YOUR story of "it hit the fan ... but then got better" (Page 2)

kraut_fan - 2011-03-31 12:32 PM IGNORE SPELLING AND GRAMMER!! I have not told my story but this thread is almost the best place to let it all out.... 

Tears in my eyes. I am happy for you. Genuinely.

Edited to remove your entire post that I copied into my post...

It's possible. (I like the angel idea, but yes, it's possible). Oceanside (like all 70.3s, I think) has rules against outside assistance, and that includes people who have finished the course. (An exception is made for the last-place finisher, with whom the entire last aid station runs in up to the finishing chute). But it's possible that, for some reason, he was wandering around that part of the course, saw me and felt sorry for me, and decided to run with me a ways. My state of mind could certainly account for not remembering him come or go, and that would explain why he wasn't wearing a bib (anymore). I *think* his name was Mike (could've been Mark) but there would be a gazillion of those in earlier results ... and maybe even a half-gazillion of them in black-and-white kit (believe me, I looked at the Oceanside pics, too, at least for quite a few places up).

I don't know. I just know that "it" had hit the fan for me in that race, and Mike-whoever made an enormous difference.

Yeah, their birthday is a pretty special day and they are pretty special boys!!  (Of course I am biased.)

That would be a {{{PIGLET PRESS}}}.

Why, thank you.

By 1994 the *it hit the fan...the greatest band in the history of rock was disintegrating.  GNR was imploding.

I was sad.

Slowly, but surely...Axl Rose rebuilt the band.  He had a vision.  That vision began with the album Chinese Democracy, a true labor of love.  Record execs, managers, even so-called fans pressured Axl to compromise his vision.  Axl didn't cave.  $100 million was waved in his face to do a cash-grab reunion tour and album.  Axl didn't buckle...and never will.  

(This I Love will always make me misty-eyed)

http://vimeo.com/15655732  

1990, right before Christmas....I get the phone call from a friend who did volunteer work at a crisis pregnancy center that she knows of an infant that might be available for adoption.  I had not shared with this individual anything about my struggles with infertility.  She had seen me hold someone else's baby in church one day and KNEW. 

We met with a lawyer, it all looked good.  A few days later we are borrowing cribs and the whole bit.  We had been told she wanted to work through the agency and not go private, we were doing all we could to get approved through the agency. 

A couple days later she signed the baby out of foster care and takes him home.  I was devastated.  Mourned as if I had physically miscarried.

This was just part of the unravelling that would happen in my life.  Over the next year my marriage completely fell apart. I walked out on him in the spring of 1991.

He was killed in a car accident in August 1991.

I started dating a few months later, having spent so much of my "marriage" mourning the marriage that never really worked on many levels. 

I got engaged to my husband in April of 1992 and we married May 1993.  So much for infertility, I was pregnant with my first child within the first 3 months.  She was 9 months old when I got pregnant with the second one.    (if I had a nickel for every time I was aksed if they were twins I would not sweat college tuition which is soon looming!)

Shyte happens....for a reason.  Sometimes we find out why after the fact.....sometimes we never know why.  But we grow in the process and become stronger-hopefully better people for having gone under fire.

Wow - these stories are so emotional I even turned off my T.V.! Really needed this tonight too. Sometimes the trials and tribulations of every day life seem to be bigger than they really are. This thread is a real wake up call for me.

I've got a couple. I could tell the one where my Dad was knocking on deaths door in the hospital for 6 weeks. The doctors could not figure out how to regulate his heart. That was 3 years ago. He recovered and has taken my mom on a cruise to Alaska.

I could tell the one when we were waiting to adopt a baby and the birth mothers kept changing their minds. The forth time it stuck and it was my birthday Now every year on my birthday my son reminds me how he was my best birthday present ever.

I could tell the one when my daughter had a seizure and turned blue. We thought she was literally dying in our arms while we were helpless. The next day you would have never known she was even sick.

