August 23, 2007

• Regardless of the outrageous taxes and fees currently being foisted off on unsuspecting travellers I’m looking forward to going home.  I’m a bit nervous, why I have no idea, but I know we will have a terrific time.  Bear can go out on Greers Ferry Lake and fish all day and night if that’s what he wants.  I’ll get to meet my best friends grand-daughter that was born while we were here. We can start all kinds of home improvement projects while were there and now that we have a house manager we know they will be completed and done right.  Bear said I could see all three of my sisters and as many nephews as I want. ( I have 5 and they have a ton of kids )  It sounds as though he might be bribing me to go to the midwest and see all of them too, but the reality is this. We have decided that when we go up there we are going to go to his moms’ house and if they want to see us then they have to go there.  I hope we see my MIL and FIL, I love those two, I could not have gotten luckier in my mom in law and Wib is just a terrific guy no matter how you slice it, so noisy and energetic. Always raring to go, even at almost 89.  

  I have decided I will not let his sisters stop us from seeing mom and Wib. It would be criminally isane of me and a real crappy thing to do to my honey.  I’m sure that his sisters are lovely people with lovely families but they don’t know us and just because we choose to live away from farming does not makes us aliens from space.  I know that Bear and the choices he’s made baffle them and I know that he hasn’t really given them a chance to get to know who he is because he left, but you would think that both of his sisters would know he is not the same guy that left Iowa 28 years ago and that they would quit judging him by the things he did that long ago and quit bringing it up.  The other thing that bugs the heck out of me is they both insist on giving a person by person update on everyone they went to high school with and yet don’t ask or want to hear about the here and now of our lives. They just want to talk about what so and so is doing.  It makes me want to say, do you have any interest at all in what we’ve been doing for the past three years?  I know the answer already and it’s not really, not in any depth.  I would also like his younger sister to quit trying to get us to farm with them, it’s a lovely offer really.  They have a house we could move into and Bear would be our brother-in-laws farm hand.  I wonder if she realizes he already has a career that he’s been doing since 1979. Oh wait, it’s not an approved career and it took him away from Iowa so it can’t possibly be as stable and secure.  After all he’s probably been trying to get back to Iowa all these years  and just hasn’t had the right offer.  

  What they don’t want to hear and what he has told them before is this, he wanted to leave when he was about 15 or 16. It took a bit longer than that and he made a sheer mess out of things when he did leave but he’s never changed his mind and what they won’t hear is that he has no desire to ever move back.   Long before he ever met me, back when he was a teenager, he used to listen to a radio program out of Little Rock called Beaker Street with a DJ named Clyde Clifford. That’s when he first thought about moving South and when people ask him where he’s from he says “I’m Northern by birth and Southern by choice.”  I figure even if he hadn’t met and married me he would have ended up somewhere in the South, it’s just where he was meant to be.  It’s where his heart is, as well as our home.  We raised our children there, our friends are there and when we go home in Oct for a visit and when we go home permanetly, that is where we’re going.   We love to travel, as all of you know, but when it comes down to it home is where the heart is and ours is in Arkansas. 

  So we will go see his mom and Wib and we will have a lovely time while we are in Minnesota, we always do, but this time we aren’t going to go to Iowa. We are going nowhere near where either one of his sisters live and if they want to see us they can get in the car and drive the hour or so and come and visit for the day. I’m not going to either one of their houses anymore.  I’m putting my foot down. Until they both make the trip south and see where we’ve lived for the past 17 years or so I won’t be going to their houses. Naturally I don’t expect them to come while we are there for such a short time in October but when we get home permanetly I don’t think it will be to much to ask. 

  P.S. Even Barry’s ex wife and husband AND her sister and her kids have been to our house. One year they all came down on our anniversary and we all went camping for three days.  How’s that for welcoming.  rofl.  It just baffles me how his sisters could never have wanted to come to our house. Actually what I think I find baffling is the lack of closeness they feel and the apparant lack of real interest they have in his well being and his life.

  • 10:04 am
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