ahhhh yes. thank you forces that be

2 good (ish) days in a row. Amazing.
Not too shabby considering my mental state lately

You Make Me Smile- Final HNT

The Final HNT Project can be found HERE

I am there with 2 more pics as well

Thank you to he who got me started- 

you could always make me smile

Thank you to you who encouraged me along the way-

you still make me smile

Thank you to Os who has been there from the start and continues to be- 

smiles are not rare around you

Thank you to Vixen who made it all worth it- 

ohhhh how you make me smile

Thank you to those who have lent an 'ear' and a 'shoulder' you know who you are - 

you helped me find my smile again

Thank you to she who convinced me to blog in the first place many Decembers ago- 

we always smiled together. 

For all the smiles and all the joys I just want to say thank you 

to you 

and to HNT

Good- Bye

So.......

I get sad in the Winter. I try so very hard not to- but it happens, like clock work.  It is where I live. It is the lack of sunshine.  yeah.....

But this pic makes me so very very happy.  I am dreaming tonight of warm summer nights.....


I start work after the new year. I have decided to substitute teach. The idea of going back to work has me in tears (still) Doesn't help the sadness any. But, it is time and it is necessary.

<3 Jules
BFD

HNT- showing more than ever (oh and 3 wishes)

I have 3 easy wishes:

1) To Vixen- a plane ticket

2) To Vixen- a room at my favorite resort- the one with the big fireplace cabin and great lake view

3) To Vixen- me for company

and finally- HNT (I know I know, it's 3 wishes this week. But I only have 2 weeks to catch up. 

HNT- Showing more than ever 

 

My face

pics by Jon H.

*click*

To see what happens to you if you mess with my friends and I.

Friends help you move, best friends help you move bodies

So my multi-personality husband (I swear he is two different people- angry and not) said....when you post back on your site, "that blog/sex thing" you should put up a pic like.........

Soooo apparently he has forgotten that I am not posting over here anymore- per his request

Guess what!? If he has forgotten I am gonna pretend I have too  :) 

Just in time for the last few HNT

anxiety

I'm prone to anxiety within the last few years.  I have been handling it pretty well lately. I wanted to pat myself on the back a bit today because I had an anxiety attack but I grabbed ahold of it and dealt with it and managed not to end up in a sweaty ball of wasted space.  I am still not 100% with what I was worrying on  but I am better.

*breathing*

p.s. I started filling out applications and making stops at places inquiring about work today.  My 'project' is obviously not going to make any money at this time and our bank acct is empty and ...... sigh..... anyway.  yay me

Abuse is not to be dismissed- an update

This summer my dear sweet friend B.P. sent me a heartfelt plea- can I use your blog?  I of course said - YES!

He then sent me a story- his story.  I had at this time known B. for a few yrs (online) and was floored by what I read. It suddenly explained so much.  The original story can be found HERE (if you have not read it- please do)

Well a month or so ago he sent me an update- please read, please take the time and trouble to comment (I know that means going off your readers to do so....please!  this man is ripping open his chest and baring his soul here)

It has been a little over four months since Jules was nice enough to allow me to use her blog to share a story that I had only shared with a handful of people. For nearly 35 years, I thought I had fully overcome the terrible things done to me by a then 19-year-old neighbor by simply not dealing with it. 

But, by never talking about it, never asking for help, and never confronting my parents with questions of why they failed me when I needed them the most, what I really had done was continue to be a victim. Just like he did all those years ago, this man still had control over me.
Sure, I looked like I had my shit together. College graduate, high school teacher, semi-successful football and basketball coach, and a pretty damn good single father. However, in a lot ways, when things in my life didn’t go the way I thought they should, I was still a five-year-old kid.
By burying the part of my life when I was sexually abused as a five-year-old, what I now know is that I only released my anger, pain and complete sadness during adversity. Things like being transferred to a different school after teaching at the same site for 17 years made me turn to alcohol, attack the ones that I loved with verbal assaults, and feeble attempts to take my life.
During one of my last alcohol-induced rages in the summer, it finally came out. After hours of screaming and yelling at the woman that I love because she didn’t understand the pain I felt about the change in my job, I broke down and told her every detail of what had happened to me as a child. 

