1. Home to Contradictions, 2. Six Degrees from Home, 3. Welcome Back to My Therapy,
4. Lying, Cheating, Stealing and Intent, 5. Power of You, 6. One Split Second,
7. Marvelous Mistakes, 8. I made a choice to make a change, 9. Connections to the Farm,
10. Back to the Farm, 11. It's a small world after all, 12 Fair Weather Friends,
13. Ghost of Roommates Past, 14. You can never go to far, 15. Glamorous Life,
16. Double Standards, 17. Lazy? No Exhausted, 18. Crossroads of Life and Death, 19. One Last Time, 20. When Worlds Collide I, 21. When Worlds Collide II, 22. When Worlds Collide III 23. The Unwanted New World, 24. Means the Old World Must Go, 25. So Where was God in all this? 26. Where did you get that from?, 27. The Reason for My Season, 28. Was Always a Little Rascal, 29. Pictures and Quotes of the Little Rascal and final chapter 30. Closing in Contradictions. ~Use these links to read in order (some chapters have songs, new added content, pictures or all:) Volume 2 >>>>>
Working things out in my mind takes many turns and just when I think I've handled something... it shows me just how wrong I can be. I have always tried to deal with things as they come no matter how difficult. Somethings are definitely harder and take much longer such as losing Trey and that's one reason I haven't written too much about him at this point. Other things I've been through many times and feel like I have the process down pat. I don't like it but I understand it. Like friends coming and going... but there are times especially now when the process fails me completely. I take the high road until I run out of road and then the only thing left is to travel the unfamiliar path. I thought I was finally free from Marvelous but he did show up from time to time as mentioned previously. While I was licking my wounds, I still felt hope for the future to maybe find a friend or two or even a really good guy later, if that was still possible, but for now I was comfortably single. I was at a Crossroads of sorts.
So I did what many newly single women do and got dressed up and went out and yes I went alone. Doing the work I did cured me of any problem of walking into any establishment alone and making myself at home but the places I went to were usually old familiar ones where I knew a lot of people. I had met a really cool lady earlier who was an industrial interior designer and because of my love for intelligence or design, we really hit it off. She thought it was cool I was PI and after one night at the Old Folks Bar when Marvelous was acting stupid in the parking lot and I asked him did he have to make an idiot of himself every time he was in public?... she thought I was great. Men... sometimes they are so simple it's complicated. She watched my relationship with Marvelous implode very soon after that and then we were both single with kids so we had a lot in common. We'll call her Janet and we had a chance to go out a few times. Janet really was a sweetheart who had so much talent in singing she could have attended Juilliard. Like many single working mothers she was supper busy but just needed to find the time for herself and maybe meet a good guy. And no, neither of us were looking for Mr. Right in the bar. ;) These next two photos were taken by Trey while he was practicing with the camera. I'd love to tell you he got better at it but I'm afraid that just wasn't so... but the blurriness helped me a lot!
I also kept up with Krystal and Ryan over the years and was sad when I heard they broke up. Unfortunately she was still on the path to self destruction and there was nothing I could say to her that would get her to stop. She would come over to my house in later years and I had just one rule. No strange men and she didn't break that rule until 2007 or so. And that's when she brought a guy we'll call Spike who was from Union County and he was a hard core IV drug user but despite that he was pretty intelligent... drug problem not withstanding of course. I think his aunt was even my history teacher in school and she was one of the best teachers back then. He loved her and she loved him but they were a bad combination. She left him eventually and he started to call me and that was just the sort of thing I was looking to avoid. Once she disappears I don't see her for long periods of time so I took the few things she had to his house and had a long talk with him. Long story was he didn't have a back up plan after he was in an accident that cut his military dreams short. Since this was much later after round 2 with Marvelous I was still reeling from that so we both had a lot to talk about. I watched him try to find an available vein for over an hour and he remarked that I wasn't scared of him or anything and I asked why should I be? He then asked me if this was fun and I told him not really... it's kind of boring way of life... like watching a human pin cushion. He then gave me a book called The Road Less Traveled and it was pretty remarkable coming from him so I again learned not to judge a book by it's cover. I saw Krystal once or twice after that and that was all. She disappeared again, I think back with Ryan and as usual life goes on.
