WalkingThrough the Fog By a Thread

It sits above my brows like a low level drift, thick, impenetrable, sometimes with a low level buzz that keeps me on the edge of irritation at all times and is most likely caused but an overabundance of caffeine sizzling through my bloodstream.  This is the fog in my head. I have been asking myself lately, “What the fuck were you thinking, going back to school in the fall semester instead of waiting for spring?”

I do this to myself periodically. I have some diabolical insane part of me that decides that life isn’t stressful enough trying to live the life of a modern pioneer, with children,  but I must further complicate it by going beyond the bounds of even my own oft times questioned sanity.

Sometimes I think I have two crazy people sharing my brain that are in a constant competition of one-upsmanship.

Then I reflect in a more relaxing moment that I went back to school after a lot of thought and prayer and after truly feeling as if that were the direction I were being guided in.  The challenge is to try and keep on top of it all.

Keeping on top of it is something I aspire to like a crack addict hoping for the next fix.  Problem is I have no supplier and me and organization is not something that goes together.  ‘Keeping on top of it’ implies that I should have (sh)it all together in a tidy pile to be able to surmount it.  Reality shows in fact, that it is in a constant state of cave-in and I am more like an ant scrambling madly up the perpetually sliding sand hill.

My husband has accused me of being a hummingbird, flitting from one thing to another and never finishing.  I do finish things….just not all together or all in the same day.  He doesn’t realize that I have many personality aspects vying for control in my head.  They don’t always agree on what should come first.  So I end up sabotaging myself in quite a few areas and productive turnout is pathetic.

Take my kitchen for example.  My hearth.  The center of health, communion and sustenance for my family.  The place that, traditionally, as a mother, should be warm and peaceful, a place of nourishment for mind, body and spirit.

What I have for a kitchen is a 15 foot camp trailer.  It has two bunks that are used as storage spots.   The regular table broke and I tried having a small coffee table in there.  It serves as a place to pile stuff.  Some useful, some not so.  The same can be said for the seats.  In fact, the seat by the door is piled with boxes from our storage unit and cases of canned goods from the case lot sale at B & B last month.  I have a small propane cookstove barely large enough for a cake pan and not tall enough to brave baking an actual loaf of bread.  I only have an icebox style fridge, so in the summer months there are things I just don’t buy.  Like mayonnaise, butter or milk.  They spoil too quickly.  We get either enriched rice or almond milk, which keeps longer, or powdered milk, which tastes disgusting but works for cooking.  We can’t keep ice long enough in the coolers.  If we buy fresh produce it needs to be eaten within one or two days max to prevent spoilage.  This does not always happen so I always have a gallon of white vinegar on hand to kill off the science experiment that grows inside dark moist coolers when vegetables or dairy products cross over to the other side.

It’s not like I don’t know what I should be doing.  I know there are things I could or should do.  Sometimes I even make lists.  Where I consistently fail is in the practical application.  Often I feel as if I am facing this maelstrom of ‘stuff that needs to be done’ and it hits me in the face as soon as I open my eyes.  I don’t know where to begin.  Or, if I begin, I am easily drawn into the next ‘important thing to do’.

Looking at those pictures of F’s filthy kitchen made me realize the only difference between our housekeeping styles at first glance is that I put all my food cans in a huge laundry hamper outside to take to recycling, and I have mouse poison under the trailer bed to discourage any would be tenant vermin.  Ok, probably there is a lot less animal filth too, though the level of food spillage my children and I seem to generate is horrifying.  Bunny, my now five year old daughter also has a penchant for conducting cupboard recon for the sole purpose of commandeering cereal.  There is now an amazing amount of Count Chocula in the potato and onion bucket from our meager garden harvest.

I have NO PLACE to store anything.  So things get piled on the bunks, on the table, on the counters.  Then it avalanches and I cuss and shuffle it around and try to form new stacks.  I swear I am cleaning the place up, but then I have kids who are hungry RIGHT NOW and will DIE OF STARVATION if they are not fed within ten minutes.  But now I need a cooking pot because we got home too late the previous night to heat the water and do the previous nights dishes and they are all sitting, dirty, in the huge purple wash bin outside.  An I can’t find my frying pan because there is still a bag of canned goods sitting on it from the groceries we bought two or three days ago that I have been meaning to get into the cupboard if only I could reach it because there are two coolers, a shallow pan of hand washing water and half a case of Coca-Cola sitting between me and the teeny tiny little cupboards I have to cram everything to feed six people in for two weeks.

I kick the case of Coca-Cola and curse the company for ever taking the coca out of it, because, having gotten to actually try chewing some coca a former employer brought back from her trip to Peru, I could sure use that kind of caffeine-without-the-jitters-or-irritability energy boost to get this shithole cleaned and I don’t think I am getting to South America anytime soon to lay in my own supply.

This is usually when I leave the trailer, step outside, right into the face of the entire full length trailer house GM used to live in that has completely collapsed, exposing its guts of moldering books, bed frames, clothes, car parts, tufts of hairy insulation, mouse shit, furniture and some appliances mixed with God only knows what else in a musty smelling carnage.  My only bright spot in that view is that there is a boreal toad that lives somewhere in it, possibly under that bed frame pedestal and he croaks briefly throughout the day.  Trailer trash habitat.  Adaptive species amaze me.

Then I go hide in my outhouse.

This is pathetically, one of the only places where I can invoke the “LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE” rights to privacy laws so scarce in a parent’s life.

