• Yep. It is 10:25 and we are picking up full price cheesecake from the cheesecake factory. Sup holla. #

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• Enjoying: http://www.couturebook.com – take your photos, upload them, and turn them into a wickedly sweet photo book. #

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Bob was always nice to us, but I sensed something dark within him and also a sadness. It was in his eyes, the way he moved, the way he talked. He had close-cropped black hair that was seasoned with a little gray. He was probably in his late 40′s and he wore his life experience like a heavy coat of misery.

“What are you doing with the pop-up camper dad?” I was only 12 but I remember my dad cranking the lever that raised the lid and revealed the contents within. Once the beds were extended on each side the small camper could sleep 4 people comfortably.

“Well, I’mgetting it ready for Bob and Sharon, they need a place to stay for a while.” Dad responded without pausing from his task.

Our mobile home was so small that it really couldn’t accomodate a married couple. Dad ran the water hose out to the camper so they would have running water in the kitchen. I don’t remember where they bathed or went to the bathroom.

Bob worked for my dad at Grandy’s and that is where he met Sharon. Sharon was also one of my dad’s employees. She had big brown eyes that reminded me of a scared deer, large, luminous and filled with fear. She was sweet and kind and my parents encouraged the relationship that was forming between Bob and Sharon. Eventually they got married, but during their courtship I heard my mom mention a couple of times that Bob had been in prison and that he had taken two AIDS tests to make sure that he didn’t have AIDS.  This was back when everyone thought AIDS was something that you could get by drinking after someone or sitting on a toilet seat and so I thought little of it.

Bob and Sharon stayed in the camper for a few weeks and eventually got their own place. Things seemed to be going well for them and then they stopped coming around so much. One day my mom got a call and it was from Sharon. Apparently Bob had been beating her up and there was a time when he tied her down to the bed and left her there while he went to work.

I remember sitting in the car, riding in the backseat of our black Ford Escort. The vinyl seets were cold and maroon. I loved the little car, but I hated maroon. “From what I know, Sharon was beaten in a previous marriage.” Mom confided in us. We were her favorite confidantes. My sisters and I listened as mom went on. “It seems as though Bob had a history of abusing women and Sharon had a history of being abused. For some reason, these kind of people are drawn to each other, it’s like predator’s can sense a weakness in someone and they are drawn to them.”

It was one of my first lessons in the depravity of human kind. I couldn’t understand how Bob could be so cruel. I imagined Sharon being tied to the bed and being afraid, alone, bereft. She had no family and very few friends and I can only imagine how she must have hated herself for falling back into the same situation.

Dad fired Bob and Sharon left him. After that I don’t know what became of them, they were just a brief, cruel chapter in a large book of pain and sorrow. I hope wherever they are today, that Sharon has found someone that is being kind to her and I hope Bob has overcome the need to abuse women.

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“I’ll kick your ass!” Bubba screamed at my step-dad. At 4 years old he was feisty and I feared for his life. My step-dad was not someone to be talked back to. I can still remember the jangle of his belt buckle as it was coming undone. The leather swish, swish, swishing through the belt loops.  I’d start running and my dad would grab me by the hand and pick me up in the air. Feet still running but going no where I’d feel the first crack against my butt and scream out in pain. When Bubba screamed out, “I’ll kick your ass” I knew what was coming next.

Teresa, Bubba and Shelly came to live with us when I was 5 and we lived in The Colony, TX.  I didn’t really understand the concept of foster children at the time, but I remember that they stayed with us for a few months and just when we started getting close to them, they were wisked away by the state and place in some sort of facility. I’d later learn that they had been abused by their parents and that is why they were coming to live with us.

Eventually Teresa and Bubba were released and allowed to move back in with us, but Shelly moved back in with her mom.  After Bubba lived with us for a couple of years he eventually went back to live with his mom too. Teresa stayed.

I remember Teresa dating a guy in Sanger. She drove over to his house one night and brought me and my sisters with her. She told us to stay in the house and her and “Bobby” went out to the car. Eventually we got bored and went outside to look for them and they were intertwined like two snakes in a mud wrestling contest. We thought it was funny and she was a good sport about it too. She was so infatuated with him she seemed to care less about anything else.

One thing that was peculiar about Teresa and Bubba was their knowledge of good and evil. They seemed to know so much more at their ages than we did. Bubba was younger than me but when I asked my mom what a tampon was Bubba piped up and said, “It goes right here” and made some very specific hand gestures. My mom laughed it off and changed the subject.

Over the years Teresa became like our big sister. When I was 6 she was 14 and so she seemed like an adult to me. When she turned 16 she got her drivers license and started taking us places. She worked with my mom at Safeway, dressed like my mom and styled her hair like my mom.  Eventually she met a man and then without even saying goodbye, she left and never came back. It was very odd.

