Another Year On My Own 2011 Life Sucks and Then...

January 2011. Horrible cold creeps across the nation and seems to settle, as usual, in the Midwest. The center of my universe is Missouri, Saint Joseph, NW corner bordering Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas. Deep heavy snow covers the land and below zero temperatures reign.

January 10Th, fell on a Monday, Ice gleamed in the crevasse between the top of the little Geo Metro and the door opening. The sidewalk to the car was covered with a foot of snow and all around the car the drifts were non negotiable. I strained stepping through them as I made the way to the car and pulled and pulled on the door. It was 4:10 AM. I had to be at work at 5AM and I usually left at 4:30 AM to make my way toward the main road to get to work. But this morning the doors would not open so I traipsed back over the deep drift to the house to call work for a ride. Rides would not be available until my coworker and a supervisor could come in at 8:00 AM to offer rides to stranded agents who would have gladly turned back over in their beds and back to dreamland. 365 days a year, 24/7 we had to be at work no matter the holiday or weather if scheduled to work. I waited until 5:40 am, then made my way back to the comfort of the warm bed.

I woke up again at 8:40. No school on this dreadfully cold day. My son notified me that my work had called at 8Am. I jumped on the phone to see if it was Kelly calling offering a ride. I called the cell number and told her I was ready to go as soon as she could get here. I work a 6 hr shift, normally from 5AM to 11AM but because I didn't get to work that morning until about 9:30 I had to work the 6 hrs from that time to 3:30 PM or else receive a half point for being late.

I was a disgruntled employee at this point, another ride wasn't available to take me home until 4P when another employee arrived. I caught a ride with another employee instead thinking I would get home quicker but her radiator was leaking and we had to stop at a filling station so she could add more antifreeze. By the time I got home I was more than a little angry. The man I had been seeing worked in KS and I knew he had to come this way to get home. Time came and went and no sign of anyone. I thought he would surely stop by to see if I needed anything since it was the first big snow of the season.

I pulled up my social site I frequented since August of 2009. He was on later that afternoon and I pretty much let him have it. I told him I needed the walk shoveled and the door to my car realeased from its icy grip so I wouldn't have to work all day the next day too. The walk I could master but the door was unrelenting. The car was covered with snow, the broom left inside the car so I could sweep it off after work on the way home. No way to get inside the car to get it.
Tuesday January 11th, He came and said he had left a shovel at his other house for the residents inside, then went home to plow his driveway with the tractor. I was miffed that he thought of them, his family, after passing my house up.

After shoveling a path to the car, defrosting the driver's side door, and cleaning the car and around the car so I could drive myself to work, he came inside. He was tired, feeling weak, said he had been sick all day. He said he had to carry a hundred pound bag of sand up and down 4 flights of stairs at his work in Levenworth, KS. I kissed his face as he sat crumpled on the arm of my 5ft leather couch. I asked him why he didn't tell me he was sick in the first place? I love you's spoken then he left.
I got off work the next day, Wednesday the 12th of January 2011 at the usual time, 11AM. Grateful that he had come to help me the day before so I wouldn't have to stay all day. I got a call around noon. He was in the hospital. No one knew but me. He didn't want his family to know he was there. He had left me an e mail that morning saying he was going to the Doctor's office instead of going to work. Anytime he misses work I knew it had to be serious. He is the hardest working man I know, trying to juggle a full time job and his business, family and me all at the same time had taken it's toll and the ulcer he had been harboring had torn and he was bleeding internally.

He was supposed to be there for tests on Thursday, admitted on Wednesday. He wanted me to come and see him. I grabbed my coat and headed out the door to icy road conditions to make my way to the hospital. Once there I found the room easy enough and he was there lying on the bed with the TV on. He looked so small and thin. He was a tall man, 6ft at least. He was stretched out on the bed. Talking so softly barely audible. Still complaining of weakness but that the bleeding had stopped. He was hooked up to IV's, joking with me and the nurses. The nurse told him he would probably go home on Friday.