Back when I lived in a house in civilization with actual running water I would lock myself in for either a library period or a hot bath.  I don’t have the bath luxury now, and the length of library period depends on the weather temperature and whether or not my enzymes are doing their job at odor control.  But for a time, it is a place where I can hide and they can’t come in.  Oh, I do take off up the mountain sometimes, and Boo, my foster dog turned family member will sniff me out every time.  But I can’t just leave the kids like they used to do in the olden days to go out and get wood or work the distant fields.  Not only is this frowned on now days, but modern kids aren’t equipped to deal with things on their own.  In fact, you can bet that as soon as I am out of the house Bunny gets it into her head that all former house rules about safety, respect of others property, and general rules of proper conduct have left on my heels and there will soon emanate from our humble domain such a shrieking, caterwauling, thumping, or worse, ominous and pregnant silence you have ever encountered.  Most times I will return to find my baby, Nunkee, with new war paint either in the medium of marker or biggest sister’s pillaged makeup, objects once high upon the shelves stomped into the floor, every toy box, jewelry box, container, or suitcase upended and scattered, and a five year old Bunny proclaiming in prim report, “Nunkee did it, I saw her!”

Which is usually where my voice maxes out at the sound barrier, children attempt to flee in terror or pick up as quickly as humanly possible, and I stomp back up to rail in vain at the general disarray of my life and kitchen space.

Then I kick that Coca-cola box again.

I know one thing that will help me maintain my sanity.  I can keep writing.  I will be making time every week, possibly more than once (baby steps!) to come into the college library and maintain my thread of communication with myself through this outlet.  That way GM won’t be trying to sneak peeks over my shoulder to read what horrible family secrets I may be spilling and I won’t have to minimize the damned screen every two minutes, breaking my thread of concentration.  That thread is the only way I have of finding my way through the fog.

I know there are few certainties I can count on in this life.  I am certain hanging on for dear life to this thread is my necessity.  My emotional sustenance and survival.  My way of seeing it through and maybe, just maybe having it make sense in the end.  It is my one, unbreakable link to sanity in the chaos.

Or so the voices tell me.

Space to Grow

A re-occurring theme through my whole life has been reluctance to a long term relationship. Raised by parents who neither loved nor respected each other gave me a very biased and tainted view of relationships and parenting. I have known this for a long time.

 

Breaking up with Guitar Man didn’t mean we were not going to have contact. We had one child together and I was pregnant with our second, a daughter. No only did we need to get away from each other and the toxic relationship we created, but I felt that getting out and being on his own was what GM needed to help him grow up. His whole life he had lived with one parent or the other until I came in to change everything. That was his safety as well as theirs in that twisted co-dependant way they live. Instead of teaching GM to become an independent self sufficient person, they had their built in babysitter, handyman, sometimes scapegoat and general all around savior merely a shout or phone call away. His sisters used it to their every advantage as well. If anything needed done, they would call GM. GM thought of this as ’helping out’ your family. A familial duty. Even though the help he got in return was usually a pittance compared to what he had to put out. I came into the picture and after we began having kids this messed it up a bit for them as far as having their on-call babysitter. GM now had his own family to take care of. While I wasn’t ever outright rude to his family, and I even, at that time, liked his Mom a lot, I didn’t realize until much later how badly they thought of me.

 

I had loved this man since I was 16. I wanted to see him happy and succeed, but I wanted that for myself as well.

 

I helped him look for a place. He found a small one bedroom house near my mother’s house. For the first time in his life, GM had his own place he paid for himself, his own utilities to be responsible for and had to get it all going for himself. He did awesome, as I knew he could. He liked his job and kept at it. After a few months his father, whose health was getting worse, moved in with him, supposedly to watch his place, but in reality because he wanted someone to take care of him. He had wanted that even in good health and now it was open opportunity for him again. But in true co-dependant fashion he was living there to ’keep an eye on GM’s stuff’ while he worked nights.

 

GM would come watch the kids down at our house on the weekends for me when I worked the closing shifts at the pizza delivery place where I worked my second job. He slept on the couch. I had long since stopped all physical contact. I urged him to get out and date. He refused.

 

I wanted to date but it was awkward for me. I still held feelings for GM even though I pushed them far out of sight. I wanted to move on but I couldn’t, not still being so close to him. We even went over to Oregon for a week for a mutual friend’s wedding. But that aspect of our relationship was over. We slept in the same room. Familiarity allowed us to sleep in the same bed with the baby in the middle. I would not allow anything else and GM never pushed it.

 

After toxic mold was discovered under the Funeral Home apartment, GM let us all stay with him for about two weeks until we got another place. He worked nights and I worked days and the baby slept between us. We had one really nasty fight in that time. Right in front of our son. GM grabbed his 9mm pistol and went to take off in his car. I wouldn’t allow him to leave because I didn’t know if he was going to hurt himself or not. I was angry as well because that was the way it usually went. Explosive argument followed by him getting to leave to cool off while I was stuck, furious, still trying to deal with the kids and my own out of control emotions. I was not afraid for myself because he had never threatened me or the kids. But still, I didn’t know if he might at some point. After I we got our own place again I brought the kids to his house instead of having him come to mine. It just seemed to complicate things more having him there. I really was trying to move on.

 

I dabbled with an online single parent’s group. It was so unreal. Talking to someone through the computer, how the hell do you judge what’s real? GM didn’t like it, he was jealous. He never did let it go. I decided to try dating once. I mostly just wanted friends. Some work friends and I had all gone out drinking and when a guy I thought about dating kissed me all I could think was, this isn’t GM. The guy wanted more and the thought made me want to hurl. I really didn’t want to be with another man. I realized then that there was something I hadn’t dealt with in this relationship. I couldn’t stop loving GM no matter how hard I tried.

 

We were separated almost three years. Neither one of us ever got serious about anyone else. GM didn’t even try. Still, he hung on to the idea of us. At times it annoyed the hell out of me. I felt stalked at times. Like he was always hovering, hanging on. Sometimes he reminded me of a whipped dog and I hated that. Hated thinking of him in that way and hated seeing him act that way. It made me think less of him as a man, having him mooning, like his own father did over his mother after she left. Not a healthy loyalty but almost like and unhealthy obsession. Not that he ever pushed it or even mentioned it. I just knew it was there. I knew his capacity for loyalty. I often felt he was doing himself a grave disservice. I didn’t want to have a toxic relationship with him.

