"Time is a valuable teacher. Unfortunately, it kills all its students"

Yesterday we had the girls over for a few hours, while Jethro went to a job interview.  Someone, who may or may not have been me, had the bright idea that we should color eggs.  It seemed like a good idea.  I think God lets mothers forget how things truly are with toddlers, so that when they are grandmothers, they do things like color eggs or make cookies or do crafts with the grandkids instead of curling up in a corner, sobbing about the trauma of egg coloring and how it should be banned.

Somewhere I have a picture of a two year old Jethro, surrounded by colored eggs (the color of mud, I believe), his hands stained with egg dye.

Now I have pictures of 4 year old Justice and 2 year old Hope, with their hands stained with egg dye.  (Food coloring, actually)

We made tie dyed eggs.  For this you hard boil the eggs, then put them in a colander over bowl or pan (to catch the drips).  You sprinkle some white vinegar on the eggs, and then take your first color.  We used yellow first. You drip a drop over the eggs, then gently shake the colander to spread the color.  Then you go to your next two colors.  The eggs I have seen online are really pretty.  Ours? Eh.. well, not so much.  The girls also took candles to color on their eggs before they dyed them, to see the patterns that emerged.  Hope merrily dropped hers on the way to the refrigerator, and for a moment, I wasn't sure who was going to catch the rolling egg, her or BDG.  She did!  We rinsed off her egg and then she got to eat it.  Well, since she got to eat her egg, of course, then Justice wanted to eat HER egg.

We're getting low on hardboiled, decorated eggs.

I had some violets (purple and confederate) and a few other blossoms I was pressing.  Somehow, in the midst of egg decorating chaos, the newspaper I had the flowers in became lost.  That upsets me because I wanted to decoupage some blown eggs with the flowers.  There are still violets blooming, of course, but mine were almost dry.  It will take too long to press some more so they'll be dry before Sunday.

I have lots of pictures, but it's too hard to get them out of the camera and to this computer right now.

Am I feeling better than I was a few days ago?  Yes.  Am I still in pain? Always.  Some days it's worse than others, and when it's bad, the pain makes it difficult to walk.  Or, in all honesty, to want to live.  Luckily, all days aren't that bad for me.

So, we had the girls, and then later in the evening, we had thunderstorm watches that rapidly turned into tornado warnings. The sirens were wailing like crazy, as more funnel clouds were spotted around town and right outside the town.  I opened the door at one point, thinking I might get my tomato seed starters out of the rain, and the door pulled out of my hand.  Right as it did that, the lower glass portion fell out.  I caught it, thank goodness, and managed to get it put back, but that wind was something else.  The skies were green, it was humid, and even early in the evening, I could feel it was going to get bad.

No damage, though.

Do you guys know what happened to the felony sexual abuse case we were involved in?  (One of my children was sexually molested, the person doing it confessed her guilt to me, her husband was with us when we turned her in, and for two years, we've been fighting this in the court system.  First, she confessed her guilt.  Then she realized the judge did something wrong, so her guilty plea was taken away.  There are videos and pictures of my child on the internet, and the new police chief, investigating another case, said, "Those pictures are there forever!"  Then why didn't the police find the ones of my kid?  Anyway, the prosecuting attorney, thinking she might not win the case, dismissed the charges.  That's what we were told.  This person lawyered up, and apparently, if you do that, our prosecuting attorneys think they might not win, and why go after the person if you can't win the case, right?

I watched my child crumble.

It took all his courage to even show up, and when he was told the charges were dismissed, he slumped down, fighting tears.  He took off from the office, his wife following after him as fast as she could, right after she said, "Yeah, no wonder people take the law into their own hands."

Then this woman threatened to sue us, because of false charges.

She told me she did it.

I know what happened, and I know about the sex site she and her husband ran together.

And the police couldn't find it.  Or didn't look very hard\ when they confiscated the computers.

So, there's your advice for the day.  Just get a lawyer and keep your case in court for a couple of years.  You'll be let off, scott free.

And for my kid?  It's as if they said, "This never happened to you."  And if the circumstances were different and it was a man and  a juvenile girl?  That man would do at least 6 years in prison.

Get it together, society.  Sexual abuse happens with grown women against boys, not just men against women.  Abuse is abuse is abuse.  It's not a rite of passage.  It's horrible, cruel, and wrong, and no matter what gender the monster has, if takes advantage of your child that way, they should be punished.

The attorneys didn't take into account that this woman was pregnant by another juvenile during the ending months of this court case.

I can't write any more on this.  It makes me want to vomit.

I know.  I started out kind of with a cute story, and now I switched to something darker.  Well, welcome to my brain.

One thing I was thinking this morning was how I really dislike people who love or give conditionally.  You know. I'll love you if you do this.  I'll give if you give back.  I would never do that to any of my kids or my other family members, or even my friends.  When I was in the ICU with pneumonia, we had friends of ours sending money so Jethro could get to me. No questions asked.   Just because we're friends and they love me and they love Jethro.  My mom loved us this way, though at one time, years ago, she said if one of us were gay, she wasn't sure she could love us.  I think she would have.  She wouldn't have liked it, but she would have loved us.  I can say that now, she's gone, but I believe it.

I started to write a poem about it all, but it made me too sad.  So then I looked at crafts I want to do and thought, "Wow! I always thought something could be made from a dog food bag, but never knew what!  That's awesome!"   Garden Tote

Erma and I have made some neat things using Dimensional Magic, and I want to try some resin jewelry soon.

Now I'm back in a happy place.

Jethro is coming over soon.

Not with the girls, though, I don't think.

And Mr. Clean just called. He sounds depressed and wants to talk.  I said he could come over for a little bit.

Okay, that's it for now.

I'll post pictures soon.

I'll just post this and be done.

(from layoutsparks)