No one knew he was there but me. I felt all puffed up that I was the only one who knew his little secret, wondering what his family was thinking, but no one called to see about him except his daughter wanting a ride 4 blocks from school. She usually called him to come from Savannah to drive in to St Joseph a 10 mile drive to take her home from school which was a mere 4-6 blocks away. Dakota, my son, had been walking to school about 12 blocks from home then another 12 blocks back. He simply told her he couldn't and she didn't press him, said she would catch a ride with a friend.

Thursday January 13th 2011.

I waited to call his room because I knew the tests would take all day, colonoscopy and upper and or lower GI. He said he would call me when the sedatives he'd have to take for the tests wore off.
He called aproximately 4:30PM. I told him I was working on my website and had a few more entries and I would be there. An hour and a half later I noticed it was dark outside and the time was 5:40! Couldn't believe my eyes. I called him and said I was coming. He sounded weaker than he had at 4:30, so I said I would hurry. I got to the hospital about 6P and went to his room. Again he was stretched to his full ht upon the bed. His color was good and reddish pink but he said he was bleeding now as bad as before but he couldn't get anyone to listen to him. A male nurse came in and talked about the lab results and dismissed his pleas for help. I asked him how was he going to drive himself home the next day. He just looked so frail. He said he didn't know. He was too tired and weak to do anything. Another female nurse came in, he joked with her and I said I was going to go and that I would see him tomorrow. He said he would call before he left so I could be there if he needed any help.
The night wore on, the bleeding kept getting worse and again the male nurse was there to witness him vomit blood into a bedpan. Still nothing was done. He remembered 10PM rolled around and then he knew nothing.

He was awakened to his Doctor trying to cram a tube down his throat about 1:30AM after she was called when he coded. She walked in to a room of nurses and a crash cart filling the very small room he was in. He heard her say, "We're losing him!" And another nurse saying he "should be dead, he didn't have enough blood to keep a baby alive." He had lost all but a pint of blood. The papers he filled out on Wednesday when he was admitted included "Would you like to be transfused" and he thankfully signed "yes" to that other wise he would have died and nothing would have been done to revive him.
He was taken to ICU, Intensive Care Unit where he slept for 32 hours undisturbed. The nurse called his son and he was at his side.

Meanwhile I waited the morning of the 14th. Waiting for him to call me to go help him to his car or whatever he needed, hoping to see a stronger more recognizable version of himself that I had known and loved for over a year.

He didn't answer the phone in his room. I called the main number and asked if he had been released to go home already and wondered why he didn't call me if he was getting out earlier? She said he has been taken to ICU. I thought only family members would be allowed in there and wondered what do I do now? She said, "His son is here and would like to talk to you, please hold on and don't hang up, he is on his way to the waiting room now." I panicked and hung up since his "family" wasn't supposed to know that he and I were seeing each other, although I know they knew but it wasn't something for everyday discussion. He and his wife had been living separate lives but were still married.

I hung up the phone before he could get on and see that it was me calling. What do I do? I thought. I didn't know if he was alive, talking, dead? How could I find out since I wasn't a family member they wouldn't give me any information? I called the gift shop, couldn't send flowers or have anything in his room not even a phone. I asked if he could except a small card to let him know I knew he was there and that I still cared what happened to him. It said: "Get Well Soon" Love Darlene. I told them to give it him and not his son. No mention if any other family members were there. Since He wanted to keep this on the down low, didn't think he would want a lot of family in there.

