I am up and getting ready to go to Probate Court to prove that my husband's will is legal and to hopefully get the legal paperwork I need to move forward from this court induced limbo of the last several months.
Do the judges and court employees realize what their actions can lead to? Do they care?
The judge that is over this court? His wife married G and I. She was the judge before he was. Before cancer took her life and left him a widower, probably going through the same things as I am. But did the black robe make it easier for him? And will he look down over the courtroom and think maybe he should pay some of the kindness he was shown forward?
Guess we'll find out today in Shelby County, Alabama.
UPDATE : Well, 5 minutes before court my former step-daughter filed a motion contesting the will. She is trying to say the will is fraudulent and that G didn't sign it. She is also claiming that she has not been to our house in years. This from the same person that still has furniture and things here, still has a key, took baths and got ready to go out here, and often spent the night when she couldn't make it home. She also told him she hated him and she didn't have a father anymore when we wouldn't give her $16,000 for hair school when she had a full scholarship to or local university. Gregory may have forgiven her for that, but he never forgot. She had no problem with the signatures on the living will, burial wishes or anything else. Now I hope she doesn't have a problem paying off medical bills and other expenses. If she wants to be part of the estate, that's what she'll have to do.
Attorneys are working now and witnesses, including my 87 year old former mother-in-law, are being subpoenaed. This is about to get ugly.
Wednesday
Tuesday
The Wheels of Justice need WD40....
Tomorrow is Probate Court day.
09-09-09.
I like odd numbers, and I hope that date is a sign of the numbers coming up well for me.
As you may know, this has been a long process made longer by bureaucratic bullshit and apathy on the parts of the courts. And it continues. I just got off the phone with the court appointed guardian ad litem for my stepson, who called me to go over all of the stuff we've discussed three times already. He then ended the conversation by asking me for the telephone number and address for my stepson's mother, which he should already have. I don't have her info, the bitch won't talk to me. She's probably off somewhere being a good christian woman.
Tomorrow is an important day. His will has to be legally probated. It has been almost 6 months since Greg died and I need the letters of testamentary that only the court can provide. I need these letters to show that I am the executor of the estate and that I can receive the stock dividends from his company. I need these letters to get the money that will help me pay this house note before Bank of America kicks me out on my ass. Apparently the government's new help a homeowner plan doesn't apply to those of us who have been in good standing for years but just need a bit of help when they become a destitute widow while waiting for the wheels of justice to squeak to life. I also need this money to pay the hospital where Greg died that keeps calling and asking for him and his wallet. (HEY BROOKWOOD? Might want to make a note on your paperwork that the man died in your facility !!! You should have lifted his cash then.) And of course there are utilities and health insurance and blah blah blah things that have to be taken care of, and I am about at the end of my pennies.
I can't get any help from anyone because according to my house payment and other bills I should be making more money. Well no shit. My husband brought home more in a week than I do in two months. I only work part-time, and believe me, I have been trying to get a full-time job since all this went down! When we had his income our bills were "justified." Oh and I guess him dying and it being left all up to me is "unjustified"? Got to love the bureaucrats. I get looked down upon because my husband wanted me to spend more time with him and at home and not work as much, so I did, and a year later he dies and now I'm lazy.
Whatever.
So Lady Justice, put on your Nikes or Asics or whichever shoes make you feel like getting up and moving, and please please please grab the attorneys and the judges and the ad lit-ems and anyone else involved, and shake shake shake senora down to my hard wooden courthouse seat and give me my paperwork!!!
If you don't I might be living in a box underneath your pedestal.
09-09-09.
I like odd numbers, and I hope that date is a sign of the numbers coming up well for me.
As you may know, this has been a long process made longer by bureaucratic bullshit and apathy on the parts of the courts. And it continues. I just got off the phone with the court appointed guardian ad litem for my stepson, who called me to go over all of the stuff we've discussed three times already. He then ended the conversation by asking me for the telephone number and address for my stepson's mother, which he should already have. I don't have her info, the bitch won't talk to me. She's probably off somewhere being a good christian woman.
Tomorrow is an important day. His will has to be legally probated. It has been almost 6 months since Greg died and I need the letters of testamentary that only the court can provide. I need these letters to show that I am the executor of the estate and that I can receive the stock dividends from his company. I need these letters to get the money that will help me pay this house note before Bank of America kicks me out on my ass. Apparently the government's new help a homeowner plan doesn't apply to those of us who have been in good standing for years but just need a bit of help when they become a destitute widow while waiting for the wheels of justice to squeak to life. I also need this money to pay the hospital where Greg died that keeps calling and asking for him and his wallet. (HEY BROOKWOOD? Might want to make a note on your paperwork that the man died in your facility !!! You should have lifted his cash then.) And of course there are utilities and health insurance and blah blah blah things that have to be taken care of, and I am about at the end of my pennies.