 

About a month after my one miserable attempt at dating I decided to lay it out once and for all that we couldn’t be together ever again. I hated feeling the way I did. I wanted him to be able to move on with his life. I had pretty much decided that single parenting was what I would do until, well, until whenever. I didn’t want to love anyone else. I couldn’t. With four kids I knew my chances of dating were limited to either one night stands or pedophiles. One which held no appeal and the other which held the possibility of me going to jail for homicide.

 

I tried to rely on faith for guidance but where matters of the heart are concerned, I am blinded. Something told me to go back to him and something else told me I would be consigning myself to a lifetime of misery if I did.

 

Outside of my mother’s house I finally confronted him. I was a wreck. In tears. I told him there was just no way we could be together and we both just needed to move on. I suppose I expected anger. Fury. A huge fight. What I got was a man who told me he loved me and only wanted to see me happy. He told me that if that was really what I wanted then, he would go. And he did.

 

I drove home and cried the whole way. I felt like my heart had been cut out. Worse, even. I knew that he would keep his word. I felt like I had made the worst decision in the world. I worried that maybe he could harm himself, but after all of the time and all of the blowups I knew he would not because of the kind of dedicated loving father he was.

 

For the first time, I knew without doubt what it would be like to not have this complicated, kind, loyal, loving and infuriating man in my life. He had always been available for me if I needed him after the breakup. I never tried to abuse that but probably did. The next realization hit home very hard.

 

I had just made the biggest mistake of my life. I could not picture my life without him in it. Not just hovering in the shadows. I loved this man. As twisted, malfunctioning and fucked up as the relationship had been I knew it had changed. We had changed.

 

That same night I called him. I was worried about him. We talked and once again he told me how much he loved me and that if I wanted him there he would be there in ten minutes. I broke. I told him to come.

 

For a year after that, he lived in his house and the kids and I lived in mine. He began staying with us more and more. He was more helpful. We talked things out without screaming constantly. Both of us were sick of renting and after the owner of the property I was renting sold it the new landlords turned out to be complete slumlord assholes. THe had their nephew move into the apartment in the garage so he could ‘keep an eye’ (i.e.; spy) on us, though we had been model renters.

 

That shit got old fast.

 

After a year of being together, our youngest daughter Nunkee being born, GM and I decided to get married. I knew there were still going to be difficulties. I realized finally, that that is what marriages are about, the good AND the bad, the give and the take and it appeared that he knew that as well.

 

I will only tolerate harassment from landlords so much. I knew they wanted us out so we gave our 30 day notice. The month before our wedding. I knew from all these years that GM really wanted to move back out to his Dad’s property. What I think of as the Junk Yard because it is. There are over 50 junk cars, some that are from the 30s, 40s and 50s on the place. It is a form of hording that I really didn’t understand until fairly recently. Five years ago when S moved over here she brought her one time boyfriend F and over 20 unspayed, unneutered dogs plus a variety of geese and rabbits with her. She left them up on that property and went to live in town with N. She would go out every few days, if she felt like it to bring food, water, snuff and dog food out to F who had no vehicle of his own. Everything up there depended on whether or not S felt like going out and bringing the necessities. Over the years in the winter when the roads were impassable, S had had GM take the food and dog food in to F by walking across the train trestle in deep snow the mile up the mountain to do it.

 

Like an idiot I didn’t take into consideration this families habit of leaving all their difficult shit for GM to clean up. All I was focused on was wanting to show my husband to be my willingness to sacrifice (because obviously I have NEVER done THAT before) comfort to live a life both of us wanted. Yes, we both want to live away from town and people. I want to be self sufficient and self sustaining. With a well, solar power and organic sustainable farm. I don’t really know what GM wants, he says one thing then, well, that part of the story will unfold in time.

In the middle of April, when we were in the process of moving, GM’s mother announced that she and GMs sister N, and the three kids were going to be losing the trailer they had been renting. S couldn’t afford to pay rent anymore and GMs sister N hadn’t kept a job in the 6 plus years she and the kids had been there except when the welfare office forced her to go to work for them until they had to lay her off. S had moved in with her and supported her and the kids. N was always taking classes online, and was already in possession of a BA in culinary arts she chose never to use. N was content to allow S to support her and in her twisted way, S seemed to prefer it that way. Even though she also seemed to resent it.

 

I have to admit. I had a selfish hope that GM’s Dad would follow through on his promise to give us the land, perhaps as a wedding gift. Having lived next to N before, and she, her neglect and bullshit being a large art of the reason I left before, well, lets just say that my attitude at the prospect went to shit in a hurry.

 

My wedding was looming. I needed to take my landlords to small claims court to get my deposit back. Neglect was once again coming home to roost. This was the beginning of a whole new can of worms.

 

Interlude: The Dream That Lead

Originally Titled A View From the Outhouse, this is the blog I had to remove from my MySpace page because of the conflict it caused with my husband.  I put it hear because it is pertinent to what lead me to where we are now.

A View From the Outhouse

The title of this blog is what I have in my future.  I am trying to have a more positive outlook but I am stuck in the middle of moving and I am finding it very difficult.  Likewise, I am trying to find the humor in it, but honestly I have been spread so thin I don’t laugh much at anything at this moment.  I know I wrote of the whole CPS thing, but there have been a lot of other things going on as well that I have not been writing about, it has all been just so damned overwhelming I have been walking through life in a fog.

