facebook

okay, most of us have a past, some of us have a much longer past than others...mine is pretty long. i recently signed up on facebook, thinking maybe i would run into someone from the past. when you put things in facebook the system somehow figures out by your age or where you're from, or maybe something you say, who you might be friends with. one night i'm checking out the friends list, and lo and behold, there's a name from the very distant past. so i write on her wall 'are you the 'Jane Doe' who lived on Prospect Place in Vista?' that was all i said. so we have been playing phone tag for days and finally tonight she caught me at home.

we met when we were 12. lots of stuff happened to us and between us. we grew apart in high school because dumb stuff happens in high school. we talked about all those people we both knew and where they are now. we talked about our kids and their kids. we talked about ex-husbands, brother and sister-in-laws, parents-in-laws. where we have lived and worked. the conversation could have gone on all night. then she told me a very touching story about my dad.

when she was 11 her older sister died. she didn't tell me how or why, just that after that her mother couldn't live in the same house, or evidently even the same state, so they moved from Pennsylvania to California in an old car pulling a small trailer. her, her mom and dad and little sister. her parents didn't know where they would live or work, they just knew they wanted to be in California. as they rolled into Vista (my home town) one foggy night, they ran out of gas next to my dad's gas station. her dad asked my dad if he knew where they might park their trailer until they found jobs and could afford to move to a trailer park. my dad let them park behind his gas station until they found jobs. she said they were only there a few days, but her dad never forgot that kindness. i teared up. i guess i shouldn't be surprised that she hadn't told me that story before, kids never want to admit to being poor or different. even though we were close for many years and she spent time at our house, she had never mentioned it, and pop probably didn't realize she was the same kid whose family he had befriended that foggy night.

i'm hoping we can get together soon and share more stories. she was a great friend. we've missed each other. strange how we sometimes just let things go. we shouldn't.

PotY2008 BB and Great Grandpa Bergman

BB greets his Great Grandpa in California for GG's 90th birthday in October '08

Winter sunset on the Potomac 1/27/09

MofM and I were totally taken by the sunset last night! After days of dark, dreary skies, snow, and ice, the sun suddenly came out at 5:30 p.m. Was almost as great as a sunset on the Pacific, but not quite...

PotD2 - my little sweetieman...BB

PotD - my little sweetieman...BB

Who's your daddy? the continuing saga update

omg!

I just got off the phone with Jane. As she was struggling to figure this whole thing out, she decided to call one of her cousins whose mother (Jane's mother's sister) is still alive. She asked her cousin to call her mother and ask her what she knows. Turns out that Jane's mother had told 'all' to this sister, and also her other sisters....and the 'all' turns out to be much more than what she thought was her half-brother knew, or at least was willing to tell Jane....her 'half-brother', it turns out, is her 'whole-brother'. Jane's mother had also carried HIM!


The couple Jane's supposed father and real mother had befriended were also having trouble conceiving, but it was the woman who had the problem. Between them they somehow decided that Jane's mother would have a second child with the neighbor immediately after Jane, and give this child to them....aye, yi yi!



Jane is now in the process of finding out if her 'brother' knows all of this as well....

PotD ....a cold, clammy place ....Alcatraz

Who's your daddy?

Here’s a story that’ll make ya think…

I’m watching one of my favorite TV shows the other night and I get a call that comes up PRIVATE on my caller ID. This could have been my best friend from Littlehood (we’ll call her Jane) or it could be the gorgeous a-hole with whom I was idiot enough to live 15 years ago, and no longer wish to have any contact with. I hesitate to answer, mainly because of the TV show, but pick it up before it goes to voicemail out of guilt.

