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Sunday, August 18, 2019

A Real Shit Pit!..........property of Julianna Rowe


Okay… so this little outhouse has been on the “Funny Farm” (the crazy place I grew up) for sixty years plus...  I used it!!  In fact when I was in high school this is all we had besides a five gallon bucket with a board across it for balance and might I add COMFORT! GAWD. This was for a mid-night emergency which was truly awful not to mention we had no running water for baths either.  Oh but hey…..we had a pump fifty foot from the house to prime the COLD water (in winter time too….) and I think a stove to heat lil’ bits of said freezing water to be placed in an aluminum cow tank on an open NOT PRIVATE porch for bathing.  I have no proper words to offer regarding this!!  !  Can you imagine??  Me either, yet the memories remember! 


Over the years, that means after we built in normal bathrooms with bathtubs and flushing toilets things were better but the Outhouse remained.  Everyone who ever used the outdoor privy (who was privileged to!!) signed in or autographed the inner walls of which I was afraid to open the door to take a pic of in case....... SNAKES??   Not to mention the darn thing might have taken a dive on me literally.  Or me taken a dive in…..eewwww

I don't like shit pits (Outhouse’s or Life Shit Pits!) as you all know from previous blogs. 
And holding it up with ONE pole is likened to what I have to do in life mentally. 

 But what would I do if I really needed to use that privy outhouse?  Probably I’d feel quite privileged not to have to use the ditch or yard? Would I chance the poles giving way? What if no one was home? Oh shit!

I love puns or whatever you call that one. 

Friday, August 16, 2019

Chapter Eight: Lost/The Car Man...............property of Julianna Rowe


Hello, My name is Katerina and I have a hell of a story to tell.

Many people have a difficult / abusive childhood and come out fine. Others do not. 
I have a truth I stand by and always will that CELLS have memories and "faces."  Science has proven the cells of our grandparents remain in the womb for generations.  In fact the Bible states THREE Generations for sure.  I am one of many on the receiving end of some unpleasant womb cells from the inhabitants of the Mansion Crestview. Do realize Crestview was only one side of the generational cellular womb transfers but needless to say the worst!  I am also a firm believer we cannot blame someone for their mistakes if they didn't have the wisdom to do anything different.  I cannot condemn or judge others for I have lived with the lack of wisdom that might have changed my life choices. And yes I have an average 109 IQ.  

Chapter Nine:    Lost / The Car Man 

Webster says:  LOST:
Parted with; no longer held or possessed; as in an unsuccessful contest or as a penalty; thrown away; having wondered from the way; perplexed; bewildered; hardened beyond sensibility; alienated; lost to shame; in theology - doomed to misery in a future state.    (Loss- The misfortune of having something taken away from us.)

And LOST I was. Each time I tried to make our lives better life took us backwards three more steps at least.  I had an unrealistic belief I would find a job even though I had no skills to make enough money for another apartment for Richie, Robbie, and I. Yet I knew deep down there was no way to physically get them back.  This time in my life was one of the worst. Defeated.

I had custody of Richie and Robbie but each time I would ask the authorities for help they would tell me there was nothing they could do because legally I had custody.  It was likened to a domestic dispute. Police wouldn’t get involved and lawyer’s told me the same thing, probably because I had no monies for them to do anything different. I may not have pursued far enough, I do not know. I do know the years and use of negative words led to my mental condition called worthlessness. I was told over and over by mother I didn’t have money or the means to care for my children. The exact same thing my Grandfather said to his daughters to steal a child from each of them.  They say the brain believes what it is told and I was living proof.  

I would try to visit Richie and Robbie but was turned away.  I wasn’t allowed to take them for ice cream or a movie or spend the night with them.  If I tried to physically remove them I was beat on the head with fists.  I was overpowered physically and mentally so I stopped going to see my boys.  In my mind I thought it worse for them to see the physical and emotional fighting……. so I went away.  I unknowingly fell directly into the hollows of the past and the haunting walls of Crestview. There I lay at my enemy’s feet without a damn clue.  I was LOST!