Toward the end of February is when my great grandmother Maw Maw who was 99 years old died and I was so proud of Trey when we all got together as a very large extended family for the last time. He helped old Uncle Pat who was my granddad's brother into the building and patiently sat through the whole thing with no complaints as kids his age have a tendency to sometimes. This is the time Marvelous got his reference from me after aggravating the living snot out of me. Daisy and I had been neighbors now almost 11 years and her brother Luke would come visit from time to time bringing his beautiful English Bulldog Spartacus when he came and I fell in love him. The dog not the man although I did like the man. I had talked to Daisy because she was so close she saw the last of Marvelous and all that transpired up close and personal so we had also became sort of friends. She had been telling me about her second bother for years and we'll call him Rosco. Rosco was a con and that was pretty much all there is too it.
Although I felt like the Bonnie thing would always be between us it worked out. I would go and help her out at the Old Folks bar when I had time and that wasn't often, believe me. Bonnie's Clyde #4? from New York hung out there again. He had divorced his wife he married while still dating Bonnie, then married Bonnie, divorced her and then remarried the 2nd wife. I thought I had problems? At this time both of Daisy's brothers where in town and they spent more time over at my house because they were bored. Rosco liked to talk more than any man I have ever met in my life. When the brothers left it was in a hurry because there was always some family drama going on and that time was no exception. Then for Valentines Day night I decided to go out to the big Country Bar here in Charlotte because I didn't think I would see too many people there I didn't want to see. Thankfully I was right... at least that night. I was ready to let it all hang out! It is a popular place still to this day so you never really know who will be there when. I knew a bouncer there and knew he was married with kids and a super good guy even though I thought he was crazy for letting Marvelous drive his motorcycle once.
I had met his sister about a year earlier and really liked her but only saw her that one time... until she happened to call me that day out of the blue so we decided to meet at the bar that night. We'll call her Ariel because she was a preachers kid and you guessed it... she was buck wild too. At least back in her day but she was older now with a great amount of responsibility. Her beloved mother was dying of cancer and her job was even more stressful than mine at times. Turns out her brother went to school with my boss and with the bosses dad frequenting the Country bar from time to time, it made it a really awkward place to be sometimes. And here is where Ariel told me she would love to meet a big, bald, redneck, guy with a goatee. In my infinite wisdom right about the time I spotted Scott and his crew at the bar, I said, " Well come on! I got one for ya." So I introduced them thinking this would be great because we could all still be friends and they hit it off. Well for a little while anyway and then it went south after a few months or so and I felt really bad.
We swapped stories, many you've read here and became really good friends. I like strong independent women who know what's going on. It saves time explaining things and let's us relate our ideas or feelings more efficiently. We were different people with different experiences but we had so much to talk about. We hung out and went out. We met each others families and for the first time in a while I felt like I had made a true friend that I would do just about anything for. Ariel shared her childhood experiences with being a preachers kid and felt like her mom raised her to be a wife and a mother. My mom raised me to get out so I just couldn't understand the philosophy. She was bad to hold grudges and I tried to show her the futility of that. Forgiveness without forgetting and moving on is not forgiving and that's like giving free rent in your head to the people that have hurt you the most... with out doing the work to learn the lessons. I also learned that Ariel had to compartmentalize her life in order to make it through the day and she carried a lot of pain around, which caused her to drink more than a college kid after finals.
I told her she could stay and keep fighting the same old fight with people or she could pick up her toys and go home, lick your wounds and move on. Not to be confused with her mantra of keeping it moving because there is no time to process life's lessons so we can learn from them. Just hanging out with her helped me tremendously with getting over Marvelous and all the hurt he had caused. Unfortunately I still had to listen to a few people come up to me to tell me something he had done at one time or another and finally I said... Enough is enough! If you couldn't tell me when things were happening then don't bother now. I needed no more information on just how low he could go. Got it... thank you! Ariel had a best friend take off with her fiance once so she understood all that comes with it and I think we both really laughed at each others idea's on how to handle men like that. Again because she is such an intensely private person I am severely limited in what I can reveal. Most of this is public knowledge if there is such a thing in their family. But I did take her to the Old Folks Bar and she loved it there because no one knew her!
She asked me to help her move and I said no problem. I showed up and started packing her stuff pretty quickly and then packing the cars. She looked at me and said good gosh you're pretty good at this. I replied yes I have done it a time or 15 over the years. I have never seen anyone so happy because I knew how to hang a curtain rod and didn't have to wait on a guy to do it. She had a great dog who I just fell in love with and two of her other friends to help so we had it done it no time. Once she was kidding with me and told me her dream was to live in a trailer on a chicken farm. I said "WHAT!, REALLY!" I can say that was not even in the top 100 list of things to do before I die, but she couldn't understand why. Later we went back to the Old Folks Bar where she met Janet. They hit it off too and I was so relieved. She had already met Daisy and had the 411 on all that. For the first time in a long time things were looking up and everybody was getting along.