I can't get any help from anyone because according to my house payment and other bills I should be making more money. Well no shit. My husband brought home more in a week than I do in two months. I only work part-time, and believe me, I have been trying to get a full-time job since all this went down! When we had his income our bills were "justified." Oh and I guess him dying and it being left all up to me is "unjustified"? Got to love the bureaucrats. I get looked down upon because my husband wanted me to spend more time with him and at home and not work as much, so I did, and a year later he dies and now I'm lazy.
Whatever.
So Lady Justice, put on your Nikes or Asics or whichever shoes make you feel like getting up and moving, and please please please grab the attorneys and the judges and the ad lit-ems and anyone else involved, and shake shake shake senora down to my hard wooden courthouse seat and give me my paperwork!!!
If you don't I might be living in a box underneath your pedestal.
Monday
I knew.
My life now seems to go into some sort of cycle.
It's like there's a very defined line that splits the center of my life, my days, nights and moments into two very specific lots.
Let's just say it's like Before Death and After Death.
B - I would be up rolling, already packed and ready to go to the lake on a holiday weekend.
A - I stay in bed the whole weekend and shuffle from the media room to the kitchen to the bathroom. The only glimpses of the outside I see are when I let the dogs out.
B - home football game? Packed the week before, ready to go, full tailgate menu prepped and ready.
But yanno what that last thing said to me??
I'm a HYPOCRITE.
A big freaking whiny ass woe is me HYPOCRITE. I bitched all this past weekend because I didn't feel good. I was hot. I was cold. I was fevery and sneezy and weak and wah wah wah I didn't have anyone to tend to me and I live so GD far ( 20 minutes) from my SUPPOSED real life friends and none of them would come comfort me because geez who wants to be around a widow? I might be contagious! Come see me and DEATH could find your little family.
Meanwhile, people's babies are dying and husbands and wives and moms and dads and brothers and sisters are leaving us and people's marriages are breaking up and all kinds of other stuff is going down, but as usual, IT WAS ALL ABOUT ME. Heaven forbid I need comfort, support, love.
Why do yall read this? Don't you get tired of listening to me bitch about my dead husband?
He's not coming back. Yall knew it long before me, but you're still here.
When they were stuffing that tube down his throat through those beautiful soft lips I had kissed so many times? I didn't know it. They all did. But I didn't.
When those frigging beep-beep-beep puff up and down machines were keeping him alive?? I didn't know it.
When the only thing that was keeping color in his skin was the IV's they changed out every few hours? I didn't know it.
When I had to sign the frigging DNR papers even though I knew he had a living will ? I didn't know it.
When the organ donor people came in and talked to me and I basically uh-huhd my way through the conversation while all the while thinking that I needed to cut his fingernails cause he would be oh so pissed if he woke up and his nails looked funky? I didn't know it.
I went all Sally Field Steel Magnolias on his ass and read to him, talked to him,combed his hair, trimmed his nails, put lotion on his feet and legs and hands, brushed his teeth around that GD tube in his mouth, put chap stick on his poor dried out hospital dead lips, laid in bed with him and held him, split the iPod headphones with him and sang along to our favorite songs, and only left him to go to the bathroom or when they made me, just for a second, cause THEY KNEW.
I KNEW TOO. I AM A LIAR.
I knew he was gone. I knew he would never come home with me or sing to me or hold me or kiss me or call me Kimbo again.
I just couldn't face it. DENIED it. This wasn't what he promised me. This is not our life. He was supposed to take me to a tropical paradise for my BD and we were supposed to have the cutest baby ever and tailgate and go skiing in the Poconos and all of the plans we talked about like we had soooo much time.
And you know what really just chaps my ass? He hit his damn head ! That hard ass stubborn head of his. One tiny cut. A butterfly bandage. And underneath? What would kill him. Why didn't I know ? Why wouldn't whoever the hell is in charge around here let me fix him?
I don't know how I face it now. He's in a damn nice ass expensive jar on the dresser in our bedroom . Some of his ashes are in a tattoo on the back of my neck. I carry some of them with me and laugh about it with people I have never met and am afraid I won't have anything to talk to about. He's dead and he's never coming back and I just can't make myself believe that this has happened to me and that it's really true.
I post about dogs and baseball and more stupid shit like books and football and for just a moment, I'm not drowning in the quicksand of sadness and grief and death and being so frigging alone you never knew it was that possible to be disconnected from the people that amass this planet.
