Attitude says a lot about your gratitude

I wanted to reach through the television and strangle her little bony neck.  I longed to just slap her into tomorrow as I labored through her terrible little I’m-a-cute-girl voice. She stirred feelings of deep hate inside of me as I watched her complain, bitch and WHINE…

About her Property Brothers, HGTV FREE home renovation in her $710,000 home!!!

Where do these people come from?  Who raises these ungrateful little snots?

I punched the pause button on the clicker to temporarily silence her tiresome complaints and headed to the kitchen for some ice tea.  As I wacked the ice maker button to make it work (redneck trick y’all) I wondered if maybe I’d just become too simple.  After all, I woke up with running water this morning (although slow because our water pressure is iffy in this 1890s farmhouse) 

While I was in the kitchen I stopped by our very rustic laundry room to check on the dryer, yep, I needed to open and close the door again and give it a good thump. EEEEeeeeeekkkkkkkk thu-da da da da dump.  That’s the sound it makes back at me when we go through this but I have already had my Come-to-Jesus moment with it once this year.  I calmly explained it was the range/oven/cookey thingy’s year to be replaced and Mr. Clothes Dryer, you can just get back in line.  You can cut in front of Mr. Refridgerator who is as ugly as sin and will likely survive the apocalypse. 

So you understand my disgust that this young 20-something’s behavior and ungrateful like attitude at the lovely FREE help she was getting in re-making an ENTIRE HOME to fulfill her very desire and wish.  I felt so sorry for her handsome but-balding-way-too-early husband.  I’m already Team Husband at this point but I figure the man must be some kind of saint to live with this day in and day out.

“Ewe, I can NOT live in a house with a bathroom like that!  I can NOT! That will NOT be OK”  she heavily breathes into the camera as she licks her lips to make sure she looks Kardashian sexy while protesting.  You would have thought the Property Brothers were asking her to set up her domicile in a dirt floor African hut complete with a colony of flies and a village of Ebola patients in the next village over.

“My MUST haves for the bathroom include a bathtub, shower (but a SPA rain forest like shower, it must be SPA like) double vanity sinks although it is going to be MY bathroom, HE has to have his own bathroom.  I’m not sharing because my mom told me the secret to a happy marriage is SEPARATE bathrooms, AND a BIDET!!”  (A bidet is a fancy little floor sink thing that splashes water up in your private parts so you feel fresh after you do your bathroom biz)

“That’s all I need, really!” B gurl finishes up her requirement list and shoots a look at her hubby who really seems afraid to disagree with her as if she is a terrorist with her arms around his dear mother’s neck and a bomb strapped to her.  Speaking of Mothers, I’ll get back to that later.

The couple wanted a New York lofty feel to their suburban home which was actually about three and a half feet from their neighbor’s.  They insisted upon tearing out a wall to expose the exposed brick, very trendy, hip and lofty.  Ok.  So the hard working team did not find any exposed brick when tearing out a wall so they did a faux brick wall instead.  That’s fine and dandy but seems a little tasky when they could’ve just dealt with the wall they had.  Earlier, the poor hubby had mentioned they just got married and were waaaaaaaaaaaay over budget, and I’m kinda starting to understand how and why.

When they finished and showed the beautiful before and after shots with the cool computer generated animation of the project, it did look very nice.  But I wondered how happy of a home that would really end up being ten years from now.  Sure they have a beautiful home in which to entertain friends and family, but if she doesn’t do some serious RENOVATION on her attitude and get some gratitude, she won’t be able to pay folks to sit in her swanky, hip, lofty living room.

I’m about two hissy fits away from thinking I’m having the big one, the nervous breakdown many days when we have water leaking in the basement and something big breaks around here.  I think I’d love to have one of those homes you see all gussied up and renovated on those shows.  Then I remember that most days I have it good.  I have a bed to sleep in, family who loves me, cats who catch barn mice, dogs who greet me with slobbery kisses, a Honda that starts right up, friends who will carry a casserole to my house on a moment’s notice if one of us is sick, a great church family, nice hair, I can touch my toes and still run a 9-and-a-half-minute mile, and a Savior who died on the cross for my sins.  Which is good because I called that little B a few non-Christian like things in my head while watching that episode.  And I realize that she doesn’t get it.  Her mama told her the key to a happy marriage is separate bathrooms and if that’s her big worry, life will be very difficult and dark for this girl.  

I hope I get it.  Even if I don’t get a renovated home, I have a lot.  Really …a lot!

~Carry on

Anne Boswell Taylor

#PropertyBrothers #HGTV #Gratitude 

Ahhh, discipline.....

