My dogs have got bronchitis – at least, two of the three have it.  Kennel Cough.  I had 11 dogs here for a while.  Thank goodness its just about down to normal again.  My dogs need their booster shots, but my hands shake too much to give them to them.  The young lady across the street, Christina, usually does them for me, but she just had a baby and hasn’t had time for it yet.  By the time she gets around to it, they will probably be over it.  The shots have a booster for Corona virus.  Three different names for the same thing. 

I am having a problem with the mouse on my computer.  What a pain in the fanny.  One of the dogs that was here was a puppy, and he chewed the cord.  It shorts in and out.  They don’t make the type  of thumb ball mouse that I have any more.  I guess I’ll have to find a new cord and put it on the old mouse.  Just one more hitch in my life.

Oh, well.  Such is life.

In my case, my mental anguish seems to be keeping pace with my physical problems.  On my personal sliding scale, they seem to slide downwards together.  And upwards, as well.  Unfortunately, it seems like lately, I have one good day for every 13-14 bad ones.  And, what is now a good day, would have been a bad one a couple of months ago.

Suicide really IS an option.  Not yet, but it can’t be ruled out in the future.  It would be nice if I could afford to get back into counseling, but my co-pay is $25.00 a shot, and I can’t afford that.  The last time that I went, they had me in twice a week before I got any kind of benefit from it, so we’re talking between $200 and $250 (according to which month it is) and for someone who can’t afford the co-pays on prescribed medicines, that’s just too much.  I’m one of those people who fall through the cracks – I make too much to qualify for any kind of help, and not enough to pay for that help by myself.

Oh, well, such is life!

Height – standing is 5’2.5″, sitting in my wheelchair, about 4’0″

Eyes – grey blue, changable

Hair – gray brown and about down to the middle of my back

Temprament – mouthy and overbearing, mostly.

 Comment:  I just reviewed this and it said that it was posted today, but it gave the time as 1:40 PM.  My time is 8:40 AM, so anytime you really want to know when a post was made, just subtract 5 hours from the posted time.

My next ‘snapshot’ memory is when I was six years old.  It was twilight, and I was sneaking out toward the garden, trying not to be seen.  My 4 year brother was hissing at me to get my attention.  I turned toward him and he waved me over to him.  We are talking in whispers so that the same cousin won’t discover us.  I’m so frightened that I can’t think, and Roy leads me into the woods.  We spent the next 3 hours hiding from him as he searched for us.  For me, actually.  He wasn’t into ‘little boys’. 

A couple of months later, this cousin raped his sisters 3 month old little girl.  She was so damaged that they had to take her to the hospital.  She lost so much blood that she nearly died.  The hospital called the cops and he was arrested.  I don’t remember what was done to him, but he quit coming around. 

Mom and dad never believed me when I told them what was being done to me, but my oldest sister, Frances, did.  She started taking me to her house when her husbands cousin came around our house.  Fran had married Bill when she was 15 years old.  (She died in 2006, her husband survived her by 3 months.  They had been married 62 years.)

I basically lived with them for the next 3 1/2 years, only coming back ‘home’ to visit on occasion.  The only memory I have of those years is another snapshot.  We all had our cows, pigs, chickens and other poultry at that time, along with mules, horses, dogs and barn cats.  Bill was milking their cow and I came up behind the cow.  He warned me to move away so that I wouldn’t get kicked several times, but that was where I wanted to stand to watch him and I (being very stubborn) wasn’t about to move.  He told me he was going to give me a spanking if he had to tell me one more time.  He did, I didn’t and he did.  I ran into the house to tell Fran, not hurt but totally outraged that he would actually pop me on the bottom.  Fran was not sympathic.  I loved Bill, but Fran was my idol.  I was so hurt that she chose to support him rather than me.  I cried and cried, not wanting attention as I had been before, but because I was heartbroken that she preferred him to me.  Now I had no one who loved me best. 