I knew.
I lied to myself. I lied to everyone.
I'm a hypocrite.
And I want my Before Death life back.
And I know I'm not gonna get it.
And it sucks.
And I hate myself for being a hypocrite phony weak-ass whiney about it.
It's like there's a very defined line that splits the center of my life, my days, nights and moments into two very specific lots.
Let's just say it's like Before Death and After Death.
B - I would be up rolling, already packed and ready to go to the lake on a holiday weekend.
A - I stay in bed the whole weekend and shuffle from the media room to the kitchen to the bathroom. The only glimpses of the outside I see are when I let the dogs out.
B - home football game? Packed the week before, ready to go, full tailgate menu prepped and ready.
A - barely watched game on TV. Tickets sit unopened in season ticket packaging.
B - Would already have fall / Halloween decor out and house looking sharp and ready to partay.
A - If I already had Halloween candy bought? Would have eaten it all by now.
B - Would arrive at work 15 or more minutes early, make-up, hair, well pressed clothes.
A - Lucky if I make it on time with sunglasses and underwear on.
B - House immaculate and not one thing out of place.
A - The dog destroys a pillow? So what? I may vacuum it. in 2010. Sometimes I leave clothes in dryer and dishes in the dishwasher for days.
B - My car? You could eat off of the floorboards.
A - Lucky if it has half a tank of gas and has been washed in the last 2 weeks.
B - I wouldn't leave the house to go to Publix w/o being dressed and ready to go other places.
A - I'll show up at Buffalo Wild Wings in my pajama bottoms, an old t-shirt of G's and a hat.
B - checked the mail everyday.
A - It sits there til it starts to rain. Then I remember mailbox leaks and I go get it. Wet? I don't care.
B - I gave a shit about people's problems.
A - Now ? fuck you. live my life.
But yanno what that last thing said to me??
I'm a HYPOCRITE.
A big freaking whiny ass woe is me HYPOCRITE. I bitched all this past weekend because I didn't feel good. I was hot. I was cold. I was fevery and sneezy and weak and wah wah wah I didn't have anyone to tend to me and I live so GD far ( 20 minutes) from my SUPPOSED real life friends and none of them would come comfort me because geez who wants to be around a widow? I might be contagious! Come see me and DEATH could find your little family.
Meanwhile, people's babies are dying and husbands and wives and moms and dads and brothers and sisters are leaving us and people's marriages are breaking up and all kinds of other stuff is going down, but as usual, IT WAS ALL ABOUT ME. Heaven forbid I need comfort, support, love.
Why do yall read this? Don't you get tired of listening to me bitch about my dead husband?
He's not coming back. Yall knew it long before me, but you're still here.
I didn't know it.
As recently as a few days ago, I heard the a/c kick on while I was napping on the couch and started to get up because I thought he was opening the garage door.
As recently as a few days ago, I heard the a/c kick on while I was napping on the couch and started to get up because I thought he was opening the garage door.
When they were stuffing that tube down his throat through those beautiful soft lips I had kissed so many times? I didn't know it. They all did. But I didn't.
When those frigging beep-beep-beep puff up and down machines were keeping him alive?? I didn't know it.
When the only thing that was keeping color in his skin was the IV's they changed out every few hours? I didn't know it.
When I had to sign the frigging DNR papers even though I knew he had a living will ? I didn't know it.
When the organ donor people came in and talked to me and I basically uh-huhd my way through the conversation while all the while thinking that I needed to cut his fingernails cause he would be oh so pissed if he woke up and his nails looked funky? I didn't know it.
I went all Sally Field Steel Magnolias on his ass and read to him, talked to him,combed his hair, trimmed his nails, put lotion on his feet and legs and hands, brushed his teeth around that GD tube in his mouth, put chap stick on his poor dried out hospital dead lips, laid in bed with him and held him, split the iPod headphones with him and sang along to our favorite songs, and only left him to go to the bathroom or when they made me, just for a second, cause THEY KNEW.
I KNEW TOO. I AM A LIAR.
I knew he was gone. I knew he would never come home with me or sing to me or hold me or kiss me or call me Kimbo again.
I just couldn't face it. DENIED it. This wasn't what he promised me. This is not our life. He was supposed to take me to a tropical paradise for my BD and we were supposed to have the cutest baby ever and tailgate and go skiing in the Poconos and all of the plans we talked about like we had soooo much time.
And you know what really just chaps my ass? He hit his damn head ! That hard ass stubborn head of his. One tiny cut. A butterfly bandage. And underneath? What would kill him. Why didn't I know ? Why wouldn't whoever the hell is in charge around here let me fix him?