I have not posted in quite some time.

Some of you know my husband Chad fell 20 feet or so from the second story of our home off a ladder.  I have thoughts on this whole experience I will share later.

For now.  My heart is hurting for a family who I didn't even know.  It seemed like a post I did a few months ago fit here.  The parents of this teenage boy who died must feel some of what I'm about to share.  However, my PRETEND story is just that...pretend.  Theirs is not.
Father be with them in their time of hurting.

Here is my original post from October 2015:

Saturday, October 31, 2015

Ahhh, discipline.....

Because we are sick parents, we decided that on top of a good one month grounding, the kiddo needed to think about a thing or two and write us an essay.  Basically, she was caught trying to plan something dangerous and got caught.  We told her to write us an essay on who would be affected and how should she die.  Morbid, yes, I know. 

I was NOT getting anything more than a laundry list of things and felt there wasn't enough sincerity in it.  So, I wrote my own take on it.  I wrote how losing a daughter could affect me.  I imagined what it would be like, although only a parent who has buried a child can know this.

Anyway, here it is, my imaginative situation, thank God!  But I wanted to share it with you:

I can still smell her perfume. Her hairbrush was left on my sink.  Her school work spills onto the table.

Her presence seems real although it isn’t.  It is just a fleeting feeling that she will walk through the doors and come home.

As I open the pantry, I find an empty box of pop tarts, something she used to do.  She would never through away the box.  I think her pre-teen brain just got distracted easily.  Nonetheless, I would give anything to find another box next week but I won’t, she is gone.

Her dirty socks spill from the laundry hamper in the hallway, something she would get to “later” there was always a later, now there is none.

I’ll never hear her pray for us at dinner anymore and laugh because it was always a funny little prayer.  “And thank you Lord for little turdbucket,” a term of affection for our chocolate standard poodle Ruger Silas.

There will be no more clanking of plates as she unloads the dishwasher for me.  Silence.  She is gone.

The kittens remind me of her because she always loved to hold them and tell me which one was her favorite which seemed to change a lot. 

The hallway on a Sunday morning is quiet, no clop clop of her boots that she loved so much.  Church will be lonely without her sitting next to me.  My daughter is with Jesus today.  I can’t help but wonder if she sees me sitting there and is there with me. 

I will donate a few of her books and keep the ones that remind me of her.

I decide to wait a bit before opening the door to her room and then I brave it.  Her sheets smell like her and there’s a pre-teen girl innocence in the room.  I feel as though my heart has been ripped from my body and I cry out WHY WHY WHY!

I cannot go through her things yet.  I wonder if I will ever be able to.  Does the hurting ever end or does a mom just learn how to manage the pain?  I have trouble even hearing her cat Oscar squeak his little “meow” in the hallway.  I feel like there is sadness in his eyes too.

Forget going to Chad’s parent’s home, the ranch in Karval.  If it was hard to be there and remember our dog Zeus, it will be next to impossible to be there anytime soon.  This is where our little girl learned to ride a horse, learned to love her cousins, cows, everything farm and ranch and even chores with Grandpa.  He is so devastated by the loss and no work is done.  Aunt Nikki comes to feed his cows.  Uncle Travis helps with anything else.  Grandma Sandy has gone to Yuma, Co to be with her twin sister because she wants to escape the memories if only for a little while.

My next trip to Oklahoma will be alone without her and the cheese fries at Eskimo Joes will not be the same.  How does a parent just live with all of the memories flooding their heart on a daily basis? 

Children are NOT supposed to go before their parents.  It is un-natural and just out of balance.  We are supposed to go first to leave them on this earth to live their lives.  We are supposed to be the ones leaving behind the keepsakes and the legacy.  We are not supposed to out-live our children.  Why did this have to happen?  I ask God Why and I don’t get an answer.

I just want one more day with her….just one more day.  Can’t we just rewind?  What did I do wrong?  Why didn’t I see the dangers ahead?  How could this have been prevented?  Why?  Why?  Why?

I slip back into extreme sobbing and expel enough tears that I feel as if I will choke.  I have a thought for a second that if I did, and I did die too, would I be with her again?  Is heaven that close?

I cannot sleep, I cannot eat and I cannot feel anything except complete and total numbness and sorrow.  

She wasn’t supposed to DIE!!! She was supposed to live and follow her dreams, marry a wonderful man and have a beautiful family, a privilege I was blessed with.

I will never have the answers and I will never stop searching for them.  The peace I knew the day before is gone.  The peace I took for granted has left.  The peace I had with my family is no more.  It is gone and it is done and I am forever changed because of it.