Tag Archives: poverty

Love In the Ghetto — It Almost Feels Like Spring

Posted on by Standard 21
But Ebony set him straight!

But Ebony set him straight!

For those of you who are my friends on Facebook, you probably are aware that last night, we had yet another shooting here at the apartments I live at. Police were everywhere, and a helicopter was used to locate the shooter. I wasn’t really bothered by it other than a bit concerned for Rebekkah, who had gone out with some friends. Thank God for cell phones.

This morning, I looked up how it all turned out last night, figuring it would be good common sense to know if a rabid, gun-wielding gang member was shacked up somewhere close. Below is the article I found, and I’m sorry, but this is just humorous to me.  And they said romance was dead!!!

:-)

Tulsa Teen Jailed In Boyfriend’s Shooting – NewsOn6.com – Tulsa, OK – News, Weather, Video and Sports – KOTV.com |.

“Tulsa police arrested a 19-year-old woman for shooting her boyfriend Friday night at the Prescott Woods Apartment complex, 61st and Peoria. Officers were already at the complex when they heard gunfire, according to Sergeant Ryan Woods of the Tulsa Police Department.

“Some of our gang officers were in the area as well,” Woods said. “They located the victim that had been shot once.”

The man, who had been shot in the torso, told officers his girlfriend Ebony Hill shot him during an argument after he told her he was going to sleep with another girl. 

Hill was booked into the Tulsa County Jail on a complaint of shooting with intent to kill.”

Best advice I could give any man around this area of town is to not assume your dealing with a girl schooledthat doesn’t carry a gun and isn’t willing to pop one off in yo’ a$$.
Dude was schooled!
LOL!!
– Bird
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One More Rant Before I’m Finished With These People

Posted on by Standard 16

This week, I had a conversation that left me annoyed and wondering why it is always poor people that threaten to get their lawyers

Yep. He still tries occasionally.

Yep. He still tries occasionally.

right on your butt. Chef’s girlfriend doesn’t seem to be the sharpest knife in the drawer, and now I’m getting an idea where she gets her weird ability to blame HER affair with my husband on ME. You are probably as sick of this subject as I am, but bear with me through one final rant about the insanity that my life was a few months ago. Call this a mental health post, if you will.

T’s mother, B, is just as appalled as I am that her daughter took up with a married man ( who is older than she is), and about once every two weeks, she tries to call me. I never answer her calls because really, what is there to say? I don’t want to chat with my husband’s girlfriend’s mother. Plus, I can never really follow what the woman is trying to say, except that she blames this whole sordid mess on Chef, and gives her daughter every excuse in the book for it not being her fault, including blaming their affair on me. What the h…….?

Here’s the thing. T is 29, as of yesterday. She is a Christian, and knew that what she was doing was wrong. Chef is to blame, but so is she. They’ve had a rather public thing going on since at least February of this year. That was long before I knew about it. That’s all I have to say about the matter. However, I don’t really understand why, but B somehow thinks that some of this crap her daughter has pulled is my fault too, and I just don’t want to hear it. This week, she cleverly restricted her number and called me looking for Chef’s phone number. I use my cell number for work, so I have no choice but to answer numbers during the day that I don’t recognize, and to say I was less than thrilled to hear from her is an understatement. She rattled on, and I hung up.

Later in the week,  she (T’s mom) sent me a text saying she forgives me and my family for everything. What??? I texted her back asking what that meant. Why should she be forgiving me? She told me to go to my husband’s house and try being nice to him from now on, and then he would take me back. She insisted that my problem was that I wasn’t appreciating my family enough. Seriously?

Wow. This is him in a nutshell.

Remind me again…why do I want him back?

Listen. I tried everything when all of this was blowing up. I tried being nice, understanding, and supportive. I tried being mean, angry, and insulting. I tried every emotion in the book, and guess what? Nothing worked because the one thing I wouldn’t do was let him have all my money to use on drugs. And since that is what T is doing now, I have no chance of “winning” him back. He has exactly what is important to him, and it wasn’t important to him who provided him with what he wanted. He isn’t in love with T; he’s said pretty insulting things about her when she got a little perturbed with him about his conduct. He isn’t in love with me, either. He wants his drugs. Period.

