Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from the Little Tennessee Mermaid

Can you feel the mischief in the air?

I hope everyone had a safe and happy Halloween. It poured down rain here, which really put a damper on the trick or treating. I followed Bert© around with an umbrella trying to keep her semi-dry as we participated in a “Trunk or Treat” event at a local church. She collected her candy, thanked everyone, and promptly decided that she was ready to go home. We watched “The Proposal” with Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds while Bert© was on candy patrol incase we had any treaters come to our house. She was highly disappointed as we didn’t receive even one knock at the door. However she managed to console herself by snuggling up with her mommy and eating some of her loot. We went to bed when Mr. Nascar returned home from working the Football game on Saturday night, and we all enjoyed a nice sleep in on Sunday morning.

Fall is in the air.

Can you feel it? Can you smell it?

Here in lovely East Tennessee the fall season has come in like a lion! The weather is gorgeous, just absolutely gorgeous. The over night lows have been in the 30’s and the air is crisp and cool. I feel like I can finally breathe.

We have had so much rain this year. We’re 10+ inches of rain over the normal rainfall totals for this time of year. The rain, combined with the cool temperatures has created a spectacular autumn. The leaves are changing colors, everywhere I look are vibrant reds, oranges, and yellows. It really has made me feel so very glad to be alive.

I do have some news, dear readers. I went last night and formally signed papers to put an offer in on a house. It’s a 31-year-old brick front rancher. 3 bedrooms, 1.5 bathrooms. It’s on about a quarter acre of property which is fenced in the back yard. It has an attached 1 car garage.

We went and viewed the home on Monday, and while there are a few things that would need to be changed (paint & wallpaper) mainly, both Mr. Nascar and I liked the house. It’s closer to Bert©’s school than we are now. It’s just up the street from where she attends daycare afterschool. The front yard is gorgeous with the miniature roses and the flower beds. We could tell the house has been taken care of. I met last night with the Seller’s real estate agent to put in an offer on the home. We should have a response from her by Thursday at noon. I have already been pre-qualified for a loan by one company, but submitted an application to another mortgage broker yesterday afternoon to see if we could get an even better rate. Hopefully all of this will click into place and we can be closed on the house by Nov. 27th. We would then give our 30 day notice to our landlord and use that time to repaint, and to slowly move items into the new house.

Bert© has been doing wonderfully in school. We should be getting her first formal report card home on Thursday. At my parent teacher conference, the teacher mentioned she would like to start Bert© on an accelerated reading program. She is the top reader in her class. I hardly have to help her figure out a word when she’s reading anymore. I couldn’t be more pleased. I love reading and often can be found with a book somewhere near me. I’m glad to see that my daughter cause also caught my love for words. Her scores in math are not as high as in reading & spelling, however they are excellent scores for a child who just turned 6 years old in August. I am very proud of her.

I am doing well. However, I am exhausted. I feel like there is never enough time to do everything that needs to be done. I have picked up a little extra work on the side, so I have worked every day for the last two weeks. While the paycheck is nice, I still have plenty of household chores that need to be completed. I am quickly running out of clean laundry! Oh the bane of the existence of a working woman. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays I pretty much rush back out of the house as soon as I get home. Bert© has Girl Scouts on Tuesdays (she’s a daisy) and on Wednesday she has catechism classes at church. We’re even thinking about adding in basketball practice for her, two nights a week. Gosh I sure would like just one day to be able to sleep in and relax.

Speaking of sleeping in and relaxing…hopefully if all goes according to plan, Mr. Nascar and I will be escaping this weekend. We are planning on going to Tunica, MS to one of the casinos down there. Mr.Nascar will be turning 43 years old this week! This trip will be one of his presents, as I hate gambling and find it very boring to watch him lose our money. I might just spend the evening in our hotel room, enjoying a nice bubbly jacuzzi bath! Mmm that sounds wonderful.

I need to get back to work now, so I shall bring this to a close. I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.

Has it truly been 6 months?

6 months! Where has the time gone? At first, the milestones were so small. He’s been home 3 days. He’s been home a week. He’s been home a month. Now, he’s been home 6 months. He’s now been home almost as long as he was gone.