 

It was the Murphy’s Law of months was March, 2008. My van was in constant breakdown and with over $700 in repairs complete and it still needing more I want to junk it but can’t. We don’t have the resources to buy a new vehicle. My Mom had a scare and an overnight stay in the hospital for pains in her head. My Mom is 77 and getting old lady brain so pains in her head are to be taken very seriously. I didn’t even know she was in the ER until she was out the following day because my bonehead sister, instead of picking up the fucking phone and calling me (a local call, mind you) decided to power up her computer, connect to the internet and send me a fucking email about it which I didn’t even get until AFTER Mom had gotten home from the hospital and talked to me. There are days my sister is in sore need of a serious bitch slapping. We’re close that way. Can you bitch slap someone in an email?

 

Then there are my wonderful landlords. They are the caretakers of the property, taking care of it for their son who bought the place last summer and who works out of state to make more money. My lease was due to be up this month of April. They sent me a letter ‘addressing’ some ‘issues’ they had and a new rental agreement for me to sign.

 

When they bought the place last summer, they decided to ‘fix it up by power washing and painting it. Real professionals they were, too, moving the couch I had on the porch onto the deck right under the eaves BEFORE power washing the roof so that all the debris on the roof ended up on the couch. Granted, mostly it was a couch for Fat Dog who lives outside and loved that couch. But please. Use some sense. Then of course, washing out the fucking paint bucket IN THE LAWN after they were done. There is still green paint in the grass. Oh. New house color? Shiny brown with green trim. Yes, SHINY. They chose a glossy paint for the exterior. And it is a dark brown. And they painted it this color last summer when it was almost 100 degrees outside. They also showed up at 8:00 every morning and not consistently. I never got a phone call when they were going to come over and also happened to be sitting on the toilet buck naked when the grandson helping him decided to paint around the bathroom window. I had the blinds drawn, but the top of the window is arched and has glass so it is only the lower windows that have blinds. He was on a ladder. Luckily there is a bit of a partition but I had to duck and cover then streak for safety once the guys head was not in sight.

 

I tolerated that. They wanted to get it done, it was hot. I wanted them the hell gone A.S.A.P. Then the owner remodeled the apartment connected to the garage to rent it out. Fine, ok. I had enjoyed having no neighbor since the previous owner had moved on but whatever, they gotta make the mortgage.

 

Then I found out the owner was renting it to his nephew. One of the Grandson’s that had helped the owners father, whom I call That Old Bastard, do some of the painting. (Though not the one who had caught me au natural on the shitter.)

 

I started to get that uneasy feeling twinking at my gut strings. Why would they have a nephew rent the place? Why, to help ‘keep an eye’ on the premises for James, the owner and uncle. That and now That Old Bastard began to drop by often and unexpectedly to ‘visit’ the grandson. Which may have been legitimate. However, he would then find a reason to knock on my door and make inquiries about things.

 

Now, I we are a low income family and my reality is that if I didn’t have housing assistance we would have no home. The job market sucks and even though I have been registered with two temp agencies even the temp work has been next to non-existent. I did have a job before Christmas with a building company, but got laid off that because of the wonderful housing market crash. I have to report all income changes and there are yearly inspections to deal with from the housing people. Checking the place out once a year makes sure that I am not harboring illegal aliens, growing a pot farm or cooking up a meth lab. It also lets them track needed repairs, make sure we aren’t kicking out all the walls and forces the landlord to do needed repairs. Fine. I know how to jump through the hoops. Hate it, but have found it necessary.

 

After inspection, That Old Bastard came back to the property, unannounced, the next day to ‘check up’ on a vent plate I told him I would have to take off the back of the house because when I put it on I locked cats under the house. Now, I have been in violation of the whole pet thing. I have outside animals and feeding outside has snowballed into other cats coming over and one cat I had got knocked up before I got her, then her two remaining children fixed, etc. And two dogs, one outside couch potato, one inside small dog. The previous owner had no beef with it even if the rental agreement stated only one dog and one cat. Anyway, they had been under the house because every vent in the plywood foundation had been kicked out when I moved in. Then James boarded it up without telling me, trapping cats underneath the house. Expecting me to let them starve and die under there I guess. Anyway, I took the back plate off out of sheer laziness didn’t replace it all winter until the day of inspection. But I told him as I replaced it I would have to take it off but would be sure to feed them and put it on when they were all present and accounted for.

 

That Old Bastard decided to come back, as if catching me in an evil act, but chose to start yelling at Lew for it as I wasn’t home. He also screamed about a door that was damaged when we moved in, trying to say it wasn’t damaged last summer and informed Lew he would be back on Monday to do repairs.

 

He never showed Monday and didn’t call. Tuesday he showed up at 9 in the morning. This is after I had repeatedly told him repairs needed to be done after 11 because Lew works graveyards and that is like waking him at 3 in the morning.

 

Not only did he show up in the morning, he WALKED IN TO MY HOUSE without waiting for Lew to answer and was in fact, in the bedroom doorway and walking into the bathroom in this bedroom while Lew was still in bed after yelling. “I’m yellin’ here!” before he walked in. Lew was left to scramble to get his pants on with That Old Bastard standing in uncomfortable proximity.

 

Lew went in the bathroom to help him, heard a noise and looked up and lo’ and behold here comes the grandson, my neighbor WALKING UNINVITED INTO MY HOUSE without knocking or calling out!

 

These are just a few of the more blatant things. There are more. Combine that with a rental agreement they wanted me to sign that wanted us to power wash the OUTSIDE of the house when we moved out. Told me to ’talk to my children’ about ’bothering’ the other tenant (their grandson) if he were outside his apartment. Stated that there would be no outside noise allowed that might disturb their grandson.

 

Basically, it sounded as if they wanted us out and I was mad enough to oblige. After writing a highly incensed eleven page response letter not only outlining all the bullshit they had pulled but giving them direct quotes from Montana’s Landlord Tenant Act of 1977 law that clearly states what they were doing were in direct violation of my tenant rights. I also demanded that all harassing behavior stop immediately or I would seek injunctive relief as was my right by that very law. I gave my 30 day notice on the last page.