Why would I want to reconcile now? He has chosen a course in his life that doesn’t work for me. I don’t want to be an addict, nor do I want to be married to one. I don’t want to always be worrying about where my next fix will come from, or deal with him when he is in the throes of the same worry. I don’t want to have to move from place to place because I don’t pay my bills. I don’t want to take care of someone who won’t work. I don’t want to take care of someone who doesn’t want to get well. So, I haven’t tried to get him back lately,  because if we couldn’t succeed in this relationship when he kind of cared about it, we certainly won’t make it now that he’s obliterated any trust I can ever have in him. The time of Chef and Bird is just over, and I’m making a new life for myself. I would like the people from my old life to stop calling me. Enough. It is over.

To say I feel total forgiveness for T and her family would be a big, fat lie. I’m really humiliated and embarrassed by a woman carrying on behind my back with my husband. I’m embarrassed by the lies he told her about me, and I’m really rather appalled that T thinks that somehow she can write her scriptures and testimony of undying love for the Lord on Facebook while flaunting her adulterous union with my husband to everyone around her. Somehow, she has justified her position in her own head, and I have no choice but to accept that. I struggle less with forgiving Chef…I consider him sick. Plus, I have loved that guy for decades. But to have this person he cheated with send me apology texts that try to justify her position by making me a poor wife is sometimes a bit too hard to take. Having her mom do it for her is enough to make my brain bleed. I will eventually move into complete forgiveness, but these random texts aren’t helping. Leave me alone.

There is always room for improvement in any marriage, and I am no exception. But it is a pure falsehood to say that I deserved my divorcehusband’s infidelity. No where in the Bible does it give a man permission to cheat on his wife, no matter what she is or isn’t doing. Ask Hosea. I’ll have to live the rest of my life with the parts of this I’ve done wrong, but I’m not going to fold up and die, and I’m not going to  make you feel better by accepting that some random adult woman couldn’t help herself from cheating with Chef because I was neglecting his needs. Nope. That isn’t what happened at all. I neglected to feed his drug habit, and she didn’t. She wins in this losing game right now, but I’m winning in the overall battle each day I don’t have to deal with all the pain and worry that comes from living with an addict who can’t shake his addiction. I am sad for Chef, and I want him to get the help he needs, but  I think if I’ve proven one thing in all of this, it is that you can’t help someone who just doesn’t want to be helped. Chef has to want to get clean. He just doesn’t right now. Period. Should he die of his use at this point, I don’t need to feel guilty. The question is, should you? Ignoring a bad habit such as this one is dangerous. How will you feel if he dies? Gets arrested? Goes to prison? These are the questions that would haunt me continually when we were still together, and I unfortunately don’t have the talent of laying my blame on other people. I own my own guilt, and those were the  problems that would haunt me all the time. Even now, I know I would struggle with the “what if’s” should something happen to him, but I also know that I waged one hell of a battle against all of this happening to both of us, and I have that to fall back on. It’s just out of my hands, now.

When I got sick of B’s texts, I finally wrote her a rather chastising one of my own about her daughter being the one who needs to be asking forgiveness, along with some angry referrals to some of her other messages to me (all without profanity, I’d like to note), and I got a call from T’s dad. Of course, I didn’t answer, but his message informed me that I needed to not be texting B or he’d call his lawyer. My first reaction was to be angry. I didn’t open up this dialogue! Then I started chuckling because it seems to me that it is always people who can’t afford a loaf of bread that throw around lawyer threats. Remember, I had to lend this family $500 to pay their rent, but now he’s going to pay a lawyer to make me not reply to texts that his wife sends me? Oh please. I wish I had enough money to afford a phone that blocks phone numbers. Forget lawyers. I have quite a list of numbers I’d like to never hear from again. Still, the threat was ludicrous, and I finally just turned the stupid phone off and enjoyed the rest of my day.