It’s my best friend from Littlehood, Jane. She sounds a little ‘off’. Suddenly she starts bawling like a baby! I have known this girl (we’re still ‘girls’ in my head) since we were 9 years old. We were neighbors. By the time we were in our early teens she was hiding at my house half the time because her parents were assholes. Her mother was wimpy and mean, and her dad was a religious zealot. You get the picture. She has a sister, 10 years older, and even when we were little, she seemed 100 years old. In essence, it wasn’t like having a sister, just another weird, wimpy, and mean mother. My dad (Pop) loved my friend. We entertained Pop by dancing to ‘Tequila’ and putting on stupid little plays for him. By the time we were teenagers her parents hated me for no apparent reason, except that Jane liked me, and I was fun to be around. When Jane would disappear and end up at our house, Pop always covered for her. Probably a dumb thing to do, but she never stayed late, and I have no idea WHAT she told her parents.

So she’s crying so hard I can hardly understand her. Finally she slows down and tells me she has just found out that her father wasn’t her father. The funny thing here (funny weird, not funny ha ha) is the weekend before, Jane and I had been on the phone for 90 minutes and one of the MANY things we talked about AGAIN (having discussed this before at intervals) was how she must have been adopted because she has never looked like either her father or her mother (both, by the way, are now deceased). I told her I thought she looked KINDA like her mother, who at least had darker skin than her father who was a pasty white with freckles. Jane is dark enough to be half Mexican or Italian and the only one of us who was ever able to get a great tan in summer! Well, guess she was KINDA right about the adoption part.

Turns out that after having Jane’s sister her parents could not conceive another child and somehow determined it was dad that was faulty in that regard. During this period of time they lived in the outskirts of San Diego where they had some very nice neighbors. They became (quite evidently) extremely good friends with these folks. Somewhere along the line, they all decided that Jane’s mom could sleep with this handy neighbor and quite possibly conceive a second child, and she did. Jane. This would not be quite the shock if Jane’s father hadn’t been a religious zealot, but then perhaps he became a religious zealot after this occurred….who knows. Two years later, the extremely good neighbors had a son.

After the birth of the neighbor’s son, Jane’s parents decided it might be a good idea to move away from these wonderful and extremely helpful folks. They kept in touch for a few years but then the close ties faded. Imagine that?

Jane’s mom died of cancer in 1992, in Jane’s house. Yes, Jane cared for her until her dying day. Jane’s dad moved to Arkansas after that, but returned to Jane’s for a grandson’s wedding in 1998. He died of a massive stroke in Jane’s dining room the morning of the wedding. They must have hoped that Jane would never discover their little secret.

Jane’s half-brother called her last weekend. He had been searching for her since his mother died in 1994 at the age of 93. At her deathbed, she had revealed the long-held secret to her only son.

When Jane finally stopped crying, and we talked for an hour, she realized this was a blessing in disguise. She has a brother, and a whole new set of nieces and nephews, etc. She’d always wanted a brother. We compared pictures of them and it is uncanny how much they look alike. I think now she’s crying for happy, not shock.

My guess is that stuff like this has always gone on. It’s likely rare it gets discovered.

PsotD Obama, Obama, Obama

I decided not to go to the Inauguration today because unless you had a ticket you ended up in the Potomac, or nearly. So....I took pictures on my TV, which if I had HD may have been a bit clearer... and I did want to see all of the goings on. Also, you had to choose between the parade or the Inauguration Address...clearly, I wanted to see both!


This pic is of our new Pres giving his Inaugural Address, with his normal awesome mix of words.

















Next, the Bushes (?) leave Washington, and the Obamas send them off. (I'm not saying it was happily, but I would bet it was CLOSE to happily!)





Last, but certainly not least, the signing of agreements to prove that Obama is President, immediately following his inauguration......

PotD

The giant Boston Head (yes, he is a Boston, dag nab it!) with his favorite pals, BS and Teddy

A Capital day, Inauguration Eve....

I decided to walk up to the mall today. I gave some thought to joining the masses tomorrow for the actual Inauguration, but after being there today with 10s of thousands of people already milling about, there is really no way I would go tomorrow....I'll watch it from the comfort of my couch. I might have been on MSNBC, I was one of the many standing there like an idiot, waving to the camera as it swept about the crowd...ehehehe Good times.