With that one tearful conversation, I finally began to heal.
Since then, I have gone to therapy and have given it everything possible to overcome the pain that I didn’t know existed inside me. It hasn’t been easy opening that chapter in my life, but it has helped and has changed how I view that time.
In the past when thoughts of my attacker came to me in a dream, I would wake terrified and would have troubles falling back to sleep. Now, however, my therapist has taught me to look at it differently.

I no longer look at as if I am the victim. Instead when he or a memory of the many incidents come back to me, I now take pride in the fact that I survived that. Despite all that he did to me and that no one was there to stop him and that I never got help for 35 years, I survived and became a success career-wise and in my personal relationships.
There is much more we have worked on and still more to come, but I have turned the page.
Everything you hear about people who were abused as children feeling shame about what happened to them, or their concerns about what others will think of them after hearing what had happened, and the anger they feel about not being able to prevent what happened to them are real. I felt all that and more. And, this is no doubt a big reason why I kept quiet for so long.
I feel none of that now. 

From time to time since my post was on Jules’s blog, I have tried to write an update to my earlier guest post. Each time, I would stop soon after starting, realizing I wasn’t ready.
I became ready last week with the news out of Penn State. In fact, this week has impacted me so much, that I am compelled to do more than just write on Jules’s blog. I am compelled to not only tell my story to people I don’t know personally, but I need to share what happened to me to my own readers, friends, and in the appropriate setting, to my students.

I can’t help it. I am heartbroken over what happened to the eight victims (any intelligent person knows there are more to come) from the hands of a football coach. A man whose number one job was not to win football games, but rather, to protect kids by providing a safe environment for them. And, while his victims may not have been his players, his moral obligations were to protect all kids he came in contact with during his career.

What sickens me more than him being a football coach or what he did to numerous kids has been the reaction of a large portion of the Penn State student body and the national media. Instead of focusing on the victims and what needs to be done for them, the media has focused on students protesting and rioting over the firing of their head coach who had some ( if not a lot) knowledge of what kind of predator his former assistant coach was in 2002.

Nine years ago and as of three weeks ago, this former coach was still on the Penn State campus using the football weight room.

I don’t care what supervisor this head coach reported what he knew back in 2002. I know who he didn’t report the information to… the police. And, because of it, there were more victims.
More kids who will live like I had to if they don’t get help. More kids who will never know who they can trust. More kids who will forever look at their parents and in the back in their mind will wonder why Mom and/or Dad did not protect them. More kids who will wonder what it was about them that made them victims. More kids who will walk on egg shells in their relationships… worried what is thought of them because they were victimized.

No, quite frankly, I don’t care how many great calls the beloved coach made en route to winning 409 football games. The only call I will remember from this coach is the one he didn’t make.
And, because of it, I am ready to talk, ready to fight for the victims.  Ready to do anything I can to prevent any other victim to have to wait 35 years to stop being a victim.

(If you or anyone you know have been victimized and would like to talk, feel free to email me at bpape0430@gmail.com.)

Again- please reach out, please send love and encouragment and contact him if you need to or just want to. 

Sincerely, 

Jules

 

I soooooo *heart* You all!

Wow! Thank you soooo much for the fabulous response to my quandary
I felt like I was yelling into an empty dark room,
only to turn the light switch on and find the room is full of friends still.

I will post what I need to very soon-
it is an update from a friend of mine
(he submitted something awhile back & wants to do an update)
(I may sneak a few things of my own in here too in the next week)
Thank you so much for your response. 
I didn't want to leave you hanging even though I don't have time to post right now
I did want to let you know I heard you & thank you!!!!!!

Ohhhhhh how I already miss Summer