Ranger (Bold Run BJs Ranger) is the pack leader, under me that is, and has the intelligence of about a 5 year old child.  He was whelped 02-18-1998.  He’s 14.5″ tall, short haired, weighs 18 pounds of solid muscle, is white with a black head and black body markings.  Well, his head was solid black, but he’s graying out and looks like he is wearing a white mask.  He takes responsibility for all the other dogs, and hangs his head, drops his little tail between his legs and acts like a whipped puppy every time I scold any of the other dogs.  He very loving and one of the most gentle dogs I’ve ever known.  He’s sired 39 litters of puppies, with an average of 6 pups to the litter.  He is plentipotent, with the majority of the pups having his coloration and temperament. 

Stormranger’s Kitty Kahlan is my alpha female and is short haired.  She was whelped 09-23-1999.  She’s 10″ tall, weighs 12 pounds, is a tri-color (white with red and black markings).  She also is very intelligent and loving and gentle.  She keeps order in the younger dogs.  She will adopt any other puppy or kitten and raise it as her own – or rather, she did before I had her spayed.  Now, she tries to do it, but can’t feed them, of course.  However, she cleans and cuddles them. 

Stormrangers Destiny Dancer is out of Kitty by Ranger and was whelped 06-23-2003.  She has short hair on her legs and long wavy hair on the rest of her body.  She’s 13 inches tall and weighs 14 pounds.  Her head is blond with a mohawk, her body is white with black and tan spots.  She’s spayed, and the most excitable dog that I own. 

Stormrangers Patches is a 5 month old male, whelped 08-04-2007 and short haired.  His body is white, he has a black mask over his eyes and ears and a tiny black spot at the base of his tail.  He’s smart as a whip, very loving and is just now trying to be the boss of the pack, which gets him into a lot of trouble with Ranger, Kitty and Destiny. 

All of them have tails about 4″ long.  All of them sleep with me – the girls to the right and boys to the left.  They are absolutely positive that they simply MUST supervise me when I go to the bathroom.  None of them ever get more than 5 feet away from me by choice.  Except for when they hear the word OUTSIDE, then they fly to the front door. 

My health is deteriorating, and I must arrange homes for them.  My life expectancy at this time is measured in months, or even weeks, according to my doctors and surgeon.  I have found a home for Ranger and Kitty Kahlan with my sister, but am in the process of finding a good home for Destiny and Patches.  I would like to keep them together, as they have bonded well with each other.  I’m being very picky, for these are my babies.  I’ve had many people ask about them, for they are beautiful and pureblooded, JRTCA registerable.  I have all their paperwork – just haven’t been able to afford it.  I’ve insisted that they have regular vet care, be kept inside and preferably in a home with children, 7-12 years old that they can sleep with, though they would do well with older people.  They think they are lap dogs, and are very quiet except when someone comes to the door.  They are very protective.  I prefer younger children as these little dogs live on the average of 18-20 years.  I personally have known a lady whose dog was 29 years old when she (the dog, not the lady) died. 

The only way that I would let them go to older people is if they had, in writing, another home lined up for the dogs if the people died before the pups. 

These little dogs are hunters, and the adults have teeth that would make a Doberman proud.  They were bred as varmint hunters, and think anything smaller (and some bigger) than they, are fair game.  This includes cats.  Kittens are okay, but after about 3 months of age, kittens develop their own scent and move themselves into the prey catagory. 

Back then, they made cotton-picking sacks in different sizes.  12 feet and 9 feet for adults, 7 feet and 5 feet long for kids.  Little kids used 100 lb. potato sacks, called “tow” sacks, with a piece of rope tied to it in a loop that went over your head and one shoulder.  That let the sack drag beside you on one side, and the top gaped open so that you could throw the cotton in the sack fairly easily.  Kids in our family started picking on the adult rows when they were 3-4 years old, and were picking their own rows by the time they were 5 to 6 years old.  Always beside a parent who was picking two rows at a time and who checked to make sure the kid wasn’t leaving cotton on their own row.  You were required to keep up with the adult, and to pick your own row ‘clean’, not leaving any opened bolls at all.  If mom or dad found more than two or three open bolls when they inspected a section of the row you were picking, you were given a lecture and made to go back over the row a second time.  A second row that wasn’t picked cleanly earned you a swat on the bottom with their bare hand.  A third time got the belt applied, with vigor, to your bottom.  If a fourth time happened, you not only got the belt, you got extra chores.  Since everything had to be done every day, the only way extra chores could be given was to take chores away from the best-behaved one, we all tried to be the best so that our chores would be lightened.  There was a whole list of things that would earn you extra chores, as well as things that would lighten your chore load.  We all knew both lists by heart.

