Hello Monday -- A Wee bit of story

Hi friends.  This has been another busy busy weekend.  Lots to do and not much of it was crafting.  Booo!

However, I did get this cabinet moved out of my house (to make space for people to move through the kitchen to the dining area when we have guests!). I don't want to talk about how long it took me to find homes for the contents of this cabinet.  But the good news is that I DID!

Bean, however, is remaining in the house for safe keeping.  

There is still time to get your comments in on the Lily Bee Blogs first Blog Hop.  Make sure and start here and visit all the stops along the way for your chance to win a $50 Visa gift card and loads of inspiration from the amazing Lily Bee Design team.

In more news from the homefront, I got myself a new dooo!  (please read that in a nice Texas drawl!)  Added some highlights and cut off a LOT of hair!  Probably about 7 inches I'm guessing.

And now for the next little bit of my story.......

The year I was eleven was pretty eventful.  It was, as you'd imagine, my first year as an official middle school-er.  Sixth grade is definitely a time of major transition.  All kinds of crazy things are happening to a young woman's body.  She doesn't know if she's coming or going, and more importantly, do 'YOU' like her?  Whoever you are, you need to like her or she will have a complex.

Let's just say that ........I had a complex.

I may have gotten a little ahead of myself with that last story as I think my friend Celia was kidnapped in the early part of  1984.  At any rate, 1983 brought lots of changes. 

My father had  a girlfriend named Bobbie Jean.  She was 9 years older than Daddy and, as far as I could see, a very angry woman. In hind-sight, I have learned that he had her in his life before he had left my mother and I. However, at the time, I had no idea of that.  

All I knew for certain was that she wasn't a big fan of me (during this time when it was so important to be liked).  She was constantly snapping at me to stop hugging my dad, or sitting on his lap or whatever.  I couldn't even begin to understand why she seemed to want me to never get any love from him, but that is how it seemed to me.

I can remember trying to like her and trying to make her like me.  I wanted her approval, I wanted her to be okay with me.  But it never seemed to work.  

Bobbie Jean worked at my dad's nursery with him and in that year, the two of them got married.  They didn't invite me to the wedding.  I believe it took place in the justice of the peace.  All I can remember is that one day my dad was just my dad and the next, he was married to someone who hated me.

I felt like I had entered the Cinderella story in some ways.

It wasn't long before Bobbie Jean convinced Daddy that he should move out West.  She was certain there were greater opportunities for him there.  The truth was, she liked the West better for it's climate and she wanted to get him away from me and my mother.

They would be moving across the country in the Spring of 1984.  I was devastated.  Already, I didn't see nearly enough of my daddy and now he would be all the way across the country.  My little heart was utterly broken and the nights of crying myself to sleep continued.

Meanwhile, my mother's mental state went from bad to worse.  She was broken-hearted as well, having hoped that the love of her life would return to her.  Daddy marrying BJ solidified in her troubled mind that she was to remain single and she began receding more deeply into herself.

Not wanting to lose my daddy, I begged to go with him to Arizona.  He'd been supposedly fighting in court for custody of me all along.  (I don't believe that he actually did this, but he placated me with enough references to how the court wouldn't help him in this area that I wanted to believe he was fighting for me.)  But, since he didn't have custody, he 'just couldn't' have me live with him.

However, it was decided that I would take the road trip with he and BJ out West and then he'd send me back home.  I'd get to see where they'd be living and fly on a plane for the first time.  In my young mind, that seemed a reasonable compromise.  I had something to look forward to.

The truth was, I had no idea what the next few years would hold for me.