Make New Friends and Keep the Old......

This week has been one of discovery and re-discovery...I began the week re-connecting with a childhood friend whom I had lost touch with over the years but missed just the same. I was delighted earlier this month to find Renee on facebook and living just a few miles from me! We met up at a dessert place that had coffee/tea and made crepes....I had an apple pie crepe and she had the strawberry/nutella crepe. Boy was that yummy! It was a good thing that we chose to sit outside because the place closed at 9 and by the time we were done talking, laughing and getting pictures, it was nearly 10:30! We will definitely get together again as soon as we can, and it will not take 22 years this time! What a blessing that Renee and I are still friends after all these years!!!

The week also included some real help for our house, for Matthew. Finally. We have a team of people who are coming here for the next several months to work with Matthew individually, work with us and all 5 of us, the intent being to help us put our family back together where we can function as a family and be what I had once dreamed of so long ago. The name of the agency really says it all...Hope Services, and for the first time in many, many moons, that is what I have inside. Hope...and to my astonishment, joy in my spirits.

Hope and joy. These are 2 feelings that do not come naturally to me and they have not come easily to me all these years. It feels quite strange to feel emotions other than panic, disconnect and sadness, those being so much of what I had become accustomed to over the years, my auto-pilot emotions if you will. I have come to realize that hope and joy are a by-product of my spiritual journey. Church, religion and the Lord while I was growing up were not what they were intended to be. For me, they were a chore; something I had to do to stay out of trouble at home. The end result for me was once I turned of legal age, I steered clear of the whole thing. I did internalize some of the important things I had learned, however....how to treat others with kindness and respect, to show compassion and for the most part, not to behave like a jerk toward anyone. This disconnect eventually caught up to me once our struggles with autism in the house kicked into high gear. The more stress our troubles at home caused, the more alone I felt, to the point where I finally felt completely emptied out. Something was missing inside me and it was something big. That something to keep me not just going, but to be, not merely exist each day.

Since last year, I have slowly worked my way back toward letting God's presence back into my life. It has been a bumpy journey but has not ended, (although I do need to pause every so often to ask for directions, hahaha) He sent me a big brother (thank you Grant!) to bolster my spirits and get me pointed in the right direction and I found myself attending church again, this time on my terms. It was the first time in a long time that I found some peace while I sorted everything else out. The blessings that He has shown me since then have been very humbling to me. For the first time in a long time, we found people who instead of turning us away, have told us "yes, we can help you; we can help your son". The most significant blessings of this have been Matthew qualifying for help finding and keeping a job once he completes his schooling, and we qualified for funding assistance for an in-home program that will help us all put our family back together. This in-home service would not have been affordable to us for the recommended time frame, had we not gotten the funding help. I am 100% convinced that God interceded on our behalf for this, and I know He is the reason we found out about it, let alone was able to sign on for it. Miracles don't have to part an ocean to be real, and I know I was granted one here. It is not going to be the easiest 5 or 6 months ahead here, but when it takes a long time for a family to get this out of sync, it will take time to make things right. But I have hope now. and some joy in my heart. Two emotions that will take some getting used to, but I like how they feel and I look forward to getting better acquainted.

So here's to my friend Renee....and to my new friends Hope and Joy. Please stick around a while..........there's room in my heart for all of you.

another unplanned family visit (but just as nice)

Maria and I took the spontaneous idea to go up to Sara's one night and return the next afternoon, just so we could grab a chance to see Diana (and Mom, Andrew, Ella & Owen again too). It was a whirlwind short but sweet visit, and fun as always. Chances for the 4 of us sisters to be together are not frequent enough so we try to grab them as often as the opportunity presents itself.





Now....here is where it gets silly...and fun. Just like when we were kids, Maria and I found another way to inject some hilarity and adventure into our existence. We left Sara's in the afternoon to head home shortly after Diana headed to the airport. We intended to make a couple stops on the way back to Ikea and Wegmans(esp. Wegmans!) so Maria plugged in her GPS and off we went. Had a grand time in both places, which offered up enough of a time delay that we basically missed the usual crawl to get out of town on 95 south. Maria has satellite radio in her car and we quickly found ourselves a way to amuse us and make the time pass by. The love channel, filled with an all you can eat buffet of the most vomit inducing sappy songs out there, just in time for Valentine's Day. We decided to make a game of it, trying to predict either the next pukey sappy song or artist coming up next at any given time and boy we were not disappointed, either. We got a dose of Air Supply, the Commodores, Anne Murray and Neil Diamond, just to name a few. After a while, we had to stop for gas since the little gas light was about to come on, so we pulled off at an exit to fill up.