 

The Monday they would be receiving the letter from me That Old Bastard called and wondered when I would be signing the new rental agreement and mailing it to them. The Old Bitch, That Old Bastard’s wife had put a sticky note on the rental agreement saying parts that didn’t apply to me would be taken out of the agreement I was to sign. Every time I had spoken to That Old Bastard about anything rental related he told me to talk to The Old Bitch because she was in charge of all things rental related. Which made me wonder why the hell he was calling me about a rental issue. It was also before they got to read the part in the letter where I told them I wouldn’t speak to That Old Bastard about any rental issues anymore due to the fact he kept telling me to deal with The Old Bitch instead.

 

I know I sound a bit bitter and more than a little angry. I think most people could understand the anger. I have had it with the invasions. I told them in my letter I would rather live out of my camp trailer than put up with landlords who felt it was their right to be in constant violation of their tenants legal right.

 

And I would. I have had to move two years in a row now. First because of mold in the basement apartment under the funeral home where we lived. Now because I refuse to subjugate myself and my family to the whim of landlord tyrants. I am tired of moving.

 

I could have curled to their will, signed their questionable and possibly illegal rental agreement. But I know they want us gone. We’re poor people, you see, so we must be scum of the earth and criminals.

 

We have the mixed fortune of living in one of the most beautiful, and highly sought after places in Montana. The rich have discovered the Flathead Valley and even with the housing market crashing everywhere else, here you can’t find land on acreage with a home for anything under $200,000.

 

So Lew’s Dad owns five acres on the backside of Teakettle Mountain. They lived there about ten years, the two of them. There is an amazing collection of vehicles on the property. No well. The closest running water is a seasonal creek about three miles down the road. No electricity. Of the two I will miss the water the most. I will miss my huge tub here that was big enough for all three of my girls and I to fit in.

 

Why this route? I know people wonder. When my father was alive he told me I was crazy. Just plain crazy to go out there. I lived there for a summer but drove out there every weekend the whole winter when Lew and I were first together. With my then three year old daughter. I got stuck. A LOT. I learned how to put tire chains on. I had a beat to shit pick-up then. I went out there because I had loved the guy that lived out there since I was sixteen. He just didn’t know it until I was 29. I didn’t mind the summer, but I swore I would never live out there during the winter as ill equipped vehicle-wise as I was. The snow can get damned deep out there.

 

When it was just Lew and I up on that mountain, things were good. I could see the way to make the dream I had of having an organic farmlet a reality. There was solitude and beauty, even though you could always hear the highway noise across the river. You could walk over to our makeshift shooting range and blow the hell out of stuff and no one would call the cops. You didn’t have neighbors to worry about. No landlords to tell you to polish all the rocks before you moved out. No landlord to drive you out in the first place.

 

This is where it’s at I suppose. I am tired of being homeless. I am paying people for the privilege of living in their places until they decide they don’t want us there anymore. Or until my Fuck You attitude kicks in and I shake the dust of the place from my boots. These dwellings are NOT my home. They are shelter over my head until circumstances change. That’s why I have never tried very hard to get rid of my pathetically tiny 15 foot camp trailer cause by damned that thing is my HOME. Mine! I own it. Free and Clear. No one can take it away from me.

 

I have long known Lew would be happier out in the sticks again. He grew up there. It is important to me that he is happy and I want to make a home he is happy to come home to. He has made a lot of sacrifices for me and the kids. But living that rustic with a pack of small children is going to suck ASS until we get the water situation designed. Even if we have to haul water, little kids are grubby individuals on days when you have all you can run water. I bought a generator. So we can use occasional power. Thank God it’s warming time and not autumn.

 

I know a few people will think I am crazy, even me at times. I have prayed long and hard about the direction our lives are supposed to take. Faith sometimes requires just that. Faith that all is as it should be and all in the Great Spirit’s design.

 

I have misgivings. The largest is that the land is not in our names and Lew’s father is not in the best of health. There is no will. I am balking at building any permanent structure. Lew and I have been fighting about it regularly in fact. He sees the necessity of a permanent structure. Which is a real necessity. Especially living wall to wall with six people in a small camper. But I can’t get past the knowing that unless there is land in our name we are just tenants again who own nothing and can lose our home. Then wee really would be homeless. There would be no last resort and all we would have would be that damned camper.

 

There are days, like today, when I want to leave this valley. I want to leave what it is becoming. I want to go live where the majority of people don’t. Realtors and wealthy people have already discovered the land adjacent to Lew’s Dad’s. I’m afraid it’s only a matter of time before we would be pushed out of there as well.

 

That’s it, I suppose. It’s not ours. Not really. No matter what we built. So it would never feel like my home, even though to Lew it is home. I would just be another resident tenant. Until circumstances changed and I was left a nomad once more, children in tow.

 

There is too much division in this for me. I do not feel like we are standing on solid or unified ground at all. I don’t like this quicksand footing. Perhaps it is because my faith is being tested. I don’t know. I feel there is no place in this valley for my family and I. Nothing I will be able to say is ours. We are just living off of someone else. I HATE that! I have wanted to get off public assistance and can’t. I have wanted to finish school but can’t seem to do that either. Right now I have no hope of a happy future.

 

I know I am tired. Beyond tired. I took the week long temp job that I was requested for this week and it has thrown me a week behind my packing. Stress and more stress. I keep waiting for my arrhythmic heart to just explode. Some days I wish it would. I am into mind numbing exhaustion now, lack of sleep, headaches.