Here is a story I am really not proud of though. And it is something minor compared to those other life events. I like to call it The Birthday I hit the Fan. Let me set the stage for you. I am trying to get ready for my kids birthday parties. I am already sulking about being the one to have to do all the planning, all the buying of treats, scheduling the date for the pool parry, organizing all the family etc. while hubby just has to show up. So, I've already got a chip on my shoulder. I'm not saying that is O.K. it's just what I was feeling.

Now, the day before the party my MIL wants to have everyone over to her house for dinner. I still need to make 2 cakes. I just decide to do it at her house. I really did not think this through very well at all. My MIL lives for the kitchen, always gives us kitchen gadgets for gifts, pots, pans, mixers, spatulas. I've got more kitchen crap than I have space to put it. Baking in her kitchen was not the best idea. Anyway, I start to make the cakes and she is correcting me the whole time. It is a box mix, this is not rocket science you know? I just go with the flow. Son wants a horse cake so now I have to use a template and try to cut the cake like a horse while MIL is correcting me and husband is sitting on the recliner blocking out life. This is all stressing me out a little bit because I don't really like to bake and now more family is coming over giving me more "input" about cake baking but I just keep at it.

Next thing I know I hear people laughing because my son has started playing in the mud a little. I say go tell his dad. I'm trying to ice the cake by this time and decorate it to look like a horse while  at the same time baking another butterfly cake for my daughter and remember that I already had a chip on shoulder before I even started. Did I mention that I don't like to cook?

Anyway, next I hear Gabe is in the mud up to his ankles. Go tell his dad I say. Now Gabe is in the mud up to his knees. Go tell his dad I say. You see where this is going. Pretty soon my son is covered in mud from head to toe, I am covered in icing with way too many hens in the kitchen telling me what to do, my daughter starts having a major screaming fit right about this time and my dear husband has been sitting in the recliner the entire time acting like he has no children at all!! POOF - this is where I blow my top. In a house full of his aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters I march into the living room and SCREAM at my husband to get off his rear end and help me. And I mean I screamed. He gets mad and says something about not appreciating my tone and that just really set me off even more so I screamed again that I didn't really care if he liked my tone at all. That I didn't like having to do everything while he sat there watching TV! Whew, not my finest moment for sure.

Why is this relevant you ask? Because from this horribly embarrassing moment I can actually reflect, learn and do things very different. This year we had the party at home, I bought the cakes from the store. I nicely asked my husband ahead of time if he would take care of ordering fried chicken (so I didn't have to cook). He also did the grocery shopping for the party this year.  I will never forget that birthday and I will never make those same mistakes again. See, it got better!

So... I have held back in sharing my "story" because it's complicated, it doesn't compute to me anymore, and it all ended up fine in the end. So, I will give you the very very condensed version.

This was my life for 10 years.

Without sounding melodramatic, I fell in love with a man that made me feel inadequate, small, and incompetent. I couldn't leave. We married. I still couldn't leave. He controlled most everything I did and criticized my every move. I couldn't take the garbage out in a way that met his expectations. But that didn't mean I didn't try. Over and over and over and over.

I started training for triathlons as a way to get him to "notice" me. And a way to make him see that I was actually good for something... and maybe good AT something. He was not impressed. He didn't care, and even though he encouraged me to "get a hobby" and "stop following him around like a dog" my interests were not interesting enough to garner his support.

The story is long, and at times terrible, but after 6 years of dating and 3 years 10 months and 18 days of marriage, we got divorced.

And life has been effortless ever since.

If you or someone you know is in a verbally, emotionally or physically abusive relationship... please pass this link along...

YOU ARE NOT CRAZY.

Powerful.  Thank you for sharing, Whizzzzz.

firstnet911 - 2011-04-01 11:58 AM Let me know if the sun rises tomorrow...

HOLY CANNOLI IT DID!!!

How did you know?

You and Amy ... saving my spirits, making my life better no matter how difficult yours are, you hooligans you.

BIG FAT {{{MELON PRESS}}}