Why I Will NEVER Get Bored in Life...There's So Much Yet To Do

If this were a school morning, as opposed to a teacher workday/student holiday, I would not have 6 guys already up. It just doesn't work like that.

Paloma is spiraling badly, she viciously threw Nando across the family room yesterday, refused to let Tabby sit anywhere near Grandma, my mom looking at me in shock. Who acts like that? What can I do about it? "That's assault," I again hissed at her, she roaring back with her eyes blazing and bugged out, "I don't CARE!," scaring the tar out of me for her future.

She's refused showers for over a week, getting teased at school, my own kids say nothing at all to her, knowing her retaliatory ways, such as several times when she's wickedly cut up Mayra's clothes, there's no reasoning with her at all. She's very disturbed, and it's sad. Simply sad.

I've done this long enough, lived with severely mentally ill children, to know there's so little hope for either change or improvement. I'm relieved not to be living with Pepe, her birth brother, who'd cut computer wires, or Nintendo wires, in retaliation whenever he felt like it. Or Joey, who'd break things on purpose just to see dismay cross my face. Y'all, this isn't normal.

I recycle milk jugs, yet my feeble simple efforts are counteracted by blatant vandalism, further frustrating me.

How does one prevent those behaviors? If I consequence him, there's worse results. How do I force Paloma to shower? It can't be done. This is a control issue on her part, there's no understanding that she could also conversely control people to like her, rather than force folks to avoid her.

She needs psychiatric hospitalization, and I see so little hope in sight.

I could call the deputies, press assault charges, but we're treated like it's a minor family skirmish, rather than a major impending problem. I've been conditioned now, haven't I? This is a battered family syndrome.

JoJo tossed a pair of scissors at a kid in school, "no intended malice," reads the referral, rather this just illustrates his utter lack of impulse control, he's suspended all next week as a result. "Now that I'm almost 13, am I allowed to touch a kitchen knife?" he recently asked me.

"Heck no," I'd responded, knowing he'd sling it, carve in a kitchen table, or otherwise use it destructively, without even thinking about his actions, that's how he's wired. He's way better now with his medications, even he's remarked about it, but he has a long way to go yet.

JoJo is not emotionally ill, just troubled. There's a major difference. He'll likely make me crazy, yet there's a lot of hope for his own future.

Facbook has dredged up about a thousand regrets for me, as I've been in contact with so many folks from my past, so far in the past that I was childless at the time. They've all gone on to have exciting adventures, and I feel left in the dust a bit. Constrained mightily by the issues and challenges here, all of my own choice, I never ever want to imply that my life was forced upon me. I made every single decision and I made it all happen...therefore I will see it through to completion and remind myself that I was called...all this other stuff is illustrated temptations. Duh.

I am thrilled still, after all these years, to be a garden freak, to be obsessed and consumed by my soil, and my food production efforts. I know that the ills of society would've swept me up in some form or another, mainstream mall shopping and abject consumerism turns me off, I'd watched this video with utter fascination yesterday, our society is terminally ill, our wanton wastefulness is inexcusable. A great review by a Quaker preacher found here.

I'm telling ya, us complacent Christians can be the worst advertisements for God, maybe a strident one like me even more frightening, yet my soul calls out for problems to be solved somehow, for me to do what I can, wherever I can make a difference, in all the problems that I see on earth.

We Americans are throwing away about 100 million pounds of food each year while other folks are starving.

Do you really think we won't be held accountable on Judgement Day for this?

I think we will, and that behooves me to do something about it.

Here's the movie trailer, tell me it didn't stir something in you....