I’ll try to keep them in as much of a chronological order as I can, but no promises. 

This first part is going to be pretty much an overview of my life growing up.  General, not specifics. 

My dad was a share-cropper, and we moved often.  We were a very large family, and dad was very good at what he did.  I’m almost 64 years old, so this was a long time ago, during the time of family farms.  Some of them were pretty large, a section or more (640 acres), and not all of the farmers had kids to work the land, or maybe they had them, but the kids weren’t interested in farming, so they had to have help.  This took the form of “sharecroppers” who worked the land in return for a ‘share of the crop’, as well as a home and acreage to grow crops and gardens of their own.   

Everyone, children and adults, worked.  In the spring we helped plant after we had helped prepare the dirt (plow, harrow, furrow) for the crops.  In the summer, we hoed weeds out of crops – corn, cotton, soybeans, etc.   In the fall, we helped harvest the crops, mostly picking cotton.  In the winter, we pulled ‘bolls’. 

Dad and my older brother drove the combines for harvesting the corn and wheat and soybeans.  Dad had his choice of getting paid in cash for his part of the harvested crops, or in part of the crop itself.  He usually chose cash for the soybeans and cotton, but took his share of the wheat and corn in the form of flour and cornmeal from the Grist Mill.  Mom always went with him to the mill, because she had to pick out the sacks.  These were material sacks – calico and gingham mostly – that she made our clothes out of.

I called all my surviving sisters and my brother to let them know that they needed to be on the lookout for it, because it’s one of the things that is passed on to children at almost 100% rate, only to find out that, without exception, all of them were on Prozac also.

I was first diagnosed with Major Depression and Multi-Personality Disease when I was 42 years old, but my first suicide attempt was when I was 14 years old.  It was hushed up, because no one wanted a “crazy” in their family.  I tried three other times before the one when I was 42.  I almost made it that time, and ended up in a mental institution for a month after I go out of the hospital (ten days).  My doctors were already treating me for depression at that time – I was diagnosed with multiple personality problems while in the M.I.  This is not schicophrenia, or split personality, by the way, as a lot of people seem to believe.  That is two distinct personalities, a good guy and a bad guy basically.  DID, or multi-Personalilty Disorder, can have a plentitude of personalities, or part personalities.  I had six entire personalities which could take over the body and drive it non-stop for anywhere from an hour to 2-3 weeks at a time.  There is also 29 partials.  These, in my case at least, had one job and one job only that they did.  One of mine did nothing but drive the vehicle.  Not that they did it all the time, but when they were ‘up front’ that was the only thing they would do – the job that they were specifically created for.  These personalities were not something that was done consciously, but were created by the brain without me actually knowing anything about it when things got too much for me to handle.  Many of them were discovered when I was hypnotized at the hospital.  The youngest was too young to talk, believed to have been created when my Aunt’s boyfriend gave me gonnerrhia at ten months of age.  Of course, I wasn’t alone at that.  Every young girl in my family, with one exception, was treated for it at the same time.  The older ones told who did it, so they knew who it was.  He was never even questioned, as doctors weren’t required to report such things then.  However, a 10 month old baby is not prepared to accept the sexual attention of even very smally endowed man.  I don’t remember it now, but apparently it was traumatic enough to create my first ”personality” who still exists, to this day.

Another one, also based from the sexual attention of one of my in-laws cousins, was created when I was four years old.  I suppose that a 4 year olds perception of this type of event is different from a 10 month old baby’s.  Which would explain why I have another personality from when my mom married my stepdad.  He favored oral and anal sex, as did his friends (3 of them).  The last sexual type personality was created when I was raped on my 16th birthday.  I still wake up with nightmares from that.  But 1,2 and 4 are only partial personalities.  Number three is the only one that is a full fledged person in her own right. 