That is when disassociation kicked in.   I felt powerless and helpless to do anything to change the situation.  When a person disassociates from the here and now it’s avoidance to be able to cope with a traumatic event.  And so I did and unconsciously still do at times.  I had childhood trauma and it was being passed on to my children.  The damn demons of Crestview struck again and again and again.
I received no great whooshing crescendo of truth from anywhere.  No window opened with bright lights of wisdom.  Nope. I had failed my children and I on a colossal level and I silently realized it.  I was living life blind and it would continue presenting me with four more years of hell.

I owned a horrible but hilarious broken down Nash Rambler  that got me to and from work.  I found a job at a hotel twenty miles from our tobacco raising home town in Virginia.  God I hated that smell and those sticky leaves. Working at the hotel as a desk clerk brought forth new people into my life, mostly men although I did not partake in the bedfellows as much as they tried and they did try.   I was always on guard, rarely able to be authentic.  Until I met “The Car Man” I shall call him. 

I had moved out from traitor Grandma Heiny who had turned me over to the wolves and moved to another city with one of the clerks from the hotel.  She was wild and crazy which made up for my conservative nature although I did have an amazing sense of humor that surfaced from somewhere in the trauma infested dark forest of my mind.  My God given humor may have saved my life or it may have hastened the time frame of its healing and strengthening.  I will never know.

Back to “The Car Man.”  Nice looking lad for sure.  The George Clooney of those there times!  God he was beautiful and he thought I was too.  There you have it! Two beauts liking the others beauty but where would that get anyone!  No where’s ville.  That being said, he became a good friend.  In fact he gave me a nice Mercedes convertible to use for as long as I needed.  


Good thing because I could see the highway beneath my feet of the rusted out floorboard of that old Nash Rambler and when I turned a corner to the right the driver’s side door would fling itself all the way out and about….hit the front fender and fly back.  If I didn’t catch it on the backside it would start that embarrassing and dangerous mess all over again.   

Dwayne changed my life because he helped change how I saw myself.  It was one of the first times a man didn’t use me as a trophy on his arm of life or for a wanted home for hairy!  Heck if I had lain with every man people thought or said I did I would have been the dang town pin cushion. I was thought of that way anyway.  Made me so sad and still does.  No one thought the ugly girl did the ugly with darn near every man in town and she probably did whoever she is!! Not that I was a saint for there are more crazy stories coming before I finally found the courage and a way to get my children back…..

Dwayne would be the person that literally saved my life about a year or so later from a gunman holding me hostage in Las Vegas.  He was and still is a nonjudgmental pleasant  memory of mine.




Sunday, August 11, 2019

The Marvelous Memory of the Maple Creme Egg..................

The Marvelous Memory of the Maple Creme Egg......by Diane Ogden

Who cares huh?  When I was a child I loved maple anything.  Maple syrup, maple cookies, and I stabbed the bottom of every piece of chocolate in the huge box at Christmas with a knife until I found the maple piece.  After a few years I learned it was always the round one with one swirl almost full circle but not quite.  I loved maple frosting, maple ice cream, maple candy drops, maple flavored hickory smoked bacon, maple oatmeal, maple flavored brussell sprouts, and lollipops!   The chocolate cake with maple flavored fluffy frosting was the killer deal. And of course the maple cream Easter egg. I quit eating all that sugary maple many years ago, and then something happened to me today. Maybe it was a maple demon.
I had to run to the Walgreen's for some plastic jugged water and some tummy pills.  Change of season always messes with a touchy tummy.  Back to my point.  There it was, at least a hundred Russell Stover Cream Eggs spread out over a half of isle 3, third shelf up right at eye level.  Didn't even need to bend over.  Wont be able to bend over if I don't stay away from said isle.  I scanned each little box searching for the word maple.  I found butter creme, peanut butter creme, coconut, vanilla, peach, lemon, orange, chocolate, and finally  ("drum roll please") there it lay among thirty other ones.  I just stared at them in awe thinking don't do it, don't do it.  Of course I was going to do it!  I didn't scan the entire length of that shelf for nothing.  It was a lousy memory that caused this moment of weakness or the maple demon. I reached into the box and took one out.  Then I took out another one.  That = two!  I told myself I would take one bite and put it away when I got outside and into my car.  But what I really did was eat the whole thing before I got out the driveway and up to the first light.  I tried to savor it and move it around my taste buds for a long time but it didn't work.  My brain went into maple overdrive and it was history.  Do recall I have another one!  I truly doubt I will enter the Walgreen's again until after Easter because I am a maple flavored failure. I will say since the last Maple flavored Russell Stover Creme egg I ate, which was twenty some plus years ago.......Mr Stover has changed the consistency of the maple creme.  It is now filled with air.  It is spongy and thin.  Used to be thick and creamy.  Not so much no more.  Wonder if that means it has less killer calories and may not clog my heart arteries!  Right! The good news:  I enjoyed the heck out of that spongy maple air thing.
So Be Happy, Be Well, and Be Safe until we meet again.  And if we don't, you'll know what happened.  (I am not going to have a maple flavored heart attack) Just kidding