Remember when I posted this? “The Nightmare is over”was my homecoming post for Mr. Nascar. He’d been home 3 wonderful days at that point. I didn’t even realize we were at the 6 month mark until I logged into my profile at a prison support website that I still patronize and looked at my ticker. It said “6 months since he came home”. Wow. It feels like maybe we should celebrate this milestone.

We’ve done a lot of things this year that we didn’t get to do last year because he was in lock up. We celebrated Bert©’s 6th birthday together. We took her to her first day of 1st grade together. We all went and spent an entire day at the Tennessee Valley Fair together. We vacationed together. We’ve fought together. We’ve discussed issues together as a family. We’ve been through the death of my step-father. Mr. Nascar’s two surgeries, and about 7 subsequent hospital visits to deal with his infections. We’ve laughed together, held each other as we’ve cried. We’ve fixed Bert©’s umpteen boo-boos together.

We still have so much to look forward to. This year will be our first to celebrate Christmas as a family. I think that’s really important to Mr. Nascar as it has been so long since he’s had a family of his own to celebrate things with.

We’ve talked about getting married and even about trying to have a child together. I’m apprehensive about that, based on previous experiences with TheEx. It’s not fair for me to compare TheEx to Mr. Nascar, but that’s my own lack of self-assurance speaking.

We’re talking about, and actually looking for a house to purchase together.

Life is actually pretty good for us right now. He tells me that I’m stuck with him, that he’s not going anywhere. The past 6 months have been challenging and wonderful at the same time. I wonder what the next 6 months will be like.

Thank you all for being there during my journey, and for being so supportive!

The black plague has descended

Hello everyone! Has it really been almost 2 months since my last post? Life really has gotten the better of me. We are so busy these days, that I was complaining to Mr. Nascar just the other day that we never see him anymore. “But it’s football time, honey” is what he responds.

Things that have happened in the last two months:

1. Mr. Nascar has gently reopened his moving business. His old roommate really did a number on his once stellar 5-star rating. He has reduced his rates and his travel fee to attract customers. So far he’s had 3 jobs. Two have made the time to go back to the website and leave him a 5-star rating. The other lady, well she said she would, but she hasn’t yet.
2. Bert© successfully graduated kindergarten and started 1st grade at a new school.
3. Bert© my darling baby girl had her 6th birthday at the end of August. We had a bowling party and the kids had a blast. She got her metallic-pink Nintendo DS and was promptly grounded from it the following Monday as a consequence for bad behavior at school.
4. Mr. Nascar started working utilities for the Comcast Friday night high-school football game of the week.
5. Bert©  and I go camping for the long weekend!
6. Mr. Nascar and I find out that Bert© has a boyfriend!! They hold hands as they walk down to their afterschool care every day.
7. Mr. Nascar starts working utilities for the college football team. 5 of their first 6 games are home games. We’ve got 3 games down.
8. My laptop computer bit the dust. Frankly I’m pretty PO’d at the way HP and their “representatives” have treated me. I can’t say too much more about that at the moment. I’m struggling to deal with my desk top computer at the moment, which is slow and cumbersome.
9. Bert© started girl scouts! I’m hoping to go sometime this week and pick up her uniform. Her 2nd meeting is tomorrow evening.
10. Bert© started Catechism classes at church, Wednesday evenings will be a late night for her as well.
11. Bert© is no longer an only sibling. TheEx and his wife had their baby on Friday. Right now that is all that she can talk about. I promised to take her and let her pick out a little welcome gift to send to them.
12. Mr. Nascar and I are actually house hunting. We haven’t found anything we’ve liked enough to put an offer in on, but we’re looking.
13. I am sick. I have the regular flu. I just spent 90 minutes at the doctors office this morning. I’ll be off work for the next little while as I’m contagious because I’m still having a fever. I have a terrible cough as well. The doctor has prescribed antibiotics because she didn’t like the way my lungs sounded.

That’s about all that I can think of off the top of my head. It has been a very busy couple of months. I hope all of you are well. I’ve missed you!

Cancer is such an ugly word

Mr. Nascar went to the local health department about a month after he was released. He doesn’t have any insurance and was dropped from TennCare when he was released from prison. While incarcerated, he had noticed a mole on his right shoulder blade had changed. It was an ugly little thing, so black that glistened. The health department referred him to a dermatologist to have the mole removed. He went for his office visit, they cut it out, stitched him up and he went along his merry way. He had a follow up appointment scheduled for 2 weeks later.