I don't know how I face it now. He's in a damn nice ass expensive jar on the dresser in our bedroom . Some of his ashes are in a tattoo on the back of my neck. I carry some of them with me and laugh about it with people I have never met and am afraid I won't have anything to talk to about. He's dead and he's never coming back and I just can't make myself believe that this has happened to me and that it's really true.
I post about dogs and baseball and more stupid shit like books and football and for just a moment, I'm not drowning in the quicksand of sadness and grief and death and being so frigging alone you never knew it was that possible to be disconnected from the people that amass this planet.
I knew.
I lied to myself. I lied to everyone.
I'm a hypocrite.
And I want my Before Death life back.
And I know I'm not gonna get it.
And it sucks.
And I hate myself for being a hypocrite phony weak-ass whiney about it.
Saturday
Football is here....and he isn't...
Auburn football begins today.
Another chapter in my life I will have to go through without him.
Our first date happened at Auburn. Our first kiss.
Our favorite place to hang out started at Auburn's Mellow Mushroom and led us to so many more.
The first picture we ever took together.
This one.
The goofy grin on his face as he waved at me all the way down (and up) the stairs....
The first time we goofed off with Dr. Bill (who ironically, I used to call Dr. Lecter....he used to bring me a wildflower every game and say "Hello Clarice") as a couple...
Chilling at home watching the away games.........
Good times with friends....
Meeting Coach Dye....Tiger Walk...rolling Toomer's corner....the Shelby County Auburn Club...SEC days....lazy Saturdays watching football and grilling out all day...the traditions and things that made us an Auburn family........Patrick Murphy Mann included......
We went to see the President there.....
I'll go back to Auburn I know. It was a part of me long before I even knew G, but he just made it a better part. I am going to try and go next weekend. It's the Mississippi State game. That game, 6 years ago, was our first date. So it's gonna be tough.
But I'll go and be surrounded by friends. I'll sing "Budda Getta" and scream "It's great to be an Auburn Tiger" and yell out the fight songs and hug Aubie on Tiger Walk and buy a game shirt and do all of the things we did in what seems like a lifetime ago.
I might not go to Mellow Mushroom, not just yet. And I probably won't do many of the things that he and I did in our Auburn game weekend routine.
But I'll do some new things. I'll make my own traditions. Auburn will always be my home. And I know you'll be watching over me, soaring above me like Tiger and Spirit do before the game.
War Eagle Baby . I love you.
Friday
Wednesday
BookWorm
I've always been a voracious reader. Before the interwebz took over the world, I read a whole lot more than I did now. I still read, but I am trying to carve out at least an hour in each day to sit down and lose myself in a book.
4 newspapers a day, various magazines, and I always had a book or three in progress. I'm one of those that can read several different books at a time. My favorites are autobiographies, crime and pretty much anything by Stephen King and Tami Hoag. I also adore Eudora Welty and John Grisham, both Mississippi authors.
When I was stateside in Poplarville in the summertime, I would ride my bike to the library and fill my basket up with books. One or two summers I won the little award they gave out for finishing all of the books on the summer reading list.
Life, work and the internet came along and changed many of my habits. I still read books, and there are certain magazines that I still read in print including National Geographic, Southern Living, various nerdy magazines and Wired.
This is my current reading stack, followed by my next stack. I really don't try to group them in any particular way, it just seems like I always have at least one autobiography and one travel book in whatever pile I'm working on at a time.
Next.....
My love of reading was instilled in me by my paternal grandfather as well as my mom and dad. My grandfather always read the Wall Street Journal and the New Orleans Times-Picayune every morning with his coffee. As I got older he would have me read one article from each section to him , not only to improve my reading and speaking skills, but to foster my interest in current events.
My grandfather was a Commander in the U.S. Navy, and after he left the service he worked for the government and for the Liberia Corporation, who owned many rubber tree plantations (they provided materials to Firestone for tires) and land in and around Liberia, Africa. He hosted and entertained many dignitaries and heads of state, but the person who I was most fascinated to hear about??
Yes, that says Charles Lindbergh. That is a first edition autographed copy of The Spirit of St. Louis, given to my Papaw by the man himself. He was a frequent guest at my grandparent's estate, and I wish I could remember half of the stories they told me about him. And I would give anything to have the pictures that Camille destroyed.
Every time my grandmother would see someone wearing seersucker fabric, she would tell me the same story....how Mr. Lindbergh wore a seersucker suit and washed it in the tub every night and hung it up to dry before putting it back on the next day. Even today, when I see seersucker, I think of that.