Monday, August 5, 2019

No Chapter: ..............."Only God and Me are My Rule Makers!"..............by Julianna Rowe

Katerina's non existent Chapter:   .....Only God and Me are My Rule Makers!


Before I continue with Katerina’s story I need to address an issue regarding what I write:   My imagination, my anxiety level, my fears, my mind, allow no one else to interfere because no one is my “Rule Maker but God and me!”  If I write something you do not care for, do not enter into my blog space for much of what I write comes from factual happenings that I embellish or imagine.  Or do I?  If I write it in a manner you believe then I am doing what I set out to do:  WRITE believable FICTION!  Using my own and others life stories is what I do. It is no different than what a stand-up comedian does only this may be the reverse of that.  Maybe I could try to add some comedy to the shit Katerina went through in her life or maybe not. Maybe its all true and maybe it is not. I set out to hurt no one's feelings.

  
Life lessons come with pain and hiding the pain makes no sense to me. Been there done that.

I was thinking about the woman who wrote “Fifty Shades of Gray” of course not comparing Katerina’s life story to Anastasia Steele and or Christian Grey’s! God forbid had I done that in my children’s eyes yet not to say I couldn't.  And bless the woman’s retirement fund that did write “Fifty Shades of Gray” despite her children and or Grandchildren’s opinions.  Hell they weren’t going to take care of her in her old age, or send her on a magnificent trip to Europe or fulfill her BUCKET LIST.  She is/was on her own.  Whether Katerina is a dear friend, a daughter, an aunt, a Grandmother, or me, is no one’s business.  Read it, weep, and or learn from it, for learning doesn’t end in the classroom, we are on this earth, for our intellectual and SPIRITUAL development.  Hopefully we don’t simply die and turn to dust. 

I shall shake the guilt I was raised with and no longer be vulnerable to manipulations from anyone regarding my writing.  

Thursday, August 1, 2019

Chapter Six: Dr. Pig.......property of Julianna Rowe



I must backtrack a few years for you to understand my next error in judgment.  Some would say it was an excuse.  Nope…. How can a person excuse themselves for something they do or did not know they were doing? It takes time to evolve. Sadly some need to learn through life's hard knocks. Do I wish I had been able to rise above my raising?  Sure. But the cells needed were not there so the Universe has to use Plan C.  

CHAPTER SIX:   Dr. Pig  

            My father bought me a horse when I was fifteen years old.  I feel bad I can't recall her name.  She was a lazy stocky pinto, but for someone who had never ridden horses….. lazy was good.   That is until one day while riding/walking down the old farm lane toward the barn she spooked and bolted. My skinny friend and I were riding double bareback.  She flew off the rear and landed like a feather.  Not me, as usual in life I hung on while sliding sideways down around her neck while continuing to hang onto her face halter. So....  she kicked me to get me off her face!   I fell a mere two feet, but somehow those two feet fractured my left arm and it swelled like angry storm waters in a raging river. 




            The local Dr. Pig we will call him tended to the arm all the while having dishonorable advances  towards me.  Back to my Grandfather's relative in Colorado right? My God I was only sixteen years old. During my physical therapy he began making more advances. Massaging my arm up to and under my arm obviously close to my breasts.  I was so frightened not to mention frozen I never returned to his office for years.  As well as I never completed the healing therapy of my arm he was in charge of. You see back then Physical Therapy was at your local GP's office.