Today was a bad day.  But then, most of them HAVE been, here lately.  I have been in considerable pain, couldn’t even get out of bed without help.  I was back in bed by noon (up for 5 hours) and didn’t get up again until almost 6:00 PM.  I guess that I’m a real wimp, but I’m taking 900 MG of Lyrica for nerve damage caused by diabetes daily, plus 30 MG of hydrocodone every day, 3 20MG tablets of soma and I’m still in so much pain that I can barely move.  I also take a shitload of other meds.  By the time that I take them all, I’m so full that I can’t even eat.  Not that I really feel like eating, anyway.  On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the worse pain that I’ve ever experienced (which at this time is at the end of a six day labor with my daughter) today started at a 9, went up to 9.5 then gradually went down after I was in bed for a couple of hours (took my noon pain meds just before laying down) to about 7.5 and are now back up to about 8.5.  As soon as enough time has gone by so that it’s safe to take the next dose, I’m headed back to bed.

Friday, January 18, 2008, 8:14 AM

My depression level is rising.  I finally managed to get a repairman out to fix my computer – that is, my access to the internet.  One person came out last week, but didn’t manage to get it going.  It was so simple – the connections were all corroded.  No signal was getting through to my computer.  The first guy didn’t even check the connections.  Hopefully, this time it will still work, even though this last repairman warned me that the signal was too strong and may cause further problems.

One of the guys who stays here gave me $25.00 of what he owes me, all in $1.00 bills.  Right now, that leaves $528.00 that he still has to pay to catch up.  Another man owes me $622.00.  Another one is behind $234.00.  If they would ever pay me, I could actually buy ALL of the medicine that I’m supposed to be on, instead of just a few of them. 

I’ve been in a lot of pain for the last week and a half.  For the last two days it’s been bad enough that I have spent most of the time in bed.  I’m a wimp.  I have no problem with death.  I’m not afraid of it at all, in fact, to me death would be a very welcome release.  I find myself thinking about it a lot more often lately.  It would be so easy.  I’m an insulin dependent diabetic.  All I have to do is take a sleeping pill, fill up about 10-12 syringes, inject them, lay down and go to sleep.  By the time I go into insulin shock, I’m deeply asleep.  Once my insulin levels reach the point of causing a heart attack, I won’t be knowing about it.  Even if someone finds me (which won’t happen unless Gloria comes by, and if I decide to do it, I’ll do it shortly after she goes to work), they won’t want to make me angry by opening my door and waking me up.  Gloria works at night, so no one will think it strange that I’ve slept a long time.  Gloria usually wakes me up about 6:20, after she has come home from work and made me a pot of coffee.  By that time, I should have been dead somewhere between 2-4 hours.  Even if she found me right after it, with my sugar levels so low as to be about non-existant, they won’t be able to restart my heart.

I’ve got to where I’m unable to stay awake past about 8:30 PM.  If I take the shots just before I go to sleep, they should have plenty of time to do their work before anyone checks on me.  I really hate that she should be the one who finds me.  But it’s the only time to be sure that the effects are irreversible.  I’ve learned several good lessons from other times that I’ve tried to kill myself.  The pain is getting so bad that I’m really getting desperate. 

I’m so alone that to all intents and purposes, I might as well be on a desert island.  I have no one that I can talk to.  The only one who might have been a confidant is Gloria, but she is very deaf, so there is no such thing as a private conversation with her.  You have to speak so loudly that everyone in the vicinity is privy to what you say.  Besides, she has so many problems of her own that I don’t want to add to her sadness.  Everyone else, without exception, is looking to me to help solve their own problems.  I like helping people, but it’s become more and more of a chore, as none of them seem to want to really DO anything for themselves.  They tell me and seem to think, “Okay, she’ll take care of it for me”.  That isn’t ‘helping’ as far as I’m concerned.  They want me to furnish food and lodging for them, while they continue to drink, and most of them, use drugs.  I’m really fed up with it.  If they have money for booze and street drugs, they have enough to pay me some of what they owe. 

