses me to no end

Okay, now let me finish by saying that I KNOW that there are others that have had it much, much worse. I also know that in this post that I sound whiny and ungrateful, so there is no need to tell me those things. Please leave comments, but only ones that are positive and encouraging. Or ones that can tell me how to hurry and find money to cover the checks that I wrote for all of the vet visits this weekend.

I really just needed to vent.

Also know that I am working on a post to follow up on this to focus on the other side, that life can be amazing at times too.

Thanks for reading!