So It Begins.

The 12 YR old's voice is starting to change already. I know. It's early. I wasn't expecting it so soon.

He's begun puberty already.

Oh, God.

The other day he yelled at me I hate you! and I distinctly noticed on the word hate his voice was a different octave; that it changed, it was much higher than usual and then afterwards I kept my ear out for it and I noticed it happened several other times,too. His voice is definitely changing; a sign of puberty and it would also explain his sudden growth spurt and why he's outgrowing all of his clothes all of a sudden and all the arms and legs of his clothing is suddenly waaay too short and now he's taller than his older sister who's almost 18.....he's now all of a sudden a towering giant.....he's easily going to end up the tallest in the family and my hubby is 6 feet tall and our oldest is over 6 feet, he's easily going to surpass that full-grown.....

Luckily he is my youngest and so the last teenager I have to endure but I thought I had another year left until I had to endure that one more, last time, but nope.....it snuck up on me a year early.

Shit.

He's always been on of the more difficult of the kids, even as a baby he was fussy,a hard to feed, cried alot and was difficult and as a kid very difficult (to put it nicely) so I hate to think what the teen year will be like, and he's already very mouthy and even hurls such hate-filled insults at me such as Go kill yourself! so I just dread to think what the next few years are going to be like......oh, God.....here it comes.

Now I know why some animals eat their young.

When I had all the kids so close together years ago, most of them just 1 and 2 years apart, it was kind of fun and they were all so cute and it was nice having them so close sharing such a close bond( some of them still share to this day, esp. the girls; they're like best friends) but I never thought ahead that years later down the road I would also have a whole bunch of teenagers all at the same time too and at one time I even had (horrors!) 5 teens all at once. It was horrible, but somehow (by the grace of God) I made it thru and now only one more to go. I just didn't expect it so soon. A year early.

The 20 YR old also has 11 people coming to her graduation this month too and I feel badly I won't be there and I'd like to be there and see it but it's in Ottawa and that's where one of the biggest traumas of my life occurred and I can never go back there ever again with all those memories; it would trigger flashbacks and PTSD and set back my emotional healing, a risk I just can't take. I can never go back there ever again. It's probably for the best though anyway as it's over a 3 HR drive each way and with my bad back I'd end up crippled and I can't leave Buddy home alone for days either with no one there to feed him or take him out for walks, and besides, I don't want to embarrass her,either; if I went I'd be afraid she might be ashamed of me in front of all her friends and such, and with my social phobia I would panic as well being with all those people being expected to mingle and be social,too, so it's probably better for everyone that I just stay home.

Daily Musing.

Hanging Out With Buddy.

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A typical day yesterday hanging out with my Best Friend. Just chilling out in the backyard, enjoying the outdoors, cuddling up, snuggling, enjoying eachother's company, enjoying the little things, smelling the fresh spring air, listening to the birds,inhaling the beauty of spring,enjoying the sun, time together with my Boy.

Joy.

Pucker up, Buttercup!

Live

Love

Laugh

Today is really cold though, like fall, only 7 C and really windy! Send me back to Jamaica; it's too cold here! They had a tornado in the Ottawa area yesterday too. The 20 YR old is fine luckily and our guys were gone by the time it hit. That was a close one!

Today's Thought.

The Chicken Adventure.

So Friday and yesterday my hubby and the girls were in Ottawa. They visited the 20 YR old and hung out with her and went shopping at the mall( she also got to drive her BF's Porsche! How awesome is that? I've never even been in one, let alone drive one, the closest I've been is in my cousin's apple red Corvette Stingray with the white leather bucket seats when I was a kid and it was amazing.....an incredible experience I will never forget) and the 16 YR old got to attend a speaking engagement with former American Prez Obama, who she loves and admires more than anyone else in the world;he's her idol; it would be like me going to see Bob Marley live in concert or seeing Jesus in person. I was hoping she'd get to meet him up close and shake his hand and get a Selfie , which would be the opportunity of a lifetime and most likely the highlight of her life, but no such luck. She had a great time though and she said she got photos and I asked her to e-mail me some but she claimed her device doesn't 'allow' her to send photos.....yeah......right....

That brings us to our Chicken Adventure.

