Hi gang, hugs all around.

Well the literary agent answered my inquiry email yesterday morning. Has been having a crazy bust few weeks along with some travel, yet the response was:

So off a copy went yesterday. Fingers crossed, folks!

Next, with luck I shall be getting a new laptop this weekend. Love, love, love my one now, but it is only a matter of time till it wheezes its last. Am looking at a kick-ass Toshiba, but we shall see. (One looking at Toshiba Satellite X205-SLI5 17" Widescreen Laptop. Intel Core 2 Duo T8300, 320GB hard drive, 3GB of DDR2 memory, hard drive speed 7200RPM...ooo-la-la!) is actually meant for gaming, but beyond the Aura/Chakra programs I have some 3D art proggies (Like Z-Brush) that need the space. Book and CD cover art and graphics, the tarot deck I am designing, stuff like that. Never had a Tosh before, always went with Compaq, but they do not make them like the used too. My main concern is, no guesses, VISTA. Of course I could go to HP direct and get a “downgrade” option of XP...still thinking of it. Would go MAC, only the Aura Chakra programs do not work with a MAC. Called the company and they said yes, their programs do work with Vista, so we shall see. Still window shopping at this point. Price is a major “ouchie” but since it’s for business 30% is write-off able so we shall see. Besides, no problem with dreaming, right?

Well, that’s the good stuff, now on to the suckie.

Family. Family = headache for Melissa.

Really thought I had a handle on things, had the “I know the principles involved, know who they are and what they are like, and I do not need to be effected detrimentally by these people,” thing down.

Like I did not give me mother a call this Mother’s Day. Reason for that was what happened last year. Mom lives across the country from me, lives close to my sister and her kids. My sister and I do not get along, are simply just too different in how we choose to be and live in this world. Details are not required.

Anyway, I had called mom, we were having a great conversation, then suddenly something changed. Mom started reacting like she was chatting with an annoying neighbor. No responses now except neutral ‘uh-huh’s’, ‘yeahs’ and the like. The she says, “Well, my daughter just got here so I have to go now.” Meaning she did not want my younger sister to know who she was talking to on the phone. No ending “I love and miss you,”, just an absently spoken “Bye.” Now, I understood she did not want her day ruined by having my sister turning into a bitch by finding out who was on the phone, but come on...

Now, mom is going through a nasty divorce, mentioned briefly in previous posts. To update, she has lost everything. Guy who wanted the divorce emptied their bank accounts before he told her and took off. Returned while she was at work and hauled away everything of value, from lawn tractor on down. Mom tried to have a yard sale, but not a single person showed. After putting everything away she hiked up to the highway and discovered every single sign she had put up had been pulled up and laid face down. Her husband’s boss and good buddy lives there. Enough said. Unable to make the mortgage payment, her husband now has the house because he could.

Now comes an email from my sister who has not spoken to me for a long time. They are very doing well, but have decided to sell their sign-making business and go into retail property. (Renters.)

Following is from the email:“Wayne and I are taking her (mom) to look at a trailer in a mobile home retirement (over 55) park today. We are seriously considering purchasing this trailer for her as long as she can make lot payments and utilities. I don't want to make her pay for it because she will need all the money she earns in savings for when she can no longer work. That won't be too far down the road... So, I am asking if you both have any desire to help out with purchases of a home for our mother. We are prepared to get a loan and purchase it ourselves but the thought came to me that you might want to be included in this decision. I don't want you to have any reason to say you were never asked to help. If you decided you would like to help with the purchase, I will give you financial details.”

“I don't want you to have any reason to say you were never asked to help.” Love that line.

Now, not going into it, yet I did not contact her back as yet on the matter. Looks like I do not have too since mom called me on Wednesday.

Sister and her husband have bought two nice homes to rent out and mom was to have one of them, but that is not going to happen now. A depressed personality with a mile-wide self destructive of personal happiness streak, mom drinks when times are bad. She got a DWI and spent the night in jail. Had a psyc evaluation and was deemed “a very sad and depressed person” so has been ordered by the court take a series of classes ($45.00 a pop).