More on the FB

Okay, so suffice it to say the FB got her due. Oh, she had Gorton for a time, and made my life absolutely miserable. There are many stories I could tell but I’ll spare you the unpleasantness. By the time she realized he was pretty slovenly and not nearly as wealthy as he had once been or at least she thought he had been, she became the miserable one.

For a time they lived in her nice house just above the slums, but by the time her divorce was final, and her house was sold, they had to move into (oh, my god) a TRAILER…not that there’s anything wrong with trailers.

Meanwhile, I pulled the old ‘frying pan into the fire’ stupidity by hooking up with Mr. Gorgeous; sold my house to a con artist; moved in with Mr. Gorgeous, dragging MoFM along, totally screwing up her life AND mine. Not much thinking went on during that whole period of time which was approximately 2 years. I think.

A few months before MoFM and I headed off to DC, Gorton left CA and moved to a farm in KS his Great Aunt had left him. FB was supposed to accompany him. Evidently she did originally (and I didn’t hear this from her) but she didn’t like it in KS and people in KS didn’t like her, so she returned to CA. On MoFM’s and my journey (Thelma and Louise) to DC, we stopped in KS (see how stupid I am??) to see Gorton. He was very happy to see MoFM and was quite cordial. He filled our Ryder truck with farm fuel, let us sleep there, fed us, and we were on our way the following morning. It was very strange. Let’s face it, the whole story is strange.

RE: More From MoFM's Storied Past

In case you are wondering how I could have put MoFM through all the shit we went through, I will attempt to give you some insight into the reality of all that transpired.



I lost my ever-lovin’ mind when the separation took place. (see Do you know what you’d do?) The fat bitch that caused all the turmoil was a ‘friend’. We had known her for 20 years. I met her when I worked at a local bank and she and I were both pregnant with sons. Over the years she kept appearing it seemed, from out of nowhere. A few years after I’d left the bank job I went to City Hall for some reason, and there she was behind the counter. A few years later and after we’d started our construction business I found her behind the counter at the Camp Pendleton contract office. I would run into her at our kid’s soccer games.


As Gorton’s alcoholism got worse and worse, he was spending less time at home, and when he was home he was a total embarrassment to the kids. I asked him to get help. He refused. He started spending the night at our office. I have to admit it was peaceful without him. Being a Veteran he could have received all the help he needed. That didn’t happen. Instead, he moved in with one of our employees and his family. I reckon I just kept hoping he’d miss us enough to get help and come home. Meanwhile, the business was going down the tubes. Entities we’d worked for over the years wouldn’t even allow him to bid jobs. A couple of years prior to all of this, business had gone downhill enough that I decided to get a real estate license to help the cause. At first I made some pretty cool sales. I was in my car most of the day, everyday. My pager was going off day and night. The kids loved it because I had a computer. That's another whole story.


As I drove around North San Diego County I would continuously see Gorton in strange places. As far as I knew, we didn’t have any jobs locally, but naïve as I was (am) I didn’t give it much thought.


One evening I got a phone call from a soccer player-friend on my team. She says ‘what was Gorton doing with ‘fat bitch’ at her son’s baseball game in San Diego?’. I was surprised, and explained that maybe he’d run into her down there somewhere, and she said ‘come watch the game’ and that there was likely nothing to it. I know, naïve may not be the word.


Then my car was stolen. (not the best years of my life) I loved that car. It had all my real estate stuff in it. I had to find it. The cops immediately found my son’s backpack, which had been in the trunk of my car, in front of a dumpster at an apartment complex nearby. The next day I took our Chevy Blazer out on the hunt for my car. I was determined to find it, and I did, in the same apartment complex. I pulled up behind it, saw a kid walking up to it with my keys in his hand and chased the bastard. I couldn’t catch him, so I called the cops, then I called our office to let Gorton know I’d found the car and asked him to bring me the extra keys. He wasn’t there, but our secretary said she’d track him down. The cops thought I was in on the heist because I found the car and they hadn’t. Unbelievable BS. They took my statement and left. I was there for another hour before Gorton arrived with my keys. I parked the Blazer and began the drive out of the complex. You’re not going to believe this next line. The fat bitch was standing on a corner inside the complex. Surprised to see her there, I said ‘what are you doing here?’ to which she replied, ‘showing a client an apartment, I see you found your car’…to which I replied something happy, but I have no idea what. I was just glad to have my car back.