I knew a lot of people in the bar even before Daisy had because it seems that everyone ends up back there after a relationship goes south. It was around this time that Little Bits brother entered the bar who I hadn't seen since he left high school. We talked, caught up and then Daisy asked me how I knew him, so I told her. Turns out they had been friends too for a while and yes the world still gets a little bit smaller everyday. A lot of old customers from The Rack come in there too and some nights it was like a family reunion. So between these two ladies one a professional bartender (Daisy) and the other a professional drinker (Ariel) is when I practiced drinking with the hopes of being able to hang. Yeah, I know. High hopes but it was a safe environment. The following pretty much sums up my experience with it from start to finish.
I really did have that t shirt at one time too and it did give me the courage to get out on the dance floor and I found a great partner to dance with... a guy from the old pool room. He loved it and was a sweet guy too but I got the feeling pretty fast that he was looking for a whole lot more than I was. I was just looking to play and have some fun and yes I told him too. I had actually met him and a friend of his at the same time. His friend introduced himself first by saying, "Hi I'm an asshole." I replied, "Bye, I'm done!" You ain't got to tell me twice! If only all guys could just be that up front and honest... life would be so much simpler.
The only problems I had was working as a PI was wearing me out and I was miserable. There were still very little options available at the time and I was wondering Where do we go from here? I had been in the car for about 13 years now and it was time to find something else to do. Sitting in it thinking about everything that was going on outside in the world was too much. I wanted to be out in the world, not just watching more people who seemingly have it all throw it away... time after time. Getting time off for anything was like asking my parents for the car. It just wasn't happening and the other main reason I got into the business was to be able to control my own schedule to a certain degree. Trey had gone to live with his dad after the Christmas holiday's and I knew this was going to be bad. I really wanted to be there for him more and since he was finishing up junior year I knew I had to get ready for after the graduation. I was pretty sure mom was going to throw him out after that because her patience was wore out with the whole situation so I just knew I would have my turn to spend some time with him. It would soon be time to Turn the Page.
19. One Last Time >>>>>
4. Lying, Cheating, Stealing and Intent, 5. Power of You, 6. One Split Second,
7. Marvelous Mistakes, 8. I made a choice to make a change, 9. Connections to the Farm,
10. Back to the Farm, 11. It's a small world after all, 12 Fair Weather Friends,
13. Ghost of Roommates Past, 14. You can never go to far, 15. Glamorous Life,
16. Double Standards, 17. Lazy? No Exhausted, 18. Crossroads of Life and Death, 19. One Last Time, 20. When Worlds Collide I, 21. When Worlds Collide II, 22. When Worlds Collide III 23. The Unwanted New World, 24. Means the Old World Must Go, 25. So Where was God in all this? 26. Where did you get that from?, 27. The Reason for My Season, 28. Was Always a Little Rascal, 29. Pictures and Quotes of the Little Rascal and final chapter 30. Closing in Contradictions. ~Use these links to read in order (some chapters have songs, new added content, pictures or all:) Volume 2 >>>>>
Working things out in my mind takes many turns and just when I think I've handled something... it shows me just how wrong I can be. I have always tried to deal with things as they come no matter how difficult. Somethings are definitely harder and take much longer such as losing Trey and that's one reason I haven't written too much about him at this point. Other things I've been through many times and feel like I have the process down pat. I don't like it but I understand it. Like friends coming and going... but there are times especially now when the process fails me completely. I take the high road until I run out of road and then the only thing left is to travel the unfamiliar path. I thought I was finally free from Marvelous but he did show up from time to time as mentioned previously. While I was licking my wounds, I still felt hope for the future to maybe find a friend or two or even a really good guy later, if that was still possible, but for now I was comfortably single. I was at a Crossroads of sorts.