I initiated the help of my neice, Susan. My brother Donald's youngest girl. She had no problems contacting his son by the social site and inquiring of his wellbeing then reporting it back to me. I read what he had written on his father's site and about collapsed when he said that on Sunday the "ventilator" had been removed and he was talking and joking again. Ventilator! He had been on a ventilator to keep him alive while in ICU! I had no idea it had been that bad up to that point. I finally got the courage to write to his son and ask how he was doing and if it would be alright for me to go see him? He said he had had more tests that morning so to wait until after 3P when he would be more awake. I left home at 3P and headed for the hospital. It took a very long walk to get to the ICU and find his room. He was awake and sitting up, still hooked to IV's. A nurse was there. I started to go back, thinking the nurse was a family friend or one of his daughters. He motioned for me to come in. He was very tall, seemed taller than he normally was. Sitting in a chair. He was pure white and swollen from head to toe. I was aghast at how different he looked from his normal, reddish tint, he had been taking Niacin, and his frail, thin features were now abnormally swollen, he looked like a giant, a big white giant. Then he told me about his ordeal, how he had lost all of his blood save for 1 pint and what he had heard the Doctor and Nurse say when they were putting the tube down his throat. He had fought them with all the strength he had. He told me I just missed his wife and daughters, his mom and his brother who had just left about 5 minutes before I got there. He said he would call me again when he got his own room.

Monday January 17th, 2011
He called me on Monday afternoon and said he was in his own room now. I went to the new room on Tuesday the 18th after work as he had instructed the night before, he said everyone would be at work and should be safe enough. The new room,which was a little harder to find this time, was on the 2nd floor, not on the third floor as it was the first time. There I found a pink faced, thin as usual man, looking healthy and calm. Ahh, what a relief! A site I had been waiting for 4 days to see. I had not gotten off work at 11Am as a caller refused to get off the phone so it was about 15 minutes later when I was finally able to leave work, so I was a bit late. When I got there he said his mother and brother were coming around noon time. He had tried to talk them into coming later in the afternoon, saying he was a bit tired and not up for company but they said they would be there anyway. I arrived knowing I would have to leave sooner than expected but was so good to see him looking like his old self again I didn't want to go. He was talking in his normal voice. Smiling and laughing, relieved he had made it through his ordeal all in one piece. He had air boots on his legs to help push the blood up through his veins and to his heart. He said he needed to go to the bathroom so I helped "unplug" them and he went to the bathroom. I kept a steady eye on the clock, it was 12P. I had closed the door but kept it open a crack. I heard voices outside and saw through the crack in the door it was a man with jeans on. I had been too late and was trapped. I yelled,"He's in the bathroom" although the bathroom had a door and would have not been a problem under usual circumstances. He came out of the bathroom staring into the eyes of his mother and brother and me fumbling to get out of the room. His mother saw me and introduced herself with a smile that soon faded into a small scowel when I introduced myself as Darlene. She had offered her hand and I shook the tiny white thing, said my name stupidly, looked toward his brother who did not offer his hand and said, "Gotta go!" I tried to laugh it off and he had a small grin on his face, not knowing what to say to them as I left, I just said, "See you later". His mom said he looked nervous, and the problem manifested as I passed by the Gift Shop and ordered a small vase of paper flowers and another card that I signed this time, "Glad you're feeling better" Darlene. Purposely leaving off the "Love" part since the other card had caused somewhat of a scandal. His mother told him to hide or throw away this card so his wife wouldn't see it when she came. He did. His wife hadn't spoken to him since July 2010. They had gone on vacation to Florida and invited him to come along assuring him she would pay for it. A free vacation he couldn't pass up so he went, leaving me here to sulk, since that was supposed to be a time for us to be together as we had in previous months without having to worry about her showing up or calling and yelling about me being there, yelling for hours at a time. Just constantly yelling at him for as many as 6 hours at a time, wanting yes or no answers from him, him promising anything to get the yelling to stop. She provided no affection, no sex, but since the divorce had never been filed by either one, she considered herself still his wife and that he shouldn't be seeing anyone else until one of them filed but no one made a move in that direction. He had a lot to lose, the properties, the business, his only means of income. He had lost the job in KS, being in the hospital then not being able to do any physical labor, barely able to get around on his own.

