By the grace of God

The stress is getting to me. Last night I felt so emotional that I had a crying breakdown in a bubblebath. Sometimes a hot bath, candles, ice cream....chocolate...music...can help you through a night of uncertainty and fearfulness.

The dark clouds started months ago when I couldn't get Sara's school to excuse her for the 10 days she was out of school with a bad throat infection. WHY? because the doctor didn't write specifically that he told me to keep her home until the test results were back from the lab and she had finished the medication. There was talk about Mono...anyway I went twice to get the doctor to rewrite but all they did was copy the old one. Now maybe that wouldn't be a problem where you live but in the state of Texas, it is against the law for a student to miss too many days of school and they issued court warrants! Yes...the high school has a community officer and she filed on Sara but not me as she knew how hard I was trying to keep her in school. BUT I'm still legally responsible especially when it comes to fines. Sara was skipping afternoon classes to eat lunch across the steet. She was getting to school late, tardy to class and getting detention for clothing violation (They have a dress code now)! Nothing but a nightmare! The school had two bomb threats (one real, one not) and four lock downs for firearms on campus....a mess!

Sara found an alternative school but it's across town and I have exactly two days to get her transferred and enrolled and to court...ahhhhhhhhhhh! Where's dear old Dad? Just like the child support....never there when you need it!

We get her in BUT she can't get in the morning sessions from 8:00 to 12:00 and can only get in the afternoon from 12:30 till 4:30. I have to be at work at 7:45 at the latest and get off at the earliest 3:45...I have only 30 min lunch so I can't run her to school...she's not driving and there's no one to do it! ughe.....the solution was a tiny miracle that a single parent allows me to drop her off every morning before my school starts and she lives only two blocks for the alternative school. It's called Texas CAN Academy to insure that Texas youth graduate for high school....

Now things are slightly better...if living with a 17 year old daughter is living! Mood swings....OMG! Then my middle son Jeff calls from the road to ask to move back for awhile...OK? At some point he suggests we get a three bedroom, he'll pay the difference and he will stay for 6 months! He ask me to cash his company check for $1,120 and he and his brother help me move...sort of! They take so long...not starting till 4:00 in the afternoon so that I barely make the deadline of moving out and leave the carpet messy! I figure I'ld get charged for carpet cleaning...RIGHT!.....meanwhile on last Wed. I go to get $40 cash when I'm denied....WHAT? I check to find both my savings and checking ..are gone and I have a $250 overdraft! I'm panicked as that's more than $1,000 dollars gone! I think...identity theft. Run to the bank to find out the company Jeff worked for bounced the check and I had footed the loss! Cell phone calls...unladylike conversations with my son who is working with the sister company and didn't know that anything had happened. The company went bankrupt! Jeff drives all night to give me just enough money to keep the bank from ruining me. I'm two weeks away from a check....and all I can think is..."Thank God I paid for my trip to Italy as early as I could"...I told Dedra that I had a feeling that something would get the money if I didn't and so if the money is spent...then it's spent! Although it was one of my children, I thought would have some tragic story for Mom to rescue them and (I would have like I always do) then no trip!

Then a week ago I get a letter in my mailbox that the complex is charging me $625.00 to put in new carpet...saying it can't be clean...pay immediately....immediately with what! DAmn the stress...I try to get a company to clean it...one who cleans carpet for this huge complex I live in AND they want $425.00 to try to clean it with no guarantee....I CAN"T GET A BREAK!

So friends when I thought I had screwed up the art show...it looked like negative karma to me!

Poor Jeff feels like a heel...waiting for the new company to send another check for $15,00....returned his new XBOX (you guys know how much that hurt) to give me $200 more dollars. Now this part is just CRAZY ...STUPID...I lost or missplaced one of the hundred dollar bills he gave me! I met me at the bookstore then handed me the money..."Jeff, could you just wait till I get home", I said..."No Mom, I'm going out". I don't know how but it's gone...I could possibly find it later...tucked in my secret place or a stupid place I can't remember 'cause I'm so damn stressed out! I hate money...

Well people...I went out Sat....my drinks were free and I recieved comfort from a very bad world but the world keeps giving bad & good Karma!

This morning as I drove Sara to school we drove up onto a wreck! "Wow, Sara, is that a car? Look it's upsidedown and....Oh, my God", I froze in mid sentence! "Mom, is that a....a...a body?,"she said with such a tiny voice. Yes...yes it is....oh, my god...he's just lying in the middle of the road. The traffic slowed but never stopped as we crept pass what looked like a large male. The ambulance wasn't there yet. Only a few officers were there, someone offical carrying a camera, flares, flashing lights and a huge moundlike thing covered with a red blanket in the middle of the highway. We knew it was a large person as the blanket couldn't cover all of him for his feet were exposed. I remember noticing that the socks were clean like he had pulled them out of his sock drawer that morning while getting ready for work. They were those white cotton socks with grey toes and heels.

His car lay on it's back like a beetle insect with it's guts strewn across the road and beyond it's owner's body. We drove pass him like he was roadkill! I felt a prayer rise to my lips to honor him somehow as his soul seem to linger like a morning fog but I still drove on to drop Sara off. I had to return the same way only minutes later to see he was still lying...all alone...on that hard cold street...still waiting to be humanized again. I saw a white hearse with doors opened and a gurney being pulled out. I noticed it's covered with a white sheet, that it's padded, soft...so as to ease someone's pain. I thought, how pointless to worry about this man's comfort now but at least he'll be human again. I go through the short detour and arrive at my school three minutes later. I walk to my portable...my little sanity, my nest, my art studio for the school then broke down and cried! My crazy money problems will work out....my daughter will straighten herself out...I will find love again...my life is good! It's all relative...in a flash....in an instant....but by the grace of god, there go I.

Picking up Sara from school, there was no visual signs left except for track marks in the median grass and a small tribute of flowers next to the yield sign.