I loved Teresa like a sister and years later I found out that she started causing problems between my parents. My dad pulled me aside one day, 11 years after the fact, and explained some things that were quite upsetting.  I realized then that was why Teresa disappeared. It was like that movie, Single White Female and I think Teresa was starting to become too much like my mom and possibly trying to take her place in the house. I was too young to pick up on anything at that age, but I understand it now and it’s more than a little disconcerting.

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• It is past midnight and I just finished a worl project. I will need those 5 hours back as soon as this project is wrapped up. Fo sho. #
• I love chik fil a so much I think me and this sandwich may need to get a room. #
• Project. Went. Live. Brain. Is. Fried. #
• Something you may not know about me: I’m a huge fan of Malcom in the Middle! #

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Terry Wayne,  a six-year old blue-eyed boy we referred to as “Bubba”, came running through the house with a sack filled with feces. The white trash bag teemed with toilet paper as he made gestures at me and my sisters as if he was going to throw it at us.

After a couple of months my dad and I finally finished the septic system. We dug it by hand, a 5×5 foot hole in the ground so deep that I had to be hoisted out of it. We poured a concrete floor in the massive hole and then I used the wheel barrel to help my dad mix cement and then I handed him bricks while he slapped on the mortar. It was a long exhausting process.

Our new mobile home sat on two acres of inexpensive land in Sanger, Texas. It was next to a creek at the bottom of a hill in a flood zone. Before we moved onto the property we had to clear the debris. First it was weekend trips up from Dallas raking up piles of dead sunflowers and brush and then finally dad rented a tractor and leveled out the land a bit and cleared it of all the overgrowth.

Moving to rural Sanger, a town of a little over 2000 people and boasting only 1 gas station and a Dairy Queen, was a big change from living on Northside Drive in Dallas. In Dallas we were close to Josey Lane Skating Rink, a Chuck E. Cheese, and a huge Church. However, our apartment complex was also filled with exhibitionists who liked to expose themselves to young children and so it was time to move to some place quieter, simpler, and safer.

We pulled our 80 foot long single-wide onto the acre and then connected the water and electricity. We had no sewer and so dad piped the gray water into the creek that ran along the house. We dug a huge hole in the back yard and we used that to dump all of our trash and then we’d set it on fire. Because we didn’t have a sewer we would place trash bags in the toilet, tape them down, use the bathroom and then take the plastic bag full of waste out into the back yard and dump it into the large hole in the ground.

Surprisingly, we found this more humorous than awful and although we would definitely have been classified as rednecks, we were actually hard-working people who were just trying to stay afloat.

Over time the house became infested with mice and roaches. Our apartment had roaches and large water bugs and so I started to think that having roaches in your house was pretty common place. Even some of my friends houses had the occasional roach, shoulder shrug, no big deal.

The roach infestation progressed over time and we had to fumigate. Scads of dead roaches littered the kitchen floor. Mom flipped over the bed in my room and cockroaches scattered. 10-20 in each corner, hiding, bunched up, and then fleeing the bug spray. It was awful. I couldn’t believe that I had been sleeping on that. We weren’t dirty people, it was just that living in a trailer home out in the country with no underpinning on your house allows for pretty much anything to crawl right in.

The washing machine leaked in the laundry room and soaked the floor. Mobile home floors are made out of particle board and then they get wet they crumble like a cookie.  The linoleum stretched with each step and soon broke through. By the back door there was a large hole and dad had to repair it.

We got our septic tank fixed put together and I watched as a large bulldozer dug huge trenches in the yard and then filled them with rocks and then laid large PVC pipe with holes on the rocks. These were the sewage lines and in the summers the yard would turn extra green where these lines ran.

We didn’t have much of a driveway and when we did have one, the flood waters would come and wash away the white gravel that had only been trucked in a few weeks before. Often times the cars would get stuck in the mud. We’d get out and push, push, push, mud flying all over us, my sister windmilling her arms trying to block the spray.

My shoes were rarely clean. I remember loving a pair of Fila hi-top tennis shoes that had black soles because they didn’t show mud stains.

It was sometimes a miserable existence, but it was also filled with a rugged simplicity. When the yard flooded we’d get empty milk cartons and put them under our arms and float towards the creek just stopping before we were swept away.

There were times when it was so muddy that we would have a natural slip and slide and we’d play in the mud and allow the rain to wash us off.

We rode our bikes up and down Corrida lane, we rode them through the creeks and enjoyed long hot summers just being outdoors with our friends.

My mom was always this constant light in our lives. She radiated joy and made the most common place seem cozy and filled with love.