We both had mostly forgotten about the issue, the old “No news is good news” approach was in the back of our minds. Unfortunately that turned out not to be the case. When he arrived at his follow up appointment the doctor gave us the news that the pathology on the mole had returned, testing positive for cancer; malignant melanoma. Ugly, ugly words. I didn’t know what to do, so I did what I do best in upsetting, stressful situations. I cried. Mr. Nascar, bless his heart takes things in stride and has a very calm attitude about it. The dermatologist referred him to an Oncologist and a Surgeon. I guess they made the appointments backward, because the Oncologist was the first appointment and he couldn’t really help us seeing as he didn’t have the results from the surgery. Mr. Nascar met with the surgeon and an appointment was set for a larger area of skin to be removed around the original mole site, and for him to be injected with radioactive dye, to see if the cancer had spread.

On May 21, we arrived at the hospital at 7am. I dropped Mr. Nascar off and then whisked Bert© off to school. I was back by 8am and went to the Day Surgery area to sit with him before his surgery. I’ll never forget, he was in bed 11 and they said I could go right back. He looked so uncomfortable at 6′ 3″ trying to fit into the little hospital bed. He nodded off, but reminded me that at 8:30 I needed to go down and talk with financial services at the hospital. Without insurance, we have to pay for all of this out of pocket. The hospital has given us a 41% cash discount, but we still needed to put down a deposit before the surgery and then make payments on the $9,000-10,000 hospital bill. Ugh, even talking about it turns my stomach. I don’t know that we’ll ever be able to get out from under that, but it’s just going to have to be one step at a time.

When I finished with financial services, I went back up to sit with Mr. Nascar as his surgery wasn’t scheduled until 11. I went back to bed 11, and pulled back the curtain. To my surprise, Mr. Nascar was not there! I startled the heck out of the old man that had been assigned to that bed next. I closed the curtain, red-faced, turned on my heel and headed back to the reception area. The very nice nurse at the front desk explained that she had hoped to catch me when I came back to tell me that they had taken him on to pre-op to prep for surgery. I just smiled and told her it was too late. I suggested that she might want to check on the man in bed 11, as I’m sure I came as a little bit of a shock to him.

In the waiting lounge, I spent hours alternating between reading my book and checking the names scrolling down the TV screen that gives an update on each patient’s surgery status. I received a call from a surgical nurse when they surgery started, and again about an hour in to update me and let me know that all was well. Finally about 1:30 that afternoon the lounge nurse notified me that the surgery was over and that the doctor would be coming to talk to me.

I had never met Dr. D before, but he was very nice. He explained to me that the surgery went well. The radioactive dye had travelled to the lymph nodes under Mr. Nascar’s right arm, so he took 3-4 of those out for biopsy. He gave me some basic care instructions, and advised me that we should set a follow up appointment for two weeks. About an hour after I spoke with Dr. D I was able to go back and sit with Mr. Nascar again. He was asleep when I arrived, heavily medicated. I sat with him for awhile and quietly read my book. Around 3pm Mr. Nascar woke up and was complaining of intense pain in the incision site on his back. The nurse said she was unable to give him any more medication; we would need to wait for discharge and have his prescription filled.

We left the hospital about 4 that afternoon and went to pick up Bert©. We made our way to Wal-Mart to have his prescriptions filled. He wasn’t feeling very well and was very groggy. He went straight to sleep as soon as we arrived home. That weekend I was off on Friday & Monday for the Memorial day holiday. Friday was Bert©’s last day of school. I promised her that I would come and have lunch with her that day, and Mr. Nascar has said he would come as well. That didn’t end up happening. From Thursday afternoon after the surgery till Saturday, Mr. Nascar slept 20-21 hours a day. On Saturday we first realized he was having a fever, 102.4. Thus began the first of 3 visits to the Emergency Room to fight what we would eventually find out to be a raging Staph infection.

Life was pretty miserable for all involved for the next two weeks or so. My step-father passed away very suddenly, from what we still really don’t know. Mr. Nascar was in copious amounts of pain from the 6” incision on his back (because the skin was pulled so tight to close the wound) and from the surgery site under his arm as it was swollen from the infection.

