Unsettled

I was reading blog entries of two people I have come to admire, respect and listen closely to when one site lead me to another and then to another and I came upon Prayforgreenville.org. Watching the animation left me unsettled. It is amazing but a bit more, I do not know I can not find the word for it . . . I am not sure, I just know I was unsettled about something. Maybe that was the purpose of the animation to unnerve people for the sake of Christ's coming. I am new in this walk and still learning and hope and know I will always be learning the rest of my life but I questioned if my faith was strong enough. Enough for what? I am not a radical, I am nonconfrontational and I am humbly grateful for the presence of the Holy Spirit that has saved me this past year and as I continue this walk I know will save me again and again. As you can tell I am having difficulty expressing the effect this site had on me. I can not decide if it is a good effect or not. Like I said, unsettled. Take a moment if you have one, visit this site. Tell me what you feel. Maybe by then I will have regained some of similence of expression.

It's MY party ...

My sister sent me an email the other day letting me know that she would be coming back to NC for my birthday but that it would be the weekend after my birthday because out brother David was having a birthday party for me and his girlfriend Misty. Our birthdays are close together. He also told her that he was coming to Greenville the weekend of my birthday to celebrate. OK so if you remember previous entrees (White Elephant among others) this divorce thing that Aaron wants makes family events sticky. At least in my mind and heart. I responded to my sister excited that she would be back but put in the email a question, "I hate to ask but do you think David is going to invite Aaron?" My sister responded that she hoped that David would know that since it is my birthday that he wouldn't invite him or at the least ask me first. In any case, she suggested that I make my desires known. That was her word, desires. What are my desires? At this moment in time I am not sure what my desires are. I guess my real desires is that none of this is really happening. That my family is not torn apart and that my relationship with my brother in not strained. Welcome to reality, it is and for what reason? Another good question.

Sometimes I feel like I am in competition with Aaron for David's time. That when he comes to Greenville for my birthday, that I have to entertain him and make the time more fun than what he might have with Aaron. I know, pretty silly but I am being honest. I guess I just feel so rejected. I feel like he has already chosen Aaron, that he has to deal with me cause I am his sister but that if I am fun and he has a good time with me he will want to inspite of me being his sister.

Well, I know you will say, Beth it is YOUR birthday, do what you want to! And I will . . . . . . . After I get an email response from him letting me know what his plans are. (sheepish wince)
Hey, I am making progress, just some habits are harder to move away from. This one is really hard cause David sees me as a selfish person, I guess cause I am the baby. You know the habit I am trying to move away from is to stop worrying about what others will think, try to accommodate others inspite of me .... I am trying to learn this! Really I am!

Generations Pass

Nope I did not spell that incorrectly in the title, Generations Pass. My grandmother passed away this past Friday. It was a relief in a way because she had Dementia and has been "gone" for several years. I know that she is in a better place where she is, happy and will remember how much we love her but of course she will always be missed.

She was an amazing woman. I would say a woman before her time. She was very independent. VERY Independent. She was not your cookie baking grandma. She was more the beer run grandma. She had a HUGE beer can collection. Loved Iron City Beer only because it was brewed in Pittsburgh. She was the biggest Steelers fan I know and now that she is in heaven, healthy and in her right mind again I know she is happy that they just won the Super Bowl. Of course when I think of my grandmother, Romayne Phillips, I will always remember her love for the beach which I share. That she drank everything with a straw, like I do. She loved cheese, me too, better than chocolate. She always had Certs or TickTacks, was always humming, I do not know what tune, and she walked at least four - five miles a day, especially if she could walk on the beach. She loved sports, football and baseball and I have known "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" since I was probably old enough to babble the song. I remember my floaty ducky and being in the ocean with her all my summers as a child, floating over the swells. She would say, "Swells are swell" and for someone who could not swim, she was a great floater and always in the water. And of course her trademark was always having a convertible (I must have gotten that vice from her too - I WILL have a convertible again!) There is so much to remember about her, how she loved Charlie Brown, music (Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon, Opera, all kinds), our walks to Dairy Queen after naps in the afternoon and getting a Mr. Misty Kiss before going back to the beach. She taught us how to make drip castles in the sand. I remember playing for hours in a tidepool one day with her when my brothers started catching blue crabs with my buckets, in the very same tidepool, and we took home - oh, I don't know how many crabs! We cooked them in a big pot in her kitchen. There were so many of them that a couple crawled out of the pot and around the floor. She was always so funny calling the "Blue Bathroom" as we drove up in the driveway in her convertible '62 Nova cause she had to "piddle". I remember everything about her house. There were no toys, other than beach toys, but there was a lot of fun. Everyone called her grandma and she was a grandma to all our friends. She had a great smile and laugh but most of all, she loved the four of us, her grandchildren. No doubt about it we were always top of her priority list and always there with us even though she lived in a different state.