After just two years of being in our mobile home it got repossessed. I think my parents finally gave up on it, throwing good money after bad just wasn’t prudent. They bought a two bedroom mobile home that was only about 60 feet long and 15 feet wide. It was tiny and when I look back now and remember that house I can’t believe that we were so poor.

One day I caught a towel on fire in the kitchen and quickly put it out. I threw it on the floor while i tended to whatever it was I was cooking and didn’t realize that it was still smoldering. It burned a hole in the linoleum. It was an ugly shade of emerald green and I never liked it. Dad tore the linoleum out and since this mobile home was built in the 70′s, it had plywood for flooring. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the money to replace the linoleum and so until the house burned down we just lived with the wood floor naked and exposed.

On October 7, 1990, when I was just 14 years old, our house was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. It was a Sunday and it hadn’t rained in a while and I wasn’t home. When my parents came and picked me up I was actually more excited about the house burning down than I was upset. I slept in the living room and used a trunk for my clothes.

When I look back on my life I don’t have any regrets about the way I was raised. We had very little, but we had each other and a lot of love. Life really isn’t about things. Yes, your children will resent you for not getting them the latest fashions or an iPhone, however, it isn’t really those things that they will remember when they get older. They’ll remember the love. They’ll remember the things you said and how you acted during the tough times.

When people see me I think sometimes they assume that I grew up in a middle-class home where the parents combined incomes exceeded 6 figures and that I had an easy traditional upbringing. We had it rough, but it was the hard times that have shaped me into the man I am today. I’m a survivor and I know how to work hard and to appreciate what really matters in life.

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• Upset about some things and brooding about them at 4:00 AM. Ugh. I just want to sleep. #
• Computer crashed. Darn windows. I need a Macbook Pro immediately! #
• At Jason’s Deli about to have a Smokey Jack Panini. By they way – you mom’s a panini! #
• My entire inner left forearm seems to be covered in a mild case of poison ivy. However, I have no clue where it came from??? #

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Top 10 Things I Learned at the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard

10.   I have way too many teeth to be a real Nascar fan.

9.     You can get away with a full set of teeth only if you are missing an appendage.

8.     Shirts are optional – strike that, highly discouraged at Nascar events.

7.     However, if you choose to wear a shirt, it better have a driver’s number
on it or you run significant risk of drunk people telling you repeatedly
you must not be a real Nascar fan. (my feelings weren’t hurt)

6.     You can also get away with wearing a shirt if it says something like:
“Possum.  It’s what’s fer dinner.”
“F*@# milk!”
“Please tell your boobs to stop staring at my eyes.”

5.     Riding in a police car can be lots of fun when you’re not in trouble and the
       police car you are in is the “rabbit” car in a police escort.

4.     Everyone hates Kyle Busch which I just don’t get cause he’s the M&M driver

       and I’ve always heard M&Ms make friends.

3.     They still do an invocation at Nascar events and include statements such as
       “And with the trading of paint, we make a joyful noise unto you o Lord” and
       “Let these good ol’ boys get it on.  In Jesus name amen.”

2.     Nascar fans are very creative and come up with new drinks such as the Happy
       (lemonade and vodka) and the Beer Gut (lemonade, beer, ice, and lime).

1.     If you ain’t first, you’re last.

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• Best quote from Semi-Pro: You hate yourself so much its impossible to love you. #
• I am going to bed at 10pm on a Friday and I don’t feel pathetic, I feel privileged. #
• Had the best burger today with the fellas. Spent 3 hours in the booth shooting a dozen, chillin, and catchin up. Life is Goood… #
• Oh, that was your mom? She was so white I thought it was an oversized tub of sour cream. #

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• Going out to eat for some Greek and then to star in a movie called My Big Fat Greek Stomach. #

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I don’t know what Etsy means, but I know it is a place where you can sell handmade goods. I would like to start paining again and I think that it might be fun to try to sell some of the stuff I create. The only tiny problem with that is I don’t know if I could let go of my paintings. When I do something that I think is pretty great I love it. Each piece has a story. Even purchasing the paint, selecting the brushes, the canvas, it all has meaning.

My only real accomplishment in the painting department is here: http://www.postednote.com/eddosroom.htm the last two pictures in this grouping.

Many of you have seen this before, but only now have I realized that this would be one more fun creative project that I could add to my big pile of projects.

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This is right up my alley. As much of a people person that I am, I hate talking on the phone. I prefer face-to-face communication.

http://www.slydial.com/situations.php 

I love these slydial situations too, they all fit, except for the multiple dating one. I can hardly keep up with one girl, it amazes me that some men could keep up with multiple women, and those men who live double lives and have entire families in other locations – when I input that data in my brain I get a response in a robotic voice that says, “Does Not Compute – Invalid Entry.”  

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