Then, more bad news came along. The pathology on the lymph nodes had come back. They had tested positive for cancer. Dr. D thought it would be best for him to go operate again on Mr. Nascar to remove the rest of the lymph nodes under his right arm. First though, we needed to clear up his current infection and give him some additional time to heal. We used that time to take off for a family vacation in Florida. We needed that, all of us. It was time to relax, and enjoy each others company without the pressure and stress of everyday life.

On Tuesday July 14, Dr. D again operated on Mr. Nascar. The difference between this surgery and the previous one is very noticeable. Mr. Nascar was awake as soon as I came back to the recovery room. He has had a full and voracious appetite. He hasn’t been sleeping most of his days away. He has been up and around, and joking with me. So far (fingers crossed, please) there has been no sign of an infection. Mr. Nascar started taking antibiotics a week prior to surgery and will continue them for 20 days afterward to hopefully thwart another infection. He says that his arm is sore, and he cannot raise it very high, and the drain that he has for the next two weeks is annoying, and things don’t taste right because of the antibiotics, and, and, and. He is back to his *relatively* normal self again. I am happy to see it. He’s itching to go back to work, but I’d like him to be out for at least a week, especially with the drain in.

He has a follow up appointment in two weeks with Dr. D. Hopefully we will have the pathology back on the remaining lymph nodes that were removed. Dr. D said that he didn’t see anything obvious that looked bad, however it’s harder to tell in men than it is in women. I don’t see that it matters much regardless because Mr. Nascar has decided not to follow up with the Oncologist. He is adamant that he doesn’t want any Chemotherapy or Radiation treatment. He tells me that he’s 42 years old and that his only regret if he dies would be leaving me and Bert© behind. He says he is not scared of dying, that he is looking forward to what happens when he passes from this life.

I am not happy about this decision, but it is not my place to force him to choose otherwise. He is a grown man and is perfectly capable of making choices in his life, he got along fine for 40 some odd years without me and he doesn’t need my opinions now. He spent 11 years caring for his mother and watching her die. He knows some of what it’s like to go through those treatments, and understands the disappointment when they don’t work. His theory is, why not enjoy the time that I do have left with the people I love, instead of making myself feel sick and miserable with the medication that’s supposed to help me and dying anyway. I really can’t fault him on his logic. Regardless, it’s plausible that I could be killed in a tragic accident and die before he does anyway. Who knows? From the moment we’re born we begin dying. Might as well make the most of it.

That being said, I’m going to go wake his butt up right now, give him and big hug and tell him how much I love him. Thank you all for letting me share this with you. It was finally time and it needed to come off my chest.

Happy Saturday everyone!

Veni, Vidi…Vacation!

Monday morning we left Jacksonville at about 7:30am and ventured down to Orlando.

Florida is so flat, I really wasn’t expecting that. While there isn’t a whole lot to see on the way down, I still thought it was beautiful. Everything is lush and green with the rains they have been having. The palm trees are gorgeous and I didn’t realize there was such a variety among the species. Tall, short, medium; with all kinds of different configuration of palm fronds. The trees are so skinny and tall. I bet I could wrap two hands around the trunk. Mr. Nascar said its probably because they were burned down in a wild fire at one point and they’ve just now had an opportunity to grow again. The brush grows up between the trees and makes it look jungle-esque. The Spanish Moss that grows hangs off of everything and gives it the unique appearance of being bearded. It’s magnificent, I’m going to have a hard time leaving on Saturday morning.

The roads are so straight. I bet we travelled 50+ miles on the interstate and never went around a curve. That is something I’ve never experienced before. Mr. Nascar and I were speculating that by their very nature of being flat and straight the roads are probably pretty dangerous, especially at nighttime. I can see where tired drivers heading home could easily fall asleep behind the wheel because there isn’t a whole lot to force you to focus on. You just hit cruise control and away you go.

Orlando is about 60 miles inland from the coast so it’s significantly warmer. We arrived at our hotel around 9:40am and luckily we were able to check in to an empty room. We dropped off our luggage, and went down to wait for the shuttle to take us to Sea World.