I know the T Family follows my blog, obviously for other reasons than what most people do, so I want them to know that I don’t want to hear from them. What is done is done. If you think this is my fault, suck it up. I don’t agree. I’m not going to help put Chef in prison so your daughter has to come home. I’m not going to apologize for not being nice to him and trying to win him back. The man, and your kid, are your problem now. Stop writing/calling me. And oh, please! Spare me your lawyer threats! I can’t believe you even bothered with that! It would mean so much more if I didn’t have the fourteen messages from B on my phone!!!! Are you kidding me??

Anyways, I’m sick of talking about this crap, so I’ll write another post later about how you meet love connections in the most random of places… :-) I have a date tonight, so I’m outta here! Have a nice Sunday afternoon!

– Bird

Broken Girl

Posted on by Standard 134

 

Sometimes, when I begin to write on this blog, I worry about hurting God‘s reputation. I love my God; I love every single thing about Him, even the stuff that hurts me. I never want to give His name a black eye. So, lately, I haven’t been writing much because I’m sad, angry, hurt, and scared. All the things that a child of God probably shouldn’t feel if they really, honestly trust Him. But I’m flawed to a spectacular degree, and right now, I would just do anything to know Chef might come home again someday. But, on the other side of that, I know he probably won’t. Free will just sucks, wouldn’t you say?

But honesty is a virtue, especially in this lying, broken world we live in, and since I can feel Him pushing me towards this blog, I’ll write.

God, I love my husband. I have all of these good memories of him over the past two decades, and the fact that he is gone is just so painful, sometimes I think I’m just going to drown in the sadness. I keep thinking that tomorrow will be better, and in a way, it is. I don’t break down and cry as much, but I’m really freaked out because I can’t pay my bills, my kids are really sad, my son also has an addiction he can’t shake, and I can’t fix any of it. What a time for God to manifest His power, right?

I hate living here now, because I’m haunted by the fact that I could possibly run into Chef with his new girlfriend(s), and I will have to see what my lack of courage has wrought. A year ago, I should have kicked him out and made him hit rock bottom, but I didn’t because I loved him so much. I didn’t want him to experience any pain, and by protecting him, I only destroyed what I loved so much. I will mourn this forever.

Today, I’m trying not to get evicted from my home. I’m trying to find a rehab for the poverty-stricken for my poor son, who isn’t handling his father splitting all that well. I’m trying to pretend to be optimistic for Cait, who is on leave from the Air Force, all the while, saddling Rebekkah with half of the bills. I am lost. I feel shoved aside because I am no longer young, needy because I need help, and I have no pride in anything anymore.

So, there you have it. Bird is broken. Make of it what you will.

– Bird

 

 

 

Ghetto Living

Posted on by Standard 41

 

Since I met Chef 20+ years ago, this man has always made sure I live in some very nice homes in some affluent neighborhoods. The kids were given their own rooms as much

No, I didn’t live in anything like this. But it is really awesome though, isn’t it??

as possible; they attended good schools, and we lived in security and stability. And then the economy tanked, I got laid off from a very well-paying job when the company I worked for moved to Georgia, and Chef ended up having to take a job that didn’t pay half of what he usually earned. And we found ourselves relegated to adjusting our standard of living and moving just across the street from the dividing line in Tulsa that separates the North side and the South side — Admiral Place.

Now, of course, unless you live in Tulsa, you aren’t really going to know what that means. But every large city has a part of it where us poor people live, and a place where the not-so-poor live, with a gray area in between that houses the mid-level incomes. And, about a year and half ago, Chef and I moved to the ghetto…lol. And frankly, it is just so much more fun than living in the large, boring houses I’m used to living in.

I’m pretty good with money, and I have had to live in poverty during my childhood, and with my first husband, so I know how to make my pennies scream. But Chef is not used to this kind of financial bind, and it was enough to make his head explode. When he looked at the houses we could afford easily, he rejected them all. Finally, I picked one out that had possibilities, as he put it.

Thanks to the club, it was painted, had new windows installed, and had some carpentry work done, all for nothing but the cost of the supplies. My landlord actually cried when I showed him the improvements. My neighbor is going to install an automatic garage door opener. Just for the price of a door he bought on clearance for $150. And, if you ask Chef these days how he likes our home, he’ll be the first to admit that it is nice not having to compete with the Joneses next door, or sell a kidney just to make utility payments. Our cars look like everyone else’s on our street; our dogs look the same as theirs, and no one flips out if the dogs pee in the wrong yard or the cat sits on a neighbor’s car. And my neighbors are friendly, kind, and always quick to lend a helping hand. We are all just working stiffs, and I just love that camaraderie.

lol….How true.