So I did what many newly single women do and got dressed up and went out and yes I went alone. Doing the work I did cured me of any problem of walking into any establishment alone and making myself at home but the places I went to were usually old familiar ones where I knew a lot of people. I had met a really cool lady earlier who was an industrial interior designer and because of my love for intelligence or design, we really hit it off. She thought it was cool I was PI and after one night at the Old Folks Bar when Marvelous was acting stupid in the parking lot and I asked him did he have to make an idiot of himself every time he was in public?... she thought I was great. Men... sometimes they are so simple it's complicated. She watched my relationship with Marvelous implode very soon after that and then we were both single with kids so we had a lot in common. We'll call her Janet and we had a chance to go out a few times. Janet really was a sweetheart who had so much talent in singing she could have attended Juilliard. Like many single working mothers she was supper busy but just needed to find the time for herself and maybe meet a good guy. And no, neither of us were looking for Mr. Right in the bar. ;) These next two photos were taken by Trey while he was practicing with the camera. I'd love to tell you he got better at it but I'm afraid that just wasn't so... but the blurriness helped me a lot!
I also kept up with Krystal and Ryan over the years and was sad when I heard they broke up. Unfortunately she was still on the path to self destruction and there was nothing I could say to her that would get her to stop. She would come over to my house in later years and I had just one rule. No strange men and she didn't break that rule until 2007 or so. And that's when she brought a guy we'll call Spike who was from Union County and he was a hard core IV drug user but despite that he was pretty intelligent... drug problem not withstanding of course. I think his aunt was even my history teacher in school and she was one of the best teachers back then. He loved her and she loved him but they were a bad combination. She left him eventually and he started to call me and that was just the sort of thing I was looking to avoid. Once she disappears I don't see her for long periods of time so I took the few things she had to his house and had a long talk with him. Long story was he didn't have a back up plan after he was in an accident that cut his military dreams short. Since this was much later after round 2 with Marvelous I was still reeling from that so we both had a lot to talk about. I watched him try to find an available vein for over an hour and he remarked that I wasn't scared of him or anything and I asked why should I be? He then asked me if this was fun and I told him not really... it's kind of boring way of life... like watching a human pin cushion. He then gave me a book called The Road Less Traveled and it was pretty remarkable coming from him so I again learned not to judge a book by it's cover. I saw Krystal once or twice after that and that was all. She disappeared again, I think back with Ryan and as usual life goes on.
Toward the end of February is when my great grandmother Maw Maw who was 99 years old died and I was so proud of Trey when we all got together as a very large extended family for the last time. He helped old Uncle Pat who was my granddad's brother into the building and patiently sat through the whole thing with no complaints as kids his age have a tendency to sometimes. This is the time Marvelous got his reference from me after aggravating the living snot out of me. Daisy and I had been neighbors now almost 11 years and her brother Luke would come visit from time to time bringing his beautiful English Bulldog Spartacus when he came and I fell in love him. The dog not the man although I did like the man. I had talked to Daisy because she was so close she saw the last of Marvelous and all that transpired up close and personal so we had also became sort of friends. She had been telling me about her second bother for years and we'll call him Rosco. Rosco was a con and that was pretty much all there is too it.
Although I felt like the Bonnie thing would always be between us it worked out. I would go and help her out at the Old Folks bar when I had time and that wasn't often, believe me. Bonnie's Clyde #4? from New York hung out there again. He had divorced his wife he married while still dating Bonnie, then married Bonnie, divorced her and then remarried the 2nd wife. I thought I had problems? At this time both of Daisy's brothers where in town and they spent more time over at my house because they were bored. Rosco liked to talk more than any man I have ever met in my life. When the brothers left it was in a hurry because there was always some family drama going on and that time was no exception. Then for Valentines Day night I decided to go out to the big Country Bar here in Charlotte because I didn't think I would see too many people there I didn't want to see. Thankfully I was right... at least that night. I was ready to let it all hang out! It is a popular place still to this day so you never really know who will be there when. I knew a bouncer there and knew he was married with kids and a super good guy even though I thought he was crazy for letting Marvelous drive his motorcycle once.
I had met his sister about a year earlier and really liked her but only saw her that one time... until she happened to call me that day out of the blue so we decided to meet at the bar that night. We'll call her Ariel because she was a preachers kid and you guessed it... she was buck wild too. At least back in her day but she was older now with a great amount of responsibility. Her beloved mother was dying of cancer and her job was even more stressful than mine at times. Turns out her brother went to school with my boss and with the bosses dad frequenting the Country bar from time to time, it made it a really awkward place to be sometimes. And here is where Ariel told me she would love to meet a big, bald, redneck, guy with a goatee. In my infinite wisdom right about the time I spotted Scott and his crew at the bar, I said, " Well come on! I got one for ya." So I introduced them thinking this would be great because we could all still be friends and they hit it off. Well for a little while anyway and then it went south after a few months or so and I felt really bad.