I should point out that we did not exit too far off the highway, so when we were ready to resume our drive home, we took exception to the amount of miles our GPS told us to drive to get back to it. I spotted an actual road sign pointing to 95, so we chose to ignore the GPS and followed the signs. Our vomitous love song game hence re-commenced and we were quite entertained for the ensuing half hour. We noticed that the GPS kept adding time to our estimated arrival back at Maria's house and kept trying to get us to use various exits; how ridiculous! She wanted us to take a longer way home, so we thought. We continued to ignore her. Eventually, we both noticed the road had widened and slowly looked up right about the time I had started to wonder why we had not yet seen Richmond. The large, wide sign announcing Washington DC was ahead of us brought us starkly to the realization that we had managed to drive 33 miles back NORTH on 95, the most hilarious part of it being that we had not even noticed!!!! This little side venture added more than an extra hour to our drive and we were too busy laughing at the absurdity of it to even care. Only Maria and I could have pulled that one off, driving the wrong direction for that long without noticing. Diana and her flight back to Chicago beat us car travelers back home, too. If anyone ever needed proof that they need sisters in their life, this would be it. In spite of the longer than necessary drive back home, I had an awesome time!

Blessings of unplanned family visits here and there

It seems that every personal crisis that has hit me so far this year, has been buffered by unexpected blessings. One such blessing was the unplanned visit into town by Mom & Ed right before my trip to Pittsburgh. Although that came with its own dramatic flair, the upside of it was that I got to spend time with them that I wasn't expecting to, and that was a wonderful thing, a much needed boost to my spirits. Not only that, but my sister Sara came down here for a night, so I got to meet my nephew Owen, who is sweet and perfect and perfectly wonderful. We ended up congregating at Maria's house for a spell, which led to some picture opportunities such as these:

better late than never..Pittsburgh!

So much for my intention to write whenever the mood strikes..here it is a month after the fact and I am only now writing about my weekend in Pittsburgh for the Super Bowl, a trip to my favorite city that was brought about by the generosity of my wonderful cousin Will. He spent flyer miles so I could fly up for free and watch the Super Bowl from Pittsburgh, something that meant more than I could put into words. This year has begun with another stressfest and going to Pgh was a respite for me that I am immensely grateful for.

Will and Alicia met me at the airport, Will sporting his inflatable helmet much to Alicia's chagrin. I however, loved such a welcome!!!


I was warmed inside with excitement at the sight of black & gold everywhere, starting with inside of the airport. There is such a pride and intense love for the Steelers in Pittsburgh and you can feel it in the air.




Will, Alicia and I headed down to one of my favorite spots downtown after we got some lunch at the Sharp Edge..the Strip district. This is more than just a location downtown, it is an experience, especially during the postseason. There was literally black & gold and Steelers pride everywhere you turned. Gobs of people, shopping for as much Steelers merchandise as they could find. I spotted cars with black & gold paper confetti on them, Steelers fight songs blaring at every store front, people dressed for the occasion but everyone sharing a common link, their love and support for the Steelers and pride that we had made another Super Bowl.





That night, Karen joined us and met up with Beth & Mike at another icon downtown for dinner, Church Brew Works. This place is magnificent inside, being a former cathedral style church but now houses a restaurant as well as a mini brewery inside, and this weekend, it was decked out with Steeler pride (what else would you find the weekend of the Super Bowl with Pgh playing?) The food was outstanding and the company even better.


We met up with Beth & Mike again in the morning for breakfast before Will & I headed over so I could visit with Aunt Aileen & Uncle Jon for a while. Again, more black & gold everywhere...all the employees at the pancake house were dressed for the Steelers, almost all the customers dressed for the Steelers, I multitasked with my Penguins jersey over a Steelers shirt since the Pens had a game earlier in the day than the Super Bowl, hahahaha...Pittsburgh is a wonderful place to be during sports season.

Gametime was going to be spent at Will's friend Donna's house, which was thankfully in walking distance from Will's. Quite nice for us because Will and I went to Donna's armed with a cooler of beer. I had in my mug a nice serving of limoncello, which is like lemonhead candy for adults, in liquid form, hahahaha...yummy AND festive!
Karen and Alicia good-naturedly accompanied us, which was quite nice!

The sight of Donna's house, both inside and out, made me giddy....Steelers stuff everywhere! I think I just may need to have my wake here someday; they can just lay out my dead carcass on the couch, heeheehee....I got to meet all of Donna's brood. They are the kind of people that you can meet and suddenly you have some lifelong friends. The kind of hard working, kindhearted decent people that are so representative of the population in Pittsburgh. Real, caring people, and they so graciously opened their home and hearts to me. What a blessing to know people like this! I could not have found a better place to watch the Super Bowl than here, and could not have found better people. Pittsburgh is a special place full of special people.






I had such a wonderful time that night that it took the sting off a Steelers loss. I did, however, mentally put football away in my mind before I could get too bummed out about the final score, but truth be told, my boys played like crap and deserved to lose, as painful as that is to admit. But we'll be back next year. I believe in my Steelers, always.