I live down the street from a Walmart that seems to just attract gunmen, crystal meth cooks,  and gang members, a bar that attracts some really, really lonely men, which in turn, attracts the Working Girls, and across the street is their working venue, a roach motel. This part of Tulsa never sleeps. I’ve seen a guy running from the police cut through my back yard, and last week another guy hid in my neighbor’s yard, trying to allude law enforcement. I’ve had a homeless girl knock on my door to get out of the rain, and I cooked her lunch, and put her in a hotel for a night. Because I live in the area that I do, the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormon regularly knock on my door, and frankly, I’m starting to recognize their faces, and I even wave at them when I drive by now.

The guy that mows my lawn found some snakes in my yard, and one really large rat was living in the dog house. No, I’m not kidding. :-)

You know, I am really loving this, much to my husband’s complete astonishment. I guess you can move the girl out of the trailer park, but not the trailer park out of the girl. And every time I see something odd, or meet someone who is having a hard life right now, I’m reminded that the Lord Jesus was poor, and if you ask me, He seemed to prefer to hang with us poverty-stricken. There is just so much more to laugh about. You will never really appreciate the good things in life until you’ve gone without, and I’ve gone without plenty of times. I have cable, when for a period of my life, I didn’t even have a television set. I have a cell phone, when there was a time, I didn’t even have a home phone. Internet when I never had a computer before.  I have central air/heat, when I once lived in a home that had neither.

Yes, I may be living in the ghetto, but I’m blessed to have so much.

My husband and I are well on the way to a stronger, happier, more peaceful relationship. Financially, my new job has made a lot of difference.

My neighbor installed my doggy door, and now Sebastian and Milo have the freedom to rule the world, as they’re inclined to believe that they do. And Suzie and Jake no longer have to exercise miracle bladder control while I’m at work all day.

And best of all, in about three weeks, both my daughter Caitlyn, who is stationed in Japan, and Rebekkah, who has been in Texas taking care of her grandparents, are coming home. My son Dj just got back from Texas, and for the first time in too long, all my children will be in one place. Thank you, Lord!!

 

Life is good!

– Bird

 

 

 

 

Seriously, Just How Important Is A Birthday?

Posted on by Standard 87

Updated: See My Goofy Picture at the Bottom

Today is my birthday.

I don’t say that so everyone makes a big deal about it. I only mention it because I’ve been thinking lately about why most of my life I’ve spent this particular day each year waiting to see who would remember, yet avoiding the internet, telephones, and the mail. What an odd thing to do, now that I really think about it. And on the back of a motorcycle yesterday, I had plenty of time to dissect why I hate most holidays, but especially Christmas and my birthday.

Growing up, my birthday always fell around the time that we were packing up and moving to a new place. My mom was a master packer/mover, and it literally took her one day to get us organized, packed, and loaded. Frankly, it was kind of an incredible sight, but it was also kind of depressing for me. We almost never stayed anywhere long enough for me to make friends, and being a “summer” birthday girl, there weren’t any birthday parties, with the exception of my sixteenth birthday. And,  I am pretty convinced that my Aunt Pamela was behind me actually having a Sweet 16 party, not my mom. We happened to be living in Harlingen for that birthday, and for once, I had quite of few friends from the private school that I had known since we were all small. I remember my Aunt Pam asking me what I wanted to do to celebrate my birthday that year, and I have no idea what my answer was. What did it matter what I hoped for? I figured we’d get a cake and some ice cream, they’d sing to me, and I’d get a present from my Aunt and Uncle and my Grandmother. All of these things were more than we ever did when we lived away from my mom’s sister and mother. Most of the time, Mom would bake a cake a few days after my birthday, promising that the next year would be better. But when it came to my aunt, she wouldn’t dream of not getting me a present. She was always good about things like that.