 

We were supposed to be getting married in May. Finally. After 8 years. Nothing has been planned for that either. I feel like it is the least of our worries and now just another added stress. I had been looking forward to it, but now. Well. I feel like there’s no point. I really, really wanted to have a wedding. We could go over to Idaho and have it over and done in an afternoon. But if one of the most important days in my life will be relegated to a side trip why fucking bother? It’s supposed to be a time of celebration. I think Lew would rather not even bother with any of that stuff and just blow the gas money to drive over to Idaho. Besides, what do I put as my bridal registry? Western Building Center for lumber or the Army Navy for winter survival gear.

 

My pessimism is reaching an all time high. I may even be out doing my late Father, Heaven forbid. I just want the fucking moving OVER with and I want my children sent off to boarding school so I can pack a fucking box without someone unpacking it right behind me because ohmygawdthat’smyfavoritetoyandwhereHASitbeen!!

Ah well. At least I have my camp trailer. Maybe I can set up along a highway and offer palm readings to stupid tourists while my children pick their pockets. Now I just need a trailer hitch on my pice of shit van so I don’t have to borrow a vehicle to pull the trailer…

Poverty to Live: Family Value

I was raised by Depression Era parents. My Father was 18 and sitting at the breakfast table eating hot cereal when news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor broke over the radio. My Mother’s parents ran a general store and post office in a very small rural town in southwest Montana. My Grandmother ran it after Grandpa dies up into the early 70s because as a child I remember my cousin Mark taking me into the store to buy nickel jerky and the mammoth sized cash register fascinated me.

My Dad was second eldest of ten children and his father worked all over trying to feed his family while his mother either stayed home with the kids or left the older ones to care for the younger while she walked to town. My father became an avid fisherman because, as he used to say, ” We could either have potatoes for dinner or potatoes and fish.” He learned to hunt for the same reasons. My Father was a hard worker.

My Mother came from a family more privileged in ways. During her younger years they lived in a mountain homestead in the Madison Valley and my Grandpa was a government trapper, in charge of taking out the roaming grizzlies and other predators that would prey on livestock. They later moved into town to run the store and post office. grandma was a small town society lady, and my Mother’s send of decorum and manners reflected this. father’s family was a rougher lot and their ways and humor reflected it. In my father’s family, then later in our own, obscene biological bodily noises were not only encouraged, but applauded, much to my Mother’s disgust as she would hightail it to the restroom at the least sign of abdominal discomfort.

I was also a late life surprise for my parents. Mom was 41 when she had me, and Dad, at 48, was sure he would be dead before he saw me graduate high school. In a way, I guess he did die before he saw that because I dropped out to get my GED, later took several years of college courses and never did really graduate high school. He was 80 when he died six years ago.

My parents knew poverty as children, to differing degrees. My mother never knew hunger. My father did. They both worked. Mother graduated college with a degree and later became a teacher. My father took five years of high school and could never pass the English class. His story is that the English teacher hated him, which very well may have been true. It is also quite possible my father suffered from the dyslexia that is so prevalent in his side of the family, but which went undiagnosed.

There is a two generational gap between my parents and I. I have two older sisters, and raising them in the 70s left my parents in a state of shock, I think. Because of my sisters drinking, drug using, sneaking out shenanigans my parents tried to overcompensate by keeping me as close to home as they possibly could. While I understand their desire to ‘protect’ me, it also, unfortunately taught me nothing about reality of day to day living and responsibilities. When I came along we had more money so I was spoiled more than my sisters. My parents were more tired when I came along. They did the best they could with the knowledge they had, a very unhappy marriage and their own views of life, which unfortunately conflicted 99% of the time.

We never want to marry our fathers or our mothers but we seem to end up following the courses we know.

My husbands family grew up poor as well. More than my parents ever were. He has in some respects I think, however unintentionally, held this against me. He has told me I am viewed by his family as standoffish. Uppity, in a way. Like I have an attitude that I am better than they are.

Every family has their dysfunction. My Dad was a bowling night drunk. He took my eldest sister on a car ride when she was three years old and told her he would kill her is she didn’t start behaving. He was constantly emotionally abusive and sometimes physically violent with us. My mother was emotionally distant and very involved in her own miseries. She and Dad never loved each other, they were merely doing what was expected of them for their generation. Marrying because that’s what you did.

My husband’s parents, as told to me by my mother-in-law were married because her parents set it up. Her father didn’t believe a woman should go to school as she wanted, to become a nurse. The arranged the marriage and set the date. She was to marry a man she not only didn’t love, but whom made her uncomfortable for the fact that he constantly watched her everywhere she went. You know, like a stalker. But she had been molested by her own brother for years. Perhaps it was her parents way of taking care of the problem. But the man they chose for her, though I do not know all the details of how that arrangement came to be, was not a very stable personality either. He has an obsessive personality. Anxiety attacks. Later on, alcoholism on both sides, physical abuse. Darker things kept from the kids. My husbands family believes in keeping secrets. ‘Family business’. Abuse. Neglect.

I was not raised that way. We have come to screaming disagreements. I have taken my final stand after this summers goings on, and I have made it clear to my husband, whether or not he completely understands;

I WILL NOT LONGER SUPPORT YOUR FAMILY IN THEIR CYCLES OF ABUSE AND NEGLECT.

I struggle with my own demons of abuse. Curse myself for allowing my father’s words to come out of my mouth. War with myself over reacting to my children with anger. Come back to them time and again when I screw up, apologize, tell them I was wrong to do or say something. try harder. Fail. At times, succeed. But I try. I try. I fuck up and try again. I play with my kids. Laugh with them. Force myself to hug and cuddle them when I am feeling like a depressed introvert, knowing that they need that more than I need my bookish escapism. I so desperately want my children to grow up happier and more successful than I have been.

Time will come to tell of it, but the only reason I didn’t turn my husband’s sister into Child Protective Services once and for all was because his best friend, her new married boyfriend was leaving his wife to come and take her and her three very disturbed children out of state. What makes me sick about it is the whole family kept their mouths shut about his sister’s neglect and what it was doing. They would talk about it as if it were the kids fault they were so fucked up. The family wanted to be rid of their burden.