            He never gave up!  I re-connected with him years later as a physician during the abusive phase of my marriage to Ronnie Lee.  Dr. Pig had a great bedside manner, especially if he thought he could get you in it and he eventually did.  He used the horrible situation I was in to use me.  I felt somewhat important seeing the infamous local surgeon even if it was behind closed doors. A far "cry" from where I had been and was. Where else was I to get uplifted kudo's? My family? My husband? His family? NOT! So the Pig and and I had a quiet affair for some time.  He told me all his troubles and vice versa. How sad when I look back to see my lack of ability to see reality. At least I didn't have to deal with a Procto!!

            I was hospitalized twice by him.  Once for pneumonia and later in life for the embarrassing hemorrhoidectomy. I must laugh at that one.  Until the time my father was hospitalized with a life threatening condition.  I felt it was my KARMA and feared my father would die because of my sin. But no, Dr. Pig saved his life right there in little town USA hospital with all its/our secrets.

            Somewhere inside my mind I knew he had more problems than I did.  But in retrospect I realize he had started his sick mental take down of me years previously when I was sixteen.  One of those conquest things in certain  men.  Again, I did what was expected of me…..although my pay off was believing I was bettering myself when in reality I was digging another hole I’d have to deal with at some point in time, probably still do somewhere on the CD of life inside my head that no one sees or dreams or feels but me.  He was a band aide for an open wound in my life.  As a professional, he could and should have tried to set me on an uphill course rather than push me further down the destructive rabbit hole I had already set in motion or was born into?? Heck I wasn’t just falling I was on a collision course.  I guess I was ready made for him.  I was looking for an external answer to an internal problem.  I never stopped trying to make that method work for many years.

            Dr. Pig moved from his little town shrine and remains an excellent unhappy surgeon who never figured life out.  From what I heard via the grapevine of facebook, he was a cruel husband to his new wife.  Least I missed that bullet!

            I continued with Ronnie Lee for a time and to my knowledge no one ever knew about the doctor and the young girl who didn’t know her potential.  In my later years when I visit the old small town the old folks look at me and smile a smile of somewhat understanding. Maturity has a way of showing us our true connection with one another even when it seems too late to use it in ways more beneficial to our lives.  Possibly it is a step towards the level we will live in our next life beyond. I can only hope and believe.

            Ronnie Lee was having affair after affair.  I had caught him many times but I didn’t leave.  I was on a mission. 

            One of his affairs was with the woman who lived behind us. One day I was doing dishes looking out the window and saw them throwing crab apples at each other and giggling like children. Couldn't get more obvious than that. He would play with her little boy and take him in the truck he drove for a living but leave his own son Robbie behind.  Robbie was rejected many times by his father in his tender years and shot at with a gun in his teen years. Yes by his father.

            Ronnie Lee was not a well person mentally or physically but then I had my emotional curses going on also.  Ronnie Lee had a bleeding ulcer so he said.  One time while drunk and after he had hit me several times he was on his knees crying for sympathy. He said he had thrown up blood…. so I called 9 1 1.   I knew he was simply trying to get out of how abusive he had been that day.  Our family doctor, not Dr. Pig.... knew how he treated me and figured he was lying about the blood because he needed redemption for hitting me the day before. 

Doc said, “Let’s see how sick he really is?”

He ordered tubes for every orifice of Ronnie's body.  I was thrilled.  I guess I thought it might make a difference but of course it did not.   From somewhere in the depths of my mind I had made another bad decision.  Not to leave him but to get pregnant once more and then leave.  This was my new mission.  What was I thinking?  I will tell you.  I had a notion that Robbie, my first borne, needed a brother or sister.  I believed Robbie shouldn’t be alone in this world and if anything happened to me he would have blood family.  So I enticed Ronnie Lee.... and got pregnant.  He said the child wasn’t his, but of course it was.  Ronnie was also a pathological liar therefore he believed everything he said.  He was also diagnosed a sociopath.  I was carefully making plans to leave as his behavior was becoming more destructive and I was terrified of him.  I recall one day he asked me to sit in the driver’s seat of our car while he did something to repair the engine.  Hood up and me behind the wheel in the driveway.  I wanted to kill him.  The only time I ever wanted to seriously kill anyone.  All I had to do is step on the gas and run over him but I did not.  I did leave him and go back to the frying pan farm with my parents.  They were not my favorite people but “it “was all I had.