I’m having a lot of confusion when I first wake up from my afternoon nap, as to whether its morning or night.  Sometimes it takes 20-30 minutes to get myself straight, though usually its more like 8-10 minutes.  I think that I find those periods of confusion more disturbing than anything else.  If Jeff, my husband, ever finds out, he will probably put me into an assisted living home, and I would lose my dogs.  I couldn’t handle that.  They are the only ones who love me just because I’m me.  Not because I feed them, because I don’t.  Other people do that for me.  I’m pretty useless nowadays.  If I ever found out that I was going to lose them, I’d kill myself in a shot.  Whats the use of living longer if it’s a pain every second of every day because you don’t have those little bright eyes watching you every day to make sure that you don’t leave them, those little hard bodies pressed up against you when you lay down, or sitting or laying down at your feet every second of every day.  They rarely get more than a few feet from me at any time.  They WANT to be close to me, and the humans I know most certainly don’t.  With the major exception of Mike and Gloria Robinson, the only time other people want to be around me is when they want something out of me.  I guess they think that I’m so stupid that I can’t see through them, but even a mental midget would get the picture when, time after time, they finish every conversation with a request for money, some of my pills (NEVER!), food, etc.  I get so tired of it.  They steal money and cigarettes from me on a regular basis. 

Life, for me, is becoming such a burden.  At times, its almost more than I can handle.

I’m out of my pain pills now.  I don’t have the money to pick them up until Thursday.  I hurt so badly that I cry sometimes.  I don’t cry easily.  When I do, I go to my bathroom, because I can’t stand for anyone to see me.  My dogs go with me – they rarely get more than 2-5 feet from me.  When I’m feeling better than I am now I joke about the fact that they don’t think I can go pee without supervision.  However, when I cry, they try to jump up on me to give me ‘kisses’ and whine piteously until I stop.  When you have 4 dogs, even small ones such as mine are, that’s a lot of sharp little claws digging into legs that are already hurting enough to cry about.  The don’t mean to cause pain; they’re trying to comfort me.  But the pain is there, nonetheless.

About a month ago, my diabetic neuropathy moved up another notch.  Now, in addition to having severe pain that my meds no longer touch, I have lost almost all sense of touch in my fingertips.  I feel like I’m back in high school typing class again.  I have to watch my fingers as I type – no such thing as touch-typing anymore.  Same with my crocheting and cross stitching.  Of course, cross-stitching is almost a gone subject anyway.  My vision is really messed up and I can’t even see where to place my needle any more.  I can handle most of it.  I am buying the LARGE TYPE books so that I can still read.  I’ve gone from Irish Linen (28-32 stitches per inch) to size 14 stitches per square inch Aida cloth for my cross-stitching.  But I can’t get used to the pain.  I’m taking the highest dosage the law allows (I’m dying, but we can’t take any chanches on me getting addicted, now, can we?) and I’m in such pain that I getting to the point that I can’t stand it anymore.  Maybe it’s more that I won’t stand it.  For a while there, I could handle more because I knew that it push came to shove, I had a foolproof way to kill myself.  I didn’t necessarily have to do it; I COULD if I really needed to.  Now, it’s getting hairline close to needing to. 

My sister Zalora, and her husband Bill, have told me that they will take Ranger and Kitty Kahlan when I die (which may be very shortly).  That leaves Destiny Dancer and now, Patches.  I would like to place them together, as they have become very attached to each other, but not many people want to take on 2 dogs.  Destiny is 5 years old and spayed, and Patches is 6 1/2 months old, and gonna be neutered as soon as I can afford it!  Ranger will be happy about that, even if Patches isn’t!

At any rate, a friend of mine had taken one of Patches littermates, the only girl, and was quite happy with her.  He fell in love with Patches and wanted him, too.  I was a bit leary of it, but was willing to try if he promised to bring him back if it didn’t work out.  He took him home with him night before last.  Yesterday morning, bright and early, he called me.  He was rather sheepish, and danced around the subject until I finally asked, “You want to bring him back home, right?”  He agreed that was exactly why he had called.  Seems like Beauty and Patches had really enjoyed being reunited with each other, racing around from room to room and barking their heads off.  Midnight, 2:00 AM, 4:00 AM, sunrise!  No one had slept at all, including their 5 month old daughter and 2 school aged kids.  All of their fannies were dragging their tracks out, and he had a full days work to do on top of it.  I told him to bring Patches home, and he gave a big sigh and told me he was on his way.  Quite literally!  He was about 5 minutes away from my house!  He delivered my pup back home again, less than 11 hours after he had left with him.  So now I’m back to square one, still looking for a good home for my little blond bombshell Destiny, and her cohort in crime, Patches.