I had never been to Sea World before, but Mr. Nascar went about 10 years ago with a previous girlfriend and loved it. He felt that this park would be the one that all three of us would enjoy the most, and boy was he right. We got a park map as soon as we arrived and set out planning our day around the shows that Sea World offers. We saw Shamu-Believe, Clyde & Seymour take Pirate Island, Blue Horizons – Dolphin show, and something with cats, dogs, and even a pig preforming. We rode one ride, and walked all over the blessed place looking at the animals and even sometimes interacting with them. We fed the sting rays, petted the dolphins, and almost got to feed the sea lions and seals as well but we just missed it. I’m going to post a few more pictures and let the pictures tell you all a thousand words. Suffice it to say, as exhausted as we were, we had a terrific time. Mr. Nascar chose well!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Greetings from Florida!

Webmiss, Bert©, & Mr. Nascar are on VACATION!!

We’re down here in sunny Jacksonville, FL where Mr. Nascar’s brother lives. We left from Tennessee early yesterday morning and arrived down here safe and sound before dark. We stopped by his brother’s apartment to visit for a bit, ran to Wal*Mart for some beach supplies and then headed down to the sand. It was awesome! Everyone kept saying how hot it was, but honestly I didn’t notice. The humidity here is negligible, whereas in Tennessee it’s unbearable. Often it’s 98% humidity before 8am up there. Yesterdays weather was pretty much ideal.

Bert© and Mr. Nascar immediately headed out into the surf for some boogie boarding lessons. The wind was blowing and the sun was setting. It was perfect. The smell of the salt water, the squish of the sand under foot, it was almost heaven. I never realized how much I missed living near the ocean until I moved to Tennessee.

 

We’re having a great time. It’s been very cool to meet Mr. Nascar’s brother and his girlfriend. We’re going to head off to church later this morning in St. Augustine at the Cathedral Basilica. While the original parish was built in 1565, it was burned to the ground at least twice. The Cathedral as it stands today was built in 1797 and over the years has been remodeled and added on to. I am told that it’s a sigh to behold and I honestly cannot wait to go and celebrate mass there. Afterward we will be going to brunch with Mr. Nascar’s brother and his girlfriend. We will bring Mr. Nascar’s brother back to the apartment as he has rehearsal with his band today and then we will be hitting the beach again. I can’t wait to walk down the strip and go into all the different shops. I truly am enjoying myself and can’t wait to explore. More pictures to come, especially of our trip down to Orlando later this week where we will be amusing ourselves at Sea World, Orlando!

The nightmare is over

I can hardly believe that I’m about to post this…but Mr. Nascar is HOME!

He was release from prison at 11:30 AM on Monday March 23, 2009. What a great day indeed. It was the first time in 8 months that I saw him in street clothes, and boy did he look fine.

I took Tuesday off to spend with him, and we pulled Bert© out of school. The weather was beautiful and we drove up to Gatlinburg and spent 3 hours at the Ripley’s Aquarium up there. We drove into the Smoky Mountain National forest for a little bit, and climbed down to the river to put our feet in the cold water. It was awesome just to spend time together, just the 3 of us. We could be as loud or as quiet as we wanted to be. We could kiss and hug for 30 minutes if we felt like it. We didn’t have to eat out of a vending machine.

We’re getting used to each other again. It has been very different actually living with him. He said he feels a little bit like a fish out of water. He hasn’t been sleeping well. He described it as almost feeling like if he truly did go to sleep, that he might wake up and it would all be taken away from him again, as if all of this was just a dream. Poor guy.

Anyway, I’ll try and update in a few days…and they have posted a challenge here at work where we can blog about one of the products we sell. I’m considering making a post about it, even if it would let all my lovely readers know exactly which company MyCompany™ actually is!

Why did I start blogging?

That was the question posed on Sleepyjane’s blog. I seem to be turning to her for inspiration with my writing lately. She wanted to get to know her fellow bloggers a little better and posed 6 random questions that people could choose to write about. I thought I would write about why I started blogging. Some of you might already know the backstory behind that, but for any “new” or potential readers, I thought I’d spell it all out again.

In 2007, there was some interesting stuff going on in my life. I have to pause here, because I’m astounded by the fact that I have been blogging for nearly 2 years now. Wow.

Anyway. Way back in 2007 I was involved heavily in a relationship with a married man. I got entangled with him quite by accident, he answered a personal ad I took out and we went for dinner one night. We had a fabulous time and he talked very candidly about loosing his fiancee in a car accident and how it had taken him nearly a year to get over it. Now, please keep in mind that I was newly separated from TheEx and hindsight tells me that I was incredibly vulnerable and naive. I believed him, I ate every word of his story up. We were together 3 months before I wised up and figure out he was married. You would think that little revelation would have been enough to make me walk away, but OH NO, I wasn’t quite done making a fool of myself.