    Since Robbie's birth my mother became even more controlling telling me everything I did wrong for or with him.  No I didn’t, I loved that little boy with all my heart.  He was the cutest and sweetest boy in the world to me.  My mother would complain I dressed him wrong and would physically take him away from me.  I couldn’t do anything right according to her.  She was cruel and there I was living with her and expecting another child.

One day Ronnie Lee called the farm and wanted to talk to me. I said, fine…..so Mother and Dad reluctantly dropped me off at a friend of ours home where Ronnie Lee was waiting.  My Dad did not feel comfortable with this situation but I told him I would be fine.  They drove away and I went inside.  There was another man there who owned the house but when I came in he left the room for the kitchen to give us privacy.....or so I thought.  That is when Ronnie Lee began to beat me up even though I was seven months pregnant.  He kicked me in the stomach and threw me all around the room.  I remember being more terrified than I had ever been. I realized he was going to kill me so he didn't have to pay for another "kid."  
  
I loved that baby inside me.  The man that owned the home would not help me even though I cried out for help.  He hid himself and watched the beating of the pregnant woman. I prayed as hard as I have ever prayed for my parents to come back.  And they did!! I have no idea why they did but they did.  I suspect it was my father’s intuition.  My Father and I have spiritual sensing and it paid off.  When Ronnie Lee saw my parent’s return and pull up in front of the house, he ran out the back door like a scared rabbit.  Dad told me he just had a feeling and I thank God for that GUIDE or ANGEL messenger who got through the veil to my dad. 
 
I divorced the bastard in 1972.  I was in my early twenties living back at the funny farm with one four year old and expecting another.  It was life nightmare number twenty-two plus I developed severe anxiety making it difficult to breathe. The stress was unbelievable.  Mother had taken over completely with Robbie and her perfectionism and narcissism were horrible to live around.  Dad just mumbled and went about his business outside.

My ninth month pregnant I decided to ride my bike into town thinking I would go into labor and get it over with.   It was very hot and I was about half way to town when I realized I had made a dangerous mistake that could hurt my baby and me.    Thank God again because along came my dad in his old blue truck because he was worried about me.  He put my bike in the back and me in the front and we went home, no words spoken.

My parents were hosting a party a day or two after the bicycle incident.  The gathering was  about advertising the program and products of a multi-level marketing company mother had signed up with.  Something like Shaklee I think.   

My luck….I went into labor around seven p.m.   I was in the upstairs bedroom deciding to wait until the contractions were good and strong. Darned if I was going to go sit at that hospital all night again like the last time. Enema's, poking, prodding, and aloneness!  By the time anyone came up and noticed I was really in labor meaning seven centimeters dilated.   Mother drove me to the local hospital, dropped me off and went back to her party.

A nurse named Mrs. Schumann  spent the entire night with me.   She was the mother of a very nice boy I graduated with named Jimmy Don.   I will never forget her.  No one ever did anything nice for me like she did.  I mean Auntie brought me nice used clothes…. I can’t think of anything else even though I am sure there were more decent memories.

I was in the delivery room with Dr. Reiner who had just informed me the baby’s head was crowning when I decided to QUIT and mentally fell apart. I told Dr. Reiner I couldn’t do it….I had an awful life, no way to care for my baby, my poor babies.  Old Doc Reiner left the crowning baby, walked up and stood near my head, bent over and asked me if I wanted to give my baby away.

 I said, “No.”

He said, “Then let’s do this, you can do this!”   

 He continued cheering me on like I was his favorite football team.   And so I did.   Richard (Richie) was born that night with me and the Doc and his nurses.   I loved Richie so much.   He was six pounds thirteen ounces with black hair and blue eyes.  He was a gentle baby and is a gentle man.   
           


Wednesday, July 3, 2019


                    PART I
                     
               ABANDONED

To forsake as a hopeless enterprise:   To dessert:
                                                          
Abandonment is cold as the icy winds of the tallest mountain, 
and as lonely and frightening as the descent among a storm.