Three weeks and a few days later, not even a month after his release from the hospital, he went into a grocery store he frequented and was told by a clerk that he saw in the paper that morning, Wednesday, Feb 9th, that he was getting a divorce. He said, "Not me! My son, by the same name is,must be him!"

American Idol was in Hollywood on that day, and I was invited to go up to his place and watch it with him. I drove through the melted streets and headed north. I packed my Diet Pepsi in a cooler as I usually spent the night when I went up there. I got to the door and it was locked. That was unusual because when he expected me he usually unlocked the door, although I knew the code to get in. I used it. I came in, he was sitting in a chair in front of the TV and the show had just started. I took off my coat and sat down. He looked like he had aged 10 years. Sitting in his sweatpants was normal for him but he was so thin. Afraid to eat anything that would aggravate his healing ulcer, vowing never to go back to the hospital again. The phone rang, par for the course, it always rang constantly, either family or friends or new customers calling. He always had it on him no matter where he was. He went into the kitchen to talk, in case I were to blurt out something or cough or make some noise as to advise the caller he wasn't alone. He came back in and said his mother had called and saw it in the paper that morning too. He again told her it was probably his son and she said "No, it was his name and his wife's name listed" she had finally filed.

One Year Later

It will be one year ago come Feb 6 when Kelvin was arrested. One week after that I filed for divorce and it was finalized June 3rd after last hearing on the same day. I received my court documents on the 7th of June last year. Has been a harrowing year for me. I have been trying to to keep up with the rent and utilities and sold my white Taurus last September. A good friend loaned me the money to buy a 1994 Geo Metro with over 200 thousand miles on it but it runs good and gets the best gas mileage. Learning to drive a 5 speed again after having the automatics for years took no real skill. Like riding a bike. Unfortunately Dakota turned 16 in October and have not the courage or patience to teach him to drive a stick shift.

I fell in love with a man I have been seeing for over a year now. We have spent a lot of time together, working at his place of business and riding all over the city on his motorcycle. Making love in various places including the woods, the car, his home, my home. Feeling like a teenager again just getting out of high school!

He went into the hospital yesterday. Internal bleeding. He underwent tests today to find out what the problem is. I was the only one he called to tell.

He has been separated from his wife for 3 and a half years and has 5 children all grown except for one daughter who is just a year younger than Dakota.

He is a workaholic. The day before he became ill I was mad at him since it snowed at least 7 inches or more and I was stranded. He didn't come home from his work in Levenworth, KS to check if I needed anything or any help. My sidewalk was full of snow, about a foot at least had drifted over and the car was frozen in place, the doors would not open and I had to call for a ride to work, working a full shift about 4 and a half hours later than usual. Need ing items from the grocery store and little cigars I have turned to now instead of the cigarettes I used to smoke. His favorite flavor is cherry so I bought him some cherry cigars and got turned on to them myself and haven't smoked a regular cigarette since.

I stopped chatting with him on my social page, yelled a little. The next day after work he came straight here and cleaned the walk, dug out from around the car, got the door to open, took me to the store and to the gas station where I buy my little cigars. When he came into the house he complained of not feeling well, felt weak. I hugged and kissed him and thanked him, told him I loved him very much. He went home and went to bed early.

The next day, Wednesday, he called me from the hospital after leaving me an e mail stating he was going to the Dr's office, very unusual for him since he worked constantly even when he had a bad cold he just kept going, never called in sick. I asked him if he called his family to let them know where he was and he said "No, just you." I told him I would come to the hospital to see him if no one else was there and he said no one else knew where he was. He wasn't telling anyone either. He was just so tired and worn out, weak. The temps here have been in the teens and below, this morning it was -2.

School was called off the last two days. Dakota walks to school since I usually work from 5am until 11am. Today, as cold as it was, school was back in session and he walked with his buddies. I asked him if he was warm enough, gloves, hat, two pairs of socks and two teeshirts under his sweatshirt. He said he didn't wear the extra socks. Stating he needed boots instead of the tennis shoes he had been wearing. I know he does. Just hoping I have enough money left over from the check to get him some new ones.