I found out as much about his wife as I could and I literally started virtually stalking her. I searched out any profile I could for her and read as much about her as I could. I was a woman obsessed. I think I wanted to see what their relationship was from her point of view. From what he had said, they had been having problems for a long time and they both were staying married because they couldn’t afford to split up. I voraciously read every word of hers that I could put my beady little eyes upon.

Eventually I discovered that she had a blog. I felt like perhaps I had struck gold. I finally felt like I might understand what made her, and more importantly their relationship tick. I wanted him to be with me, and only me more than I had wanted anything in a long time but I would never ever have asked, demanded, or manipulated things to head in my favor. I was content, happy even, to enjoy the time that we spent together and then to let him go home to her. That didn’t stop me from being a complete and total psychotic cyber stalker. Her blog was so, normal. I was almost disappointed. I wanted to read about them having fights and arguments, and all the things that drove her crazy about him…but there were none.  In time, I actually grew to enjoy the way she wrote. She is a very well spoken, articulate person, and for some God-awful reason I thought I should reach out to her.

I remember clearly the day that I left an anonymous comment on her blog. I thought I would have a heart attack I was so anxious and scared. I thought for sure she would know who it was. I was waiting, with baited breath for the man to call me and ream me out for contacting his wife. I waited in vain, for that call never did come. As time went on, I got more brazen and bold. I thought well maybe if I blogged too, we could become “virtual” friends.

I want to pause here, to smack my hand against my forehead and say: “Webmiss, what the hell were you thinking??” I am ashamed of having an affair with a married man. I am ashamed that my wonderful outlet of blogging started with such an ugly, dark secret.

So, I created a blog, and a fictitious person to go with it. I figured if we were going to be webbuddies I should at least know something about my pseudo-self. I had a gave my persona a new name, and I had out lined some background for myself. I started writing about some of the real life happenings at work, and in my family life, but I changed details like having a brother when in real life I have a sister.

I started reading other blogs, besides hers. I started commenting and actually beginning friendships with some of the people currently on my blog roll. I became so involved, that some of my true personality was coming forth and I was beginning to loose track of the deceitful details. Then, one day it all came to a head. Someone had sent me a real Christmas card, addressed to my pseudo-self but to my real address and it came back to them. I decided then and there that I couldn’t lie anymore. I outed myself on my own blog. People were shocked and angry. I lost a lot of blog-friends that I really, really liked. I had hoped that once the pretense was gone, and I could just be myself everything would be ok. But, I was wrong.

More than not, people were very supportive and understanding of why I did what I did. I have developed a kinship with these friends and continue to be active on their blogs and them on mine. I treasure those friendships because in spite of my devious actions, they saw through to the real me and chose to remain friends.

I ultimately ended the relationship with MarriedMan. It was probably the best decision I ever made. I’m happier and healthier for it. I don’t know what he’s doing, I don’t know if he’s even still married, and you know what? I don’t want to know. I never ended up becoming friends with his wife through her blog, and really that was probably best as it was a messed up idea from the beginning. I have lived to learn a lesson from that.

Rest assured, since that episode in my life I have been blogging, perhaps not as regularly as I should, but everything you read is ME, the real me. I don’t reveal the true name of the company that I work for, as I’m afraid of them coming across this blog. My daughter, really is 5, and her name is not Bert©, that is just a cool nickname Maxxy gave her. My name is not really Webmiss, but those closest to me do know what it is. Mr.Nascar, is aptly named as he is a Nascar fan, is really in prison. We have managed to travel along out 13-14 month long relationship with him comfortably incarcerated for the last 7 months all the way across the state.

And yes, damnit, I do live in Tennessee. Although you wouldn’t know it to talk to me.

That is why I started blogging. As screwed up as my logic seems now, it appeared to be a fine idea at the time. I’m 2 years older now, but much more wiser than my age belies.

From the bottom of my heart, I thank each of you that stayed with me in spite of all the lies and deceit. To the new people that are reading me, well…now you know my dirty little secret.

To ashes you will return.