Because of this happening, she is not going to be allowed to live in the home my sister and her family bought for her, telling her, and I quote: “You have brought shame and disgrace upon our family.”

Here is where I remind folks that my sister and her husband are Born Again Christians. Reason my sister despises me is that I once had the balls to tell her to actually live the quote that ends her emails, being “let love into your heart” because if there is any single person on this planet who does not do this thing, it is her. Told her this after I discovered she had went to mom’s then still husband while mom was not home, sat him at the kitchen table to tell him about all the boyfriends mom had had in her life during the years before they were married because my sister in ‘good consciousness’ could no longer stand the burden of ‘guilty silence’. Mom’s husband got pissed at my sister for being a bitch, could not comprehend how anyone could do such a thing or feel they had a reason too, I got pissed at my sister, told her to let some love into her heart...and from that moment on became the bad guy to everyone. Mom was quite cold towards me for a good year plus...

Back to the present. Now, mom--who has been extended the offer to come live with me and Emile on several occasions and refuses (wanting to be near her grandkids)--is going to have to get rid of her dog, a toy breed and the only thing she has of companionship in her life, join the YWCA in order to take showers and live in her truck.

Now get this, soon as I heard that “You have brought shame, blah-blah” line I got furious. Told her families were supposed to come together and help one another during times like this, and that it was the most horrendous and biggest crock of shit I had ever heard in my life and it was not true, how dare anyone think something like that let alone say it when mom is going through everything that she is right now...stuff like that. All mom could say is that no, is was true, they had every right to do what they did and that I should not say bad things like that about my sister. Damn near started to get panicky. Hung up soon after.

LOL, but Emile was in raging-shaky state same as I was, said I should write my sister a good long letter and lay it all on the line. I said to what purpose? You know her, do you think she will listen? No, she will not, because that is who she is. Not in this instance, but in many such as that sit down with mom’s then husband experienced over the years, we both know my sister. Not for good reason does she do those types of things, (many, many, many such,) merely because she enjoys doing those things. My sister truly enjoys doing such things to my mother. Gets off on it. Drops a bomb from the blue and sits back with a grin on her face to watch the fireworks. More traumatic the better. My young sister is an evil person, lacking all morals except for things she ‘says’ (because she gets a lot of attention and praise for saying such things,) and it pains me the unhealthy relationship between mom and her, but it is the way things are and throughout my life it has been proven time and time again that there is nothing I can do about any of it.

Ah well. Like I said, thought I had gotten beyond becoming emotionally involved in these things, but haven’t. Got a whopping stress headache and the whole nine yards. Still feeling it, to the level I did when my sister forced my then thirteen year old niece to have radiation ‘treatments’ for her diagnosed case of ‘adolescent arthritis’. (I.e Fibromialgia.) Not that it helped--of course it wouldn’t--however, it did get my sister a lot of attention for having a poor, sick daughter like that to talk to everyone about. Yup, pity the poor mother who stressed out her intelligent and sensitive daughter enough to make her ill in the first place...and now has undergone extensive radiation exposure during her young body’s most critical, growing years...

Anyhows, that’s some of the latest from my neck of the woods and things that have been keeping me busy, as well as reclusive. Hate it, trying to do better...oh yeah, one more thing. The house we wanted to buy sold to someone else. Hurts like hell, still, probably for the best. Would have been such a burden and taken too much energies and years to ever realize what would have made it a dream. My mind says it is a good thing, and I truly do know it is, yet there is still sadness. No biggie, a better, brighter future awaits. I don’t know, but it still feels--as tumultuous and whirlwind uncertain as things are now--that everything that is happening is meant to happen. The friction that ignites and propels us on to something much finer--this thing that is also meant.

Okay-d, that’s it for now. Been working our asses off past few days and am going to go chill out a bit.

Hugs and keep smiling, folks! Believe it or not I still am.

Then again, maybe I’ve just cracked? LOL!

Cheers,

Melissa