I don’t know that I did the right thing and in part I regret not turning her in. So I make up for it by crusading with Animal Control to try and liberate my mother-in-laws 16 unaltered, inbred and underfed dogs from her. So far I have only managed to steal one and get her to the basset rescue group. I am working on the sly with the director of my local animal shelter. But I have not yet had the courage, for fear of the World War III that with blow up between my husband and I when he finds out I breached his family’s backwater code of “It’s our business, no one else’s!” to call the Sheriff’s department on his mother and her ‘boyfriend’ for the neglect of these animals. We are snowed in and my rig is broken down. I did tell him I am getting rid of the dogs. I keep telling him I will no longer support his family’s habit of neglect. My husband doesn’t recognize neglect because he was raised by neglect. He remembers the child protective people making unwanted unannounced visits to them when he was growing up. His mother of course, holds that she was being victimized by the system and was doing nothing wrong. My husband, unfortunately, has the same kind of view. Everyone is out to get them and they are never at fault.

I do have to credit him in some areas for trying to improve. Mostly because I keep calling him on the bullshit. Not always in the most positive ways. But I will not be his victim. I will not subscribe to his belief in that way. I will not support him in neglect. I will overcome my fear. I will be a better parent, if not with him, them in spite of him. He is not completely unreasonable, though at times it seems he is. He has grown far more in these last nine years than he did in his previous thirty-two. I have required more from him. I have pissed some of his family off by coming into his life because he was supposed to be the one everyone dropped all their shit on to take care of. My husband is at once extremely self-sufficient and terribly handicapped within his family.

I am trying to understand it. I am trying here to write it out. Poverty plays a large part of it. And family history. I will do what I need to do.

We have dived into a lifestyle of poverty to escape poverty. I had been receiving housing assistance for a long time. With only his income since my job loss last year, we are still having to rely on food stamp assistance and Medicaid even though pays for health insurance. We want off that as well. But he doesn’t want me to work when we still would have to have childcare. Even with childcare assistance, our portion would be hundreds of dollars a month. I would be working to pay for childcare and gas. We did that before. Then we lost all assistance. Public assistance is an addiction cycle on its own.

He may be laid off this week. We will know tomorrow. Then what? We shall see.

I will not always live like this. Damnit, my kids deserve better. I will see that they get it. One way or another.

 

 

Poverty to Live

For over a year my husband spoke of nothing but how we could be saving so much money if only we would move out onto his Dad’s raw land. We can’t work on building anything if we are not out there! he would repeat. We’ll never save any money or be able to buy building materials living in town! he would lament time and again.

I prayed on it a lot. I tried to listen. I am not a Church going Christian. I try to shut up and listen to the Creator tell me what needs to be done. When shit hits the fan I wonder if I was deluding myself into thinking the Creator spoke to my heart and I was only following the path of my ever failing human design.

I felt I was supposed to go there. Support my husband in that way. But now there are ever more problems looming. My husband refuses to plan. Does not believe or cannot comprehend the idea of CYA (Cover Your Ass). Pre-planning is something he refuses to do because he holds the firm belief that none of his plans ever work out as expected. He makes no room for change. Often, if I step in with suggestions he explodes in a temper tantrum because now I am telling him he is incapable, useless, a failure. I have had to, at times, go ahead and do things as I knew they would work and this angers him. Whether it angers him because it works for me or just because I didn’t do it his way I don’t know. The arguments have become frighteningly domestic. Over three arguments he punched or kicked seven holes in the hollow core door we have between us and the cold. I have at him for attacking our children’s home. One time I took all the money from their piggy banks, packed our overnight bags and was going to head down to see if relatives could take us in until I got us on our feet again. But I don’t want to become a burden to them and I didn’t know if the women’s shelter could house me and four kids. I didn’t want to be in the damned shelter anyway. His sister was there once and she showed him where it was. I had nothing. I have nothing. Without someone to watch my kids I can get nothing. My Uncle has told me to contact him if I need help before, but his health is not good and I am a burden. I and my children are a burden. So I did not leave. I told him if he wanted me to stay he would agree to couples counseling. He bitched and moaned but said I had to find someone who would work around his graveyard work schedule. It has been three months and I never even bothered to make the call. Why? He doesn’t want it, it will do no good. I told him if he continued to smash things when we fought I would leave and take the kids to the shelter.

This makes me the evil one in his world, the bad person. That I would Take His Kids So He Could Never See Them Again. Fucking drama. I refuse to let him hold the power of terror over me. I will leave him before it erupts in war because there are days I think I could really hurt him when he gets like that but for the sake of my kids I can’t. And for the sake of our kids, he needs to grow the fuck up and stop throwing an infantile screaming temper-tantrum shit fit every time we disagree.

I worry that I will have to build the house and care for the kids while he works. I watched him build the addition onto the camp trailer we are living in. The roof isn’t even attached to the walls. There is plastic sheeting between us and the gusting winter snows that come in the gaps between the two by fours. The ceiling is only partially insulated and all the paper is still exposed because we ran out of money to buy plywood. He refuses to use sheetrock. He got angry with me because I insisted on building the floor on treated posts instead of right on the dirt. Threw his measurements off he said. The OSB board should have been covered in tarpaper at least to keep the moisture out but it’s not. Now the snow is piled against it and the rotting begins. Everything he builds is cobbled and slapped together, crooked, incomplete.

I had a dream of building my own home when we moved out there. But the home I had in mind and what my husband’s ideas are far different. I didn’t expect a palace, but a solid house with finished walls an ceilings isn’t exactly palatial. I had a vision of trying to eke out a miserable existence in these piece of shit falling downs shacks.