He was supposed to call me this morning when he got out of testing, colonoscopy. The Dr said he would be anesthetized. I tried to call his room twice. No answer. Was hoping a nurse or someone would answer the phone. I knew from previous nursing experience he would be in recovery for at least an hour if not two. It is after 1P CST. If anything happens to him I will not forgive myself for being so petty and acting like a spoiled brat. I have been spoiled by the last two husbands. I have never had to do any of the shoveling. Afterall I had a man to take care of that and keeping the car running and ready to go. I will sit and wait for his call telling me he is alright and ready to go home today or tomorrow. His father had colon Cancer and died a year ago in December on his mother's birthday.

A Newer Beginning

On Feb 6th 2010 Kelvin was involved in a police chase ending 2 blocks from our house. He ended up going up over a post and hitting the police car who was chasing him for DWI. He continued to try to get away when the officer had his head in the window. A ticket for assaulting a police officer, DWI, and possessing a pound of Marijuana they found displayed in plain view on the back seat of the Jeep Cherokee he was driving. He was arrested and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

On February 17th I filed for divorce. Court date being set for May 3rd. I made

arrangements to have that day off from work. I waited in the hallway for my lawyer to arrive and when she did we talked over what to expect. I sat quietly in the courtroom, waiting for my name to be called thinking this would be it. The judge would grant me the divorce right then and there and restore my name of Dennis back to me.

My name was finally called and the judge opened a book with a yellow sheet of prison stationary from Kelvin. He had written to the judge stating I would not let him see Dakota and that I was withholding items he wanted and would not let his daughter, Vallie Rose, pick up his things. Actually Vallie Rose had come the week after his arrest in February and got most of his things except his clothes. He also stated that I had blocked my phone number so he couldn't talk to Dakota, which was another lie, I did not have my phone number blocked it was shut off by ATT for non payment. For this reason the judge set another court date for June 3rd. I had to wait another month to regain my freedom from a man I had been married to for almost 17 yrs and rarely saw.

On June 3rd after making arrangements to have that day off as well, the judge granted me custody of Dakota, my maiden name and his dog. I had to give the new bbq grill I had bought him for Father's Day last year, 2009 back, but after 12 years what condition would it be in? The lawyer brought that to my attention. Vallie hasn't been back to get his stuff since February. The Fourth of July was coming up so I told Jennifer she and Eric could "borrow" it for their cookout. Afterall the judge said daughter but didn't specify which daughter and Jennifer was his step-daughter.

I was behind on everything. I couldn't pay the rent, without Kelvin's help I was barely able to keep the utilities on. The brakes that Kelvin "had fixed" in the Fall of 2008 were a mess and I had to have the car fixed which cost me 500.00 the amount of March's rent which was 550.00 I couldn't pay. The rent check bounced and the landlord threatened to kick me out, and have me prosecuted.

I wrote him an e mail decribing my difficulties and he wrote back and said for me to pay what I could until the amount due was paid. Impossibilty since every month adding another 550.00 and I was still trying to figure out how I was going to pay April's rent with July looming and now going toward August.

I finally called Cable and had a bundle added to my account of phone, internet and tv. Much cheaper for all three then having separate bills. Still that is over 100.00 to one company, plus the title loan on my car, and the utilities and 3 loans I had taken out when Kelvin wouldn't help me with the rent the previous year.

Now I sit and wait, single and alone, trying to care for a 15 yr old boy in highschool, no car insurance, hoping the landlord doesn't come by or an officer elling me I have a week to get out with no money to rent a new place, Fall is approaching then Winter. School starts in about a month, the middle of August and haven't any idea how I will manage that.

I signed up for the food stamp program in April and receive 168.00 a month in food benefits but no cash to help with rent and bills.