We swapped stories, many you've read here and became really good friends. I like strong independent women who know what's going on. It saves time explaining things and let's us relate our ideas or feelings more efficiently. We were different people with different experiences but we had so much to talk about. We hung out and went out. We met each others families and for the first time in a while I felt like I had made a true friend that I would do just about anything for. Ariel shared her childhood experiences with being a preachers kid and felt like her mom raised her to be a wife and a mother. My mom raised me to get out so I just couldn't understand the philosophy. She was bad to hold grudges and I tried to show her the futility of that. Forgiveness without forgetting and moving on is not forgiving and that's like giving free rent in your head to the people that have hurt you the most... with out doing the work to learn the lessons. I also learned that Ariel had to compartmentalize her life in order to make it through the day and she carried a lot of pain around, which caused her to drink more than a college kid after finals.
I told her she could stay and keep fighting the same old fight with people or she could pick up her toys and go home, lick your wounds and move on. Not to be confused with her mantra of keeping it moving because there is no time to process life's lessons so we can learn from them. Just hanging out with her helped me tremendously with getting over Marvelous and all the hurt he had caused. Unfortunately I still had to listen to a few people come up to me to tell me something he had done at one time or another and finally I said... Enough is enough! If you couldn't tell me when things were happening then don't bother now. I needed no more information on just how low he could go. Got it... thank you! Ariel had a best friend take off with her fiance once so she understood all that comes with it and I think we both really laughed at each others idea's on how to handle men like that. Again because she is such an intensely private person I am severely limited in what I can reveal. Most of this is public knowledge if there is such a thing in their family. But I did take her to the Old Folks Bar and she loved it there because no one knew her!
She asked me to help her move and I said no problem. I showed up and started packing her stuff pretty quickly and then packing the cars. She looked at me and said good gosh you're pretty good at this. I replied yes I have done it a time or 15 over the years. I have never seen anyone so happy because I knew how to hang a curtain rod and didn't have to wait on a guy to do it. She had a great dog who I just fell in love with and two of her other friends to help so we had it done it no time. Once she was kidding with me and told me her dream was to live in a trailer on a chicken farm. I said "WHAT!, REALLY!" I can say that was not even in the top 100 list of things to do before I die, but she couldn't understand why. Later we went back to the Old Folks Bar where she met Janet. They hit it off too and I was so relieved. She had already met Daisy and had the 411 on all that. For the first time in a long time things were looking up and everybody was getting along.
I knew a lot of people in the bar even before Daisy had because it seems that everyone ends up back there after a relationship goes south. It was around this time that Little Bits brother entered the bar who I hadn't seen since he left high school. We talked, caught up and then Daisy asked me how I knew him, so I told her. Turns out they had been friends too for a while and yes the world still gets a little bit smaller everyday. A lot of old customers from The Rack come in there too and some nights it was like a family reunion. So between these two ladies one a professional bartender (Daisy) and the other a professional drinker (Ariel) is when I practiced drinking with the hopes of being able to hang. Yeah, I know. High hopes but it was a safe environment. The following pretty much sums up my experience with it from start to finish.
I really did have that t shirt at one time too and it did give me the courage to get out on the dance floor and I found a great partner to dance with... a guy from the old pool room. He loved it and was a sweet guy too but I got the feeling pretty fast that he was looking for a whole lot more than I was. I was just looking to play and have some fun and yes I told him too. I had actually met him and a friend of his at the same time. His friend introduced himself first by saying, "Hi I'm an asshole." I replied, "Bye, I'm done!" You ain't got to tell me twice! If only all guys could just be that up front and honest... life would be so much simpler.
The only problems I had was working as a PI was wearing me out and I was miserable. There were still very little options available at the time and I was wondering Where do we go from here? I had been in the car for about 13 years now and it was time to find something else to do. Sitting in it thinking about everything that was going on outside in the world was too much. I wanted to be out in the world, not just watching more people who seemingly have it all throw it away... time after time. Getting time off for anything was like asking my parents for the car. It just wasn't happening and the other main reason I got into the business was to be able to control my own schedule to a certain degree. Trey had gone to live with his dad after the Christmas holiday's and I knew this was going to be bad. I really wanted to be there for him more and since he was finishing up junior year I knew I had to get ready for after the graduation. I was pretty sure mom was going to throw him out after that because her patience was wore out with the whole situation so I just knew I would have my turn to spend some time with him. It would soon be time to Turn the Page.
19. One Last Time >>>>>
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