Grandma, I know now you will remember our favorite joke, "What did the big rose say to the little rose? Hi bud!" Everytime I would tell it to you, you would laugh and laugh and hug me. It was not until I was older that I actually got the joke and play on words, I just knew you would laugh and hug me! I love you Grandma! I will grieve for the time my children will not have with you but feel fortunate for the time I did.

What's in a name?

In my Family Crisis class we were talking about how society has changed and how that has changed the dynamics of the family. Part of out discussion was the roles family members have and how that has also changed. Alfred Adler developed the theory of birth order but of course that was in the early 1900's when family and marriages were not as disposable as they are now. We talked about what happens to children when parents get divorced or remarried and have other children. This happened in my family. I have one child that is a Broadhurst when I became a Webb. Did she feel like she did not belong in our family because there were 5 Webbs and she had a different last name? I would hope that it is more the relationship, time and support that we shared that made her belong and not that name. She talked about changing her name but not necessarily to Webb. I do not remember if she wanted Webb or my maiden name Hawk. You can see how much of an issue it was to me. I hope it was not much of an issue to her. I wonder how hurtful it was to Aaron that I did not take his name legally immediately upon getting married? It was a choice made out of , for lack of a better word, protection of me. He filed bankruptcy before we got married and we were trying to keep the creditors from coming after me, the house, etc. In all other purposes I was Mrs. Webb and proud to be. Keeping Broadhurst for a little while had absolutely nothing to do with my former husband. I do not know if it bothered him if Alyssa's friends mistakenly called him Mr. Broadhurst. He was always introduced to them as Aaron. I suppose name does have a lot to do with finding your place in a family. It is definitely a visual and auditory reminder of the changes that have taken place in the family structure. Even now, I do feel somewhat of a woman without a name. I was in the process of changing my name legally and on credit cards, bank accounts, etc. when Aaron left. Some places I am Webb, some I am Broadhurst and still others I am Broadhurst-Webb. People ask me if I am going back to my maiden name. No, I am not really a Hawk by name anymore. I say that mainly because I have a family of my own now. I have two daughters. The three of us are a family. One child is a Broadhurst, one a Webb by name. I will chose to be, for lack of a better word, inconvenienced. So when Aaron gets the divorce he wants, I choose to be Broadhurst-Webb. It has absolutely nothing to do with my former husbands and everything to do with my family, my children. They will know where they belong because of the time, love, support, interest, understanding, care, that their mother will give them and the confidence that I will never disappear or be part-time in their lives. We are a family, we belong together no matter what the name is.

A Picture is worth ...

No words I can bring myself to type. I know Connie, express myself but I just can not bring myself to do it.

So I think I will go to bed...

I am NOT a Neat Freak

Believe me I am NOT an neat freak but the clutter is just getting to me again. This happens once in a while and I work at decluttering but I never get it all done. Or at least it feels like it right now. BUT... Today I did some things. This morning a cleaned the kitchen, I mean really cleaned the kitchen. Like got down on my hands and knees and with a toothbrush and Clorox Cleanup and scrubbed the baseboards and shoe molding. It is 9 PM and I jut got through using the hand vac on the living room furniture and area rug. Had to get the cat brush out and go over it to get it really clean. But it looks good. My goal is to get on EBay and be able to sell stuff that is just sitting around here and whatever I money I make will go into redoing my bedroom. I want to paint it, get new light fixtures, change the pictures on the walls everything. It was a room Aaron and I shared, we never decorated it like we wanted it so I want a space of my own, my sanctuary at home and when I get it done, McKenna's room will be done and she will learn to sleep in her own bed. Not that I mind having a little bed buddy nor do I think that she will grown up scarred in some way because she is not sleeping in her own bed at 2 years old but it has to happen sometime.

One thing that was really great today is I got my garbage disposal fixed! YEA, now I can shine my sink (the Flylady will be so proud!). Archie the Bug Guy came by to help me remove all the stuff from under the house so that the rest of the moisture barrier could be put down. While he was here I happened to tell him about trying to fix the disposal. Before he left he asked if he could help and take a look at the garbage disposal. It was jammed by a little paint brush twisted in the blades AND three baby anoles were living in it!!! How and the world did they get in there. Archie the Bug Guy said they some in through the pipes. I am glad the disposal was not working the little guys had a place to live for a little while. But anoles in my garbage disposal. SO WEIRD!