I knew my mom wouldn’t be able to afford a gift for me for this birthday either, but would promise that next year would be better. Growing up, I can count the gifts I’ve gotten for my birthday on one hand. And most of them came from other family members, but not my mom or stepfather.

It isn’t about the gifts or parties for me, though. It was about feeling special…like someone was glad that you’d shown up in this world, and wanted you to know it. And so, each year was a painful reminder to me that even mom didn’t think much about the day I showed up in this world…And I was her First Born Kid!! In fairness to my mom, though, she was from just as broken a childhood as me, and her family didn’t make a big deal about her birthday either. I think she’d be surprised to know that I always felt this way, and probably a bit guilty as well. She was raising five children, all very different and very demanding in different ways, plus not getting much help in any of the areas of her life from her husband, all the while making a little bit of money stretch to pay for just the very basic needs we had. Birthdays were just not a priority when it came to all that she was trying to balance.

Believe it or not, I didn’t get bitter about it, even as a kid. It was sad, but normal at my house. I didn’t get parties, but neither did the other kids in my family, and to me that was even worse. My two brothers and two sisters are actually quite a bit younger than me, and to see them disappointed when they were little was just mortifying. They seemed always to hope they would have a birthday party with all of their friends, or wish for a specific toy,  but I only remember them getting one or two parties the whole time I lived there. They did get presents, though. Their grandmother (we have different fathers) was always faithful about sending gifts to them no matter where we were, and as they got older, those presents were pretty much what they would request. And they were always wonderful gifts, so that made the sting of their birthday disappointments less potent. But, for my brother and I, who weren’t the biological grandchildren, it was a rub in our faces. We usually got socks and underwear for presents…A keen reminder that we didn’t belong to that family.

Anyways…enough of the sad stuff..

That Sweet 16 birthday party was a surprise party for me, and it always brings back good and bad memories. The happy memories were that all my friends, including Audra, were there, and my cake was Garfield the cat, and we had a pinata, and I got a lot of presents. The only bad memory was that my step-grandmother asked me if I was a lesbian because she’d never seen me “go around” with a boy. And she wasn’t asking innocently…it sounded like a snide accusation. But, I didn’t know what a lesbian was, and by the time she explained it to me in a way my rather innocent mind could understand, I was so freaked out, it took me sneaking a shot of vodka or whiskey, I forget which,  to calm myself back down..

This isn’t my step-grandmother. It is just a keen likeness of how I remember her….

I never knew my step-grandmother all that well, having only met her a handful of times, so her opinions about me were not only not welcome, but downright insulting!  At first, I sat there with my ears turning red, knowing that if I opened my mouth, no good thing would come from it. But I wasn’t going to let this woman accuse me of anything when she’d only ever even seen me less than 5 times ever. It was the principal of the matter. I started off calmly… I told her I wasn’t allowed to date, so it wasn’t like I could bring guys around. But, I lost control of my calm exterior quickly, and I told her that I’d had a few boyfriends, none of whom I wanted around this f***** up, freak-show of family I was in. By the last words, I was semi-shouting, and standing up. I know. There was nothing Godly about my reaction. I was just hoping to have one nice birthday party, and it seemed like this step-grandmother just wanted to ruin it for me.  All in all, though, it was a pretty tame response considering  I had just found out that there was such a thing as same sex sex, which I evidently gave the impression I was into, by an old woman who I always thought was cold, bitchy, and stuck-up (because she always talked about how much money she had, and how she was going to be buried by her dead husband, not my grandfather). She never did anything for me to reassess my initial opinion of her, and that very moment, she actually proved what I’d suspected since the first time I’d met her..she was just a mean woman; she was attending my party to see if she could ruin it, nothing more.  Even now, I’m surprised by these kinds of people, who take some kind of joy in hurting someone else. It isn’t something I ever want to empathize with though. It is just pathetic to hurt anyone else for amusement or sport.