My grandfather also ordered an entire set of classic books for me, yanno the leather bound ones with the gold leaf finish? I think he got one a month for several years. He wrote a personal message in each book up until his death. I know exactly which book was the last one he read and signed, because the next is blank. Here they are in what amounts to about 1/4 of my bookshelves....( they still smell like my grandparents house when I open them , like home)...
Here are some of my favorites....I will type out what they say under the ones that are hard to read......
This one above is The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner...my papaw wrote.... This is generally recognized as Faulkner's greatest book. I was attending "Ole Miss" in the fall of 1930 and I met Bill Faulkner who lived in Oxford. He was sitting on the curb on Main Street eating peanuts - two other football players and I were coming from practice. We stopped to talk to Faulkner who asked us to join him to eat peanuts. This was before he became famous. Love Papaw.
You are like the dawn in a yellow robe rising in the east out of the flowing ocean - "our sunshine."
There are more, but you get the idea. Sometimes I get sad when I open them up and read the words he wrote so long ago, and I wish I was the little pig-tailed girl with the yellow bike and basket full of books, riding home to show my Papaw what treasures I was to discover in their pages. But then I'm proud, and happy that I was blessed with such a wonderful person in my life that I still adore as much right this second as I did when I was that little girl.
Thanks Papaw. I love you.
4 newspapers a day, various magazines, and I always had a book or three in progress. I'm one of those that can read several different books at a time. My favorites are autobiographies, crime and pretty much anything by Stephen King and Tami Hoag. I also adore Eudora Welty and John Grisham, both Mississippi authors.
When I was stateside in Poplarville in the summertime, I would ride my bike to the library and fill my basket up with books. One or two summers I won the little award they gave out for finishing all of the books on the summer reading list.
Life, work and the internet came along and changed many of my habits. I still read books, and there are certain magazines that I still read in print including National Geographic, Southern Living, various nerdy magazines and Wired.
This is my current reading stack, followed by my next stack. I really don't try to group them in any particular way, it just seems like I always have at least one autobiography and one travel book in whatever pile I'm working on at a time.
Next.....
My love of reading was instilled in me by my paternal grandfather as well as my mom and dad. My grandfather always read the Wall Street Journal and the New Orleans Times-Picayune every morning with his coffee. As I got older he would have me read one article from each section to him , not only to improve my reading and speaking skills, but to foster my interest in current events.
My grandfather was a Commander in the U.S. Navy, and after he left the service he worked for the government and for the Liberia Corporation, who owned many rubber tree plantations (they provided materials to Firestone for tires) and land in and around Liberia, Africa. He hosted and entertained many dignitaries and heads of state, but the person who I was most fascinated to hear about??
Yes, that says Charles Lindbergh. That is a first edition autographed copy of The Spirit of St. Louis, given to my Papaw by the man himself. He was a frequent guest at my grandparent's estate, and I wish I could remember half of the stories they told me about him. And I would give anything to have the pictures that Camille destroyed.
Every time my grandmother would see someone wearing seersucker fabric, she would tell me the same story....how Mr. Lindbergh wore a seersucker suit and washed it in the tub every night and hung it up to dry before putting it back on the next day. Even today, when I see seersucker, I think of that.
My grandfather also ordered an entire set of classic books for me, yanno the leather bound ones with the gold leaf finish? I think he got one a month for several years. He wrote a personal message in each book up until his death. I know exactly which book was the last one he read and signed, because the next is blank. Here they are in what amounts to about 1/4 of my bookshelves....( they still smell like my grandparents house when I open them , like home)...
Here are some of my favorites....I will type out what they say under the ones that are hard to read......
This one above is The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner...my papaw wrote.... This is generally recognized as Faulkner's greatest book. I was attending "Ole Miss" in the fall of 1930 and I met Bill Faulkner who lived in Oxford. He was sitting on the curb on Main Street eating peanuts - two other football players and I were coming from practice. We stopped to talk to Faulkner who asked us to join him to eat peanuts. This was before he became famous. Love Papaw.
You are like the dawn in a yellow robe rising in the east out of the flowing ocean - "our sunshine."
There are more, but you get the idea. Sometimes I get sad when I open them up and read the words he wrote so long ago, and I wish I was the little pig-tailed girl with the yellow bike and basket full of books, riding home to show my Papaw what treasures I was to discover in their pages. But then I'm proud, and happy that I was blessed with such a wonderful person in my life that I still adore as much right this second as I did when I was that little girl.
Thanks Papaw. I love you.
Tuesday
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