A child that is abandoned at birth……or before

A wife that gives her all only to be left with nothing

A family pet left at the shelter they call humane…….

A man thirty years doing his job…fired……

A country devastated by terrorists…..no help in sight

A Mother praying for her child’s life……no answer

A lie….lived out many generations ……   CRESTVIEW


Tuesday, July 2, 2019

"The Edge of Crestview....." A Novel and property of Julianna Rowe


I will be sharing daily or every few days another chapter of my new novel:  

THE EDGE OF CRESTVIEW
     by Julianna Rowe
Written:  May 11, 2000
Rewritten  October 7, 2017  and again 2019 
                                                                                                                                                      Introduction:                                                                                                                                                                Crestview was a beautiful mansion with a back yard that cascaded down the slope of a mountain outside Los Angeles, California.  Heavy bricks acted and appeared like huge ladders as they braced the home from sliding down the hundreds foot slope.

Within its walls lived the high fashion well to do lives of people searching for the same goals and holding the same demons they passed onto me.  That invisible cloud of cells would lead me through many difficult times before I understood “their” impossible dreams had not come to fruition therefore had latched onto me, the weak child.  And when I eventually did I was able to let go of the anger, fear, and pain.  I  replaced it with pity for the very people who had haunted me with "their" delusive dreams.  Who hid their atrocious backgrounds and behavior behind the pretty walls of Crestview.   They, being the only touchable and untouchable force to put any blame on.  Yet the lie within its walls would live on even after the death of it and its people.  The force then moved on to another, then another.  The Spirit of Crestview would only die through time and the wisdom or its origin.... and of course having the willingness to learn.  My spirit led me through the pain and into the truth but not for many decades.  I found the anger, strife and horrors inside Crestview's walls evil as well as the money that covered up its sins.

It is written, "The truth shall set you free."   But before that could happen I allowed my life to be controlled and manipulated between the victim role and the rebellion it birthed in me.  Rolling back and forth from submissive and compliant to noncompliant which is simply the root of rejection.  This verbal equation would be the constant of my life for at least forty eight years.  I was taught in the midst of my trials; "When the curses are gone the blessings will flow."  I couldn't find my curses as evident as they were.  They had become a way of life.  My eyes were blinded to what they saw.  For many times vanity obscured my sight, blinding my own existence and or expectation of life.  I drew in what I was.  I attracted similar spirits and blew with the wind never being in touch with my inner person.  I was in need of balance.  The pendulum would sway and cause a wild ride of life for many years until I came to understand the victim of the Crestview generations within the swirls of my mind.  I no longer needed to rebel, yet before the wisdom came, the storms were severe.  As time moved more swiftly than I realized I began to  hear the soft inner voice of God or the Spirit.  I had a line of emotional thunderstorms that would swell up and hold their own, drowning out the wisdom from that true inner voice.  The part of me that was still somewhat detached from the rest of me was growing up, yet independent and waring with my authentic self.  That part attached to others for security and a sense of love, even though a twisted sense.  I was no longer a child, crying over everything and demanding, but rather of the teenage mentality "fairy tale princess" with no castle, fickle, and looking for an external domain rather than to my own internal spirit.  Emotions wanted to lead. And the fear of abandonment held steady its ground. When I was a little girl I'd talk to myself within myself.  I would figure things out, calm myself down, comfort myself like I was my only best friend.  That voice of comfort was my emotional voice which took over my life.  It became very hard to distinguish the real inner voice from the emotional voice because the later was always looking for an answer elsewhere.  It took many years for the emotions to catch up with the mind and join the spirit as one.  But, realize from the ugliness of the generations of pain  handed down mentally to me on a silver mental platter, came the real beauty.  When this takes place, there is no limit to what we can do with our lives.  I am proud I can now hear from the inner spirit allowing me the opportunity to relay this wild ride in the form of a novel. 

My Executive Order $$$$$$$$$$.......... by Julianna Rowe

  My Executive Order J$$$$$$$$$$ .......by Julianna Rowe Somewhere along the way, politics changed my signature. I realize that sounds like ...