Since ReMax was an expensive place to be a realtor I decided to go with a locally owned shop, with lower overhead. The first day I’m on the job at this company, I realize the fat bitch is a realtor in this office. Unbelievable. We become ‘lunch buddies’ and ‘caravan buddies’ and talk about all kinds of shit. She convinces me to move my desk into a double office that has opened up. Our desks face each other. She is constantly asking me about Gorton, and if he’s getting help and how he’s doing, and on and on. She tells me all about her rotten marriage, and that she’s getting divorced, yada, yada, yada. All the time I’m thinking, I do not want to go through that, I just want things to be good again. Of course at this point I have no idea that something is going on between her and Gorton. Nor do I to this day have any idea what year it may have actually begun.


Early on a Friday afternoon, it was St. Patrick's Day, I get a call from Gorton. He says he has to go to China Lake to do some finish painting over the weekend. Not an hour later, fat bitch shows up late for a lunch date we had. She said she'd been visiting a sick Aunt. (I know, how naive can one person be?) I asked her if she still wanted to go to lunch, to which she replied 'no, I have to go home and pack (one of her kids) for a soccer tournament up north.'
Okay, so this got me thinking about the last few months of odd things going on. Seeing Gorton in odd places, and suddenly realized it was sometimes near where I thought fat bitch lived, other times near hotels. The phone call from my friend.


It was pouring rain that day and I was to pick MoFM from school. I drove to the school, and asked one of her friends to take her home. I drove straight to our office to see if Gorton was still there. He wasn't. I went up to his office. Sat down at his desk and opened a drawer. Holy SHIT. There, piled high in the drawer were cards and letters from the fat bitch. Love, love, love. I was devastated. I made copies of all of them.


~ This is when I should have immediately gone to a lawyer. California is a no-fault divorce state, but by God, when you come up with evidence like I had, you have a pretty good case for a few years of alimony. I probably could have even sued the fat bitch. (I believe in North Carolina or one of those states, if you can prove infidelity, you CAN sue the bitch) ~


I wrote Gorton a simple little note and left it on his desk. Placed all the gushy love letters and cards back in the drawer, and left. I don't remember much after that. I know Gorton called me Sunday night when he returned. All he said is 'I'm sorry you had to find out that way.' I said 'gee, how did you WANT me to find out?'. This was simply the beginning of the end.


to be continued......

life during the holidays....

The holidays were way outta whack this year. Coulda been the never-ending hype with the elections and the abrupt stop on November 4. Coulda been the economy and all the hype about how sad it is for retailers that no one was buying anything; the car industry getting paid to go on; and of course the sad, sad stories of people losing their jobs just before Christmas, and in some cases their homes. It was difficult for anyone with a conscience to think about having a 'holly-jolly' Christmas with all that negativity...at least it was for me. I do not EVER remember feeling so uncaring about the holidays. Bah, humbug. I did get a Christmas tree, first time in years. That didn't help at all.

I am fortunate to have an immediate family with none of the issues we heard about on a daily basis. None lost millions in the stock market (not quite millions, anyway); none have lost jobs or homes. And we didn't have snow and ice to contend with over the holidays.

Watching the Rose Parade from beautiful, sunny (but chilly) Pasadena, California New Year's Day was very relaxing. It was great to see the Ballou High School marching band in the parade. Seems the only publicity DC schools gets is bad, so for a local high school to make it to major parades is very refreshing.

So guess there were a couple positives. Now everything is basically back to normal. The new year has begun. All those pesky resolutions will be broken. Life will go on. And, it's great to be back at work!