What is the lesson here? Right now we have no amenities. No electricity save what the generator can give us the rare times we have gas for it. No running water. Twelve miles to haul water unless we haul it in gallon jugs in backpacks across the train trestle. The trestle that is posted with No Trespassing signs.

After weeks and weeks of sleeping in her car on the property last summer his Mother acquired a two bedroom fully self sustaining trailer. Propane appliances and lights. Water tanks. Deep marine batteries for power. The guy she bought it from was supposed to pull it up the steep switchback driveway and get it set up for her. Instead, he got it stuck in the steep switchback driveway and because he had a guy coming to buy the tractor he was pulling it with, he left it, stuck in the mud in the driveway, totally blocking it. Before he left he re-opened the old back road coming in off the Forest Service property so we could drive up. It stayed there for about six weeks until my husband had time to get the old 50s era D8 Caterpillar started. He got that trailer pulled in. We had our driveway back.

But his Mother got another two bedroom trailer for free and wanted that up there too. For storage they said. Or maybe for us to live in. There was no room to put it anywhere with the plethora of junked cars, but they had to have it anyway. Save us all money on storage they said. His Mom paid a guy $150 to rent his heavy duty truck to pull it in from town and his cousin with the CDL to pull it.

The cousin with the CDL pulled it right into the hole the previous trailer had been stuck in and there it sat. When my husband got the Cat started to pull it out he threw the track off backing up and there it sat. There they both sit, actually. Though the Cat is fairing better in the three feet of snow than the trailer has. The trailer was pitched at a severe angle sideways downhill and with the snow weight on it’s walls has now folded over like a fucking cracker box. Flat.

With the track off the Cat we had no snowplow. His car was snowed in first then on Christmas Eve, coming home, I knew we were in trouble with the amount of snow when it began blowing up over the hood of the Ford Explorer to coat our windshield. We got over a foot of snow in one night. The hole my car got stuck in coming up the drive kept it there until we got someone to plow it out, but it may be the fuel pump is frozen because it won’t start. We have to walk the trestle any time we want out now until, well, spring maybe. Who knows. Our woodshed is emptying and his Mother’s boyfriend comes down and helps himself to our wood. Doesn’t get any for us, though my husband cuts all of his (I refuse to help him. It would be different if he helped us but he doesn’t). All of his Mothers too. When she’s there, which she hasn’t been for weeks and weeks.

So much is broken.  I don’t know if when or how it will be fixed or if it is fixable.  This is a small piece of what is going on there and all I have the energy to write about right now.  I feel I am failing.  Foundering.  Drowning.  The blessings are hard to see.  My faith is shaky.   I am so tired.  So damned tired.  Stranded right now, away from my home.  Have to make the trek in tomorrow, wanted to today but husband wouldn’t get us there.  I feel like I am suffocating.  Trapped in my home, trapped away from my home.  I am getting so damned angry.  I don’t know who to ask for help.  This I suppose is the most frustrating thing of all.

 

 

 

Faith is a Little Like Crazy

If I don’t title my book as I have this blog, I have sworn to myself that I will at least create a chapter of the same title. Faith describes me, but so does crazy, at least that is what I have been told from family and friends alike. My choices are….unconventional in life. Are they always in the best interests of myself and my family? I hope so. I am told they are not, but that is where opinions digress.

My blogname here is Pioneer Jo, and for good reason. When the father of the majority of my children and I got married in May we were in the process of moving on to his father’s five acre parcel of raw land that he had told us for years he planned to give us. When I say ‘raw land’ in this case I not only mean the land itself having no sundries like running water or electricity, but the land has been made raw from the years my husband and now father-in-law lived there together.

I don’t see eye to eye with my husband on a lot of issues, and unfortunately stewardship of the land is one of those things. He and his father, on this tiny plot of ground, have accumulated enough junk cars and scrap iron piles to make it look like a junkyard. When my now mother-in-law lost her place over east and moved out here four years ago she brought with her over twenty inbred basset hound cross dogs, some geese, a few rabbits and an unsettled possibly mentally unstable ex-Vietnam era vet ‘boyfriend’ to look after them all while she moved to town to live with her daughter and three hellion grandkids.

When Guitar Man and I were beginning our move out there, mother-in-law and daughter with three kids quite suddenly were unable to pay their rent and had to move out there as well.

Sometimes the crazy clouds the faith and I almost lose it in the maelstrom.

What this blog will be about are those times from this last summer, and our continuing attempt at living life out there.

This is my therapy. There are days I don’t know if I am going to be able to make either this lifestyle or my marriage work out. I had a dream for so long, and still try and cling to bits of it. Dreams of off-grid living, an organic farm, teaching my children some of those ‘old ways’ like hard work, respect for what you grow with your own hands, teamwork, family, trust and morals.

Most of all, to teach my children faith. To teach them that the Creator is alive, well, listening to and answering our prayers. I want my children to see me making the hard but correct choices. I want them to understand what intervention can mean and why sometimes it may seem crazy to steal an inbred unspayed female pup from Grandma’s overpopulated dog pack and get it to a basset rescue group and try to get some help even if ‘help’ means contacting Animal Control and a possible family explosion aimed mostly at me.

I look at my life here in Montana. Snow, knee deep. Tire chains on the four wheel drive if we want to get up to our house. Hauling every drop of water twelve miles or more. What we will have to have to build what we need and wondering constantly if we will ever be able to get it.

Knowing that I was led here for a reason. Hoping that , what? Some hope can’t be named. It can be there and be elusive all at once.

I want to be able to sort this all out in my head. To leave my children the written legacy of our lives. To let them know, when the inevitable questions rise, the whys of what I chose to do. What I am choosing to do. And how I hope it will make us all stronger and better people in this world that seems so unattached to anything of importance at times.

Faith is a little like crazy and sometimes it is hard to tell the difference. But I will try. I will try.