She was very taken aback at my language, as she considered herself a sophisticated, classy lady, and such language was beneath her breeding (and money, I suspect), but evidently was delighted with the proof that I was indeed trailer trash; as for my insulting our family, that didn’t bother her much as she didn’t much care for us “lesser” members of her new husband’s bloodline, of which she wasn’t part of. But, for my lack of respect when addressing her, she was just livid!! And she informed me that this was why she didn’t spend time with my grandfather’s side of the family. We were rude, crude, and disrespectful. I only heard rushing water in my skull while she lectured on, and in the end, she got the last word  because I walked off while she was still scolding me, heading to the bathroom to analyze what had just happened with this strange old woman, process lesbianism and its ramifications in my universe,  freak a bit about how much trouble I was going to be in when the old hag tattled to my mom about our little spat, and figure out how to steal a shot of vodka so I could go outside and enjoy my damn Sweet 16 birthday party.

I accomplished all of these things, and happily, I never saw my step-grandmother again. My mom was too horrified that someone thought one of her kids was a lesbian to care about anything else that was said or done.  I skated by with only a vague frown about my use of the F word, but I think mom was secretly a little glad someone had finally gone off on the haughty new wife. Mom and my aunt whisked me back to my pinata and the step-grandmother was gone when we went back in the house a little while later. Another thing I think I have my aunt to thank for.. …   :-) Best.Birthday.Party.Ever.

As a mother and a wife, birthdays have gotten much better. My kids never forget my birthday, though Chef has forgotten once or twice, but quickly made up for it. I don’t always get a gift, but it isn’t because no one could be bothered. Gifts don’t matter much to any of us.

But without fail, even with my own little family remembering and celebrating for years now, I’ve always waited to hear from my mom, my dad, or any of my brothers or sisters.

My mom has always forgotten my birthday for at least one day. Always. My dad, who had been missing most of my life, has never forgotten my birthday, but could usually not find me to tell me he was glad I had been born. When he had a way to call me, he always has. I know my dad loves me.

I’ve heard from my sisters on a few occasions (once or twice) over the span of 20+ years, and never from either of my brothers. And always, by the end of the day, I feel sad all over again that most of my childhood family cares so little about me, or even each other. We are all so very broken by that life, we can’t even turn to one another for comfort and encouragement in these new, better lives we’ve made for ourselves.

Almost a decade ago, Chef and I moved here to Tulsa from Texas, and we did something that we normally never did. We started to make friends. We started letting people into our lives. It was very unfamiliar to me, but Chef had missed having friends to hang out with, and I soon began to enjoy the interactions as well. And birthdays suddenly became less of a Waiting For Disappointment days, and more of a day to enjoy the company of friends and family who did actually give a crap that I had been born.

A few years ago, my motorcycle club sisters threw me a surprise birthday party…I literally had no clue they even knew my birth date, much less would bother to get the word out to all the girls, without me finding out!,  and gather for my party from not only Tulsa, but some smaller towns further away.  I was so surprised, I wanted to burst into tears. I did tear up, and then I laughed for the next couple of hours. The whole time I kept thinking about the only other party I’d ever had, and how it had been a surprise party too.

Only this time, there was no mean step-grandmother to make me feel ugly or unattractive, taking pleasure from embarrassing me…

Although there was an actual bisexual at this motorcycle biker chick party, but I already knew what that term meant; I had long ago quit judging other people’s decisions for their own lives, so I didn’t care that a bisexual was at my party; I love that bisexual, because to me she isn’t defined by any one thing about herself — good, bad, or whatever; and she would never do something intentionally to hurt someone else just for fun. And best of all, I got to wear a sombrero, and I totally rocked it. :-)

So, while birthdays started out kind of disappointing for me, they’ve gotten a fresh makeover in my mind over the last few years, and to turn over a new leaf, I’m not going to play the waiting game on a family that forgot me, and each other decades ago. Instead, I’m going to enjoy the people that are in my life now, and that includes all of you — my internet friends.

I don’t know that I’ve ever had any group of people pray for me and my family like you all, and it is without hesitation that I can promise you all know more about my life than any of my extended family does. And yet, you keep coming back, encouraging me, crying when I cry and laughing when I laugh. I appreciate all of you, and will never be able to express how all the kindness has helped me.

I want to thank you all from the bottom of my heart!!!

– Bird

 

PBOL Vickey still had a picture from my party…I’m not photogenic, but I think the sombrero works. Proceed at your own risk….  :-)