Wednesday night after heading back from Mr. Nascar’s parole hearing, Bert© and I screamed into town on two wheels with just enough time to get to church for Ash Wednesday.

I know I’ve mentioned before that I am a practicing Catholic, but it’s only in my adult years that I truly feel a connection with organized religion and my belief system. I am one of those bad people who picks apart the “rules” of their religion and pieces those bits together with my values and beliefs to make a wonderful mish-mash of personal Catholicism!

For example: the Catholic church teaches that it’s wrong to be on birth control. Children are a gift from God and should always be loved and accepted. Whoops! I just renewed my prescription for my Nuva-ring. My bad.

The church also teaches that sexual intimacy is something that should only be shared between a man and a woman within the bonds of marriage. Pre-marital sex is a no-no. I vehemently disagree with that point of view. Why I don’t advocate people being promiscuous, I see nothing wrong with sharing a sexual relationship with someone you love and care about, regardless of being married. I think that the whole “We need to wait for marriage” mindset is influencing teenagers and young adults to make the decision to get married just so they can have sex. Now I could be wrong about that, I do live in the south and we appear to have a penchant for young teenage mothers, but honestly I don’t see any sense behind asking young people to wait, when we throw sex and sexual innuendo in their faces nearly 24 hours a day. My belief, and you all can hold me to this when Bert© comes of age, is that we need to stress sex education not in school but AT HOME! Our children should be educated about safe sex and how to properly prevent pregnancy by their parents not by school teachers or their friends. Then and only then can they make correct and informed decisions. While ultimately I would like Bert© to be under lock and key until she’s 80, I am cognizant of the fact that I would be convicted of child cruelty and therefore that is not a practical option. I want to be able to trust my child as a young adult and know that she is making the right decisions for herself and that if she chooses to have sex as a teenager, she needs to give that decision the due care it deserves and protect herself no matter what happens.

I believe I have been waylaid by my thought process and have diverted from the original intent of my post.

However I choose to believe, I do feel that since these are guidelines laid out by the church I am responsible to uphold myself to the consequences for breaking those rules.  I recognize that I am not within a “state of grace” under Church doctrine and because of that I cannot partake in communion. I could remedy that by heading off to reconciliation (doesn’t that sound much nicer than confession?) and explaining to the priest that I have sinned by taking birth control and for enjoying a physical relationship with Mr. Nascar (not recently mind you). The kicker is, I would have to be truly sorry for these sins and do everything in my power to not commit them again. That I’m afraid, I cannot do, because that my friends would be lying straight to the face of God.  Or at least that’s how I see it, because I know that as soon as Mr. Nascar comes home I am going to be doing my very best to sin, as often as possible

Anyway, I still attend mass on Sundays and participate in Holy Days of Obligation (or as my old priest was fond of saying: Holy Days of Opportunity), which includes Ash Wednesday and the Lenten season which we are currently at the beginning of.

I love the ceremony of a Catholic mass. I love going into a church, no matter how far away from my home parish, and being able to participate actively because the basics of the service will be the same. I find comfort in consistency, there is nothing I hate more than change. Instead of participating in the Eucharist, I go up with my arms crossed over my chest, opposite hand on each shoulder (the acceptable sign for not taking communion) to be blessed by the priest. While I feel a certain lack of fulfillment from that process, I am making the choices that keep me in that position so I have no one to blame but myself.

Ash Wednesday was particularly profound for me this year. While I did not participate in communion, I did go up to have the priest mark the sign of the cross in ashes on my forehead. The ashes are a sacramental, created by burning the palm fronds from the previous years Palm Sunday ceremony.

Bert© ever the inquisitive child wanted to know how many cigarettes Father Mike had smoked to make all those ashes!

I was touched, seeing all these people crowded into church for the 7pm service, streaming up to the alter to be marked, physically marked by their religion. Normally for most people religion is like an invisible layer that we carry with us. One cannot just look at a person and say “Oh, she’s Catholic, or he’s Baptist, or they’re Agnostic” It was so profound to me to be able to look around and see all these people actively practicing their religion, well it was a beautiful thing. I really felt for the first time in a long time, that although there is so much evil in this world, so many people who are making bad choices and hurting one another, that there also really is a lot of good too.

And that my friends, has given me a renewed sense of hope and faith in humanity.