While they were gone my mother decided the rest of us here at home would have KFC for dinner and with no car and no one here to go pick it up we had to have it delivered so I went online to their site like I normally do......except something was wrong and it said Error 404 ( the most hated words ever when you're trying to do an online task)  and re-directed me and it kept screwing up my order changing what I ordered, and adding stuff I didn't order and substituting stuff I did order and leaving things out and I had no way of going back and deleting it; it wouldn't let me somehow,  and I logged into my account but forgot my password so I had to do another one and they were so picky about what it had to contain: password must contain at least one capital and lower-case letter plus one number and symbol.....oh, f*ck it.... the password I usually use( so that I can remember it) doesn't have all those( so it's easy for a dolt like me to remember, that's the whole point; so it's NOT too complicated) so I did that and then it had my address wrong ( a BIG problem when you want delivery) and it wouldn't let me change it so I just shut the whole damn thing off, rebooted and tried again but it automatically re-loaded with the old wrong order still on there.....I'd so far spent 45 minutes  on there trying to do it, getting increasingly frustrated......that was it.....enough....I gave up.

So then, Plan Two.

My mother decided to try the old-fashioned way: PHONE in the order, like we used to do in the Old Days, and how we still do order-in pizza and Chinese food. So she tried to call them , getting the number out of the phone book.... except it was the wrong number, so she asked Google Home and it gave her the number of the individual franchise and when she called them they said she apparantly had to go thru the call centre service and place the order thru them and not thru the restaurant itself ( WTF, man? This must be something new.....and annoying) so she did. So far so good....

Not.

The order arrived but my mother didn't get her French fries. (Last time we had KFC we'd sent my hubby and he'd forgot my gravy so I couldn't eat my fries without the gravy, otherwise it just tastes like cardboard so I gave them to the 12 YR old, and my hubby and mother hassled me for being mad I lost half my dinner) and she was absolutely livid! She was furious and called them back in a raging fury and kept yelling, I didn't get my fries!(so now she knows how I felt when I didn't get my gravy  but for some reason it's ok for her to get mad and rage but when I do I'm yelled at to shut up and be grateful you have any food to eat at all! etc...)so eventually they sent them, free of charge, but why does everything always have to be so hard for us all the time? All we wanted was some chicken!!

Today's Truth.

Self-Love.

I was thinking the other day: I have to start being nicer to the one person I'm the meanest to, the one I always insult, put-down, talk down to, call names, call worthless, hate, discourage, sabotage, think can do nothing, loathe, discount, etc; me. I have to start being kind to myself and learn some self-love and self-acceptance. I realized that I would never talk to and treat anyone else the way I do to myself, always telling myself how ugly and stupid and worthless I am, how I can't do it, how no one loves me, no wonder no one likes me, how unappealing, unlikeable, unattractive, undesirable, off-putting,disgusting, fat, lame, clueless, annoying, waste-of-space, etc. I am, constantly telling myself, every time I see my refelction in a mirror, a photo of myself, an image of my face, etc.. always reminding myself how useless, ugly and dumb I am, etc....re-playing the narrative of my school bullying over and over again in my head and in my mind, re-playing it in a loop, a neverending cycle of self-abuse keeping me down, forever playing in my mind reminding me how awful I am, what a horrible person I am, what a sorry excuse for a human being I am, why do I even exist, etc... I know part of it is my anxiety, part of it is the "conditioning" due to years of abuse, rejection, bullying and trauma in my life but it has to stop.

I have to stop abusing myself. If I constantly treated someone else like this it would be bullying. It would be cruel and mean, horrible, and awful. It wouldn't be tolerated and it shouldn't be. It's the exact same thing the bullies in school did to me. It was "only" 2 1/2 YRS out of my entire life but it was so powerful and so long-lasting it left permanent scars that will never heal,and that even after decades still contine to fester and re-open and spread. It's like a disease, like a cancer almost. Once this gets into your head it never leaves. It stays there with you,forever, haunting you, nagging at you, pulling you down, eating away at you, constantly reminding you, so now every time I "catch" myself saying something like You're so ugly! You're so stupid! etc. I have to make a conscious effort to stop, to remind myself Stop! Stop doing this to yourself! You are NOT!!You are just as good as anyone else! I really don't actually believe it yet but I'm hoping that over time I can "recondition" myself and my thinking to one day actually believe it and change my way of thinking, and maybe one day over time the behaviour will stop, and one day, maybe one day, I can look at myself in a mirror or in a photo, or be able to face myself in some other way without some negative reaction or comment, and maybe even feel positive about myself, maybe even along the lines of, You did a good job! You can do it! You are more capable than you think! You're not so worthless! etc. Small steps. Baby steps.