I still have my job, utilities takes most of that and household supplies, gas for the car etc..

Not sure how this is going to turn out. I have sold my 55 gallon fish aquarium but when I deposited that to go with what I had left of my check I have 142.00 left and 20.00 left in savings. Poor and getting poorer in good old St Joe!

After The Storm Continued 2008

In April of 2008, Jennifer had a Ford Taurus she gave to Kelvin when the transmission went out of it. He gave the Sable to Vallie who now lived in Arkansas with her new husband and two boys. He thought if they had transportation they would come and visit more often. Soon after the brakes went out of it and they were out of a vehicle again. Kelvin knows everybody and soon had the transmission repaired in the Taurus, gave the Taurus to me to drive and he drove the Cavalier. He struck up a deal with Lyle to buy a truck, which he really wanted anyway, that Lyle had bought at an auction which was a Dodge Ram, 2001. It was bigger than the Ranger. It also had an extended cab with a full seat and was a nicer looking truck than the 2003 Ranger he had bought and lost through repossession. In March of 2009 he had 3 wrecks in the truck, the last one totaled it. In order to get the truck from Lyle he needed 800.00 dollars down to take it home so he sold the Cavalier to a man who wanted the convertible. One week after he had it licensed, he drove it to Kansas City, drunk, and hit a parked car, totaling the Chevy I had had since 1996. I was so careful with it all those years. It was my red lifeline. Car repairs were expensive so I protected that little Red Chevy Convertible as if it was a precious stone from an expensive jewelry store. I was so sad when I heard what the man did to my little red car if not a little bit angry. Kelvin had sold the car for the 800.00 to buy the truck which he totaled, I had the Taurus which he had repaired and he again was without transportation. He now drives a little red Dodge Avenger with the money he had saved to get the truck fixed. The truck lies mangled at Lyle's lot on Garfield Ave.

Deaths of my Two Sisters, Audrey and Thelma and Brother Orville

On Novemeber 5th 2006 my dear sister Audrey died at the age of 81.
On March 30th 2007 my dear brother Orville died and just last Thursday April 1st 2010 my dear sister Thelma died following her husband Bob into Heaven to meet him and her son Steven who passed away in April 1985.

Ice Storm December 2007

Kelvin had been suspended for three days. He was so angry about it that he decided to quit that job and started another one in town, only five minutes away. This was a parts painting plant. Instead of making sewer lids and septic tanks he was now painting parts for plants such as Snorkel. Gas prices rose over 4.00 a gallon; in the long run we decided this job would be more economical. The pay was less and Child Support Division started taking more out of his check for Vallie when he had been in jail the first time before we met and his first wife, Diane, had been getting Welfare, Vallie was only 5 at the time. He also was continuing paying Child Support for Shelby at the same time. Student Loan started taking over 300.00 a month out of his pay check too. There wasn’t much left after that. He got paid every week instead of twice a week. I had to try and hold down the fort with my check alone. It wasn’t long before I got behind on everything, had to settle a couple of the credit cards, let the rest go. I tried to keep up the payments on his truck but by December of 2006 a tow truck driver came and took the truck back. Kelvin was beside himself with grief. He had always blamed me for everything that went wrong in his life including this downward economical slope. His buddy Lyle from the car lot offered him a blue 1995 Mercury Sable. He had been working for Lyle, washing cars and doing detail work at the garage when he got off work at 3:30 in the afternoons. He paid a small down payment and worked the rest off. It was a far cry from the new truck, the only new truck he had ever owned, which he had detailed with flame decals and embarrassing large silver “truck nuts” as they were called. He was so very proud of his truck. It was red, had an extension cab in the back where Dakota rode whenever we went anywhere as a family which wasn’t often. He took the guys he worked with to work and back and they helped with the gas when he worked in Gower. I on the other hand still drove the red 1992 Chevrolet Convertible which needed the top replaced. It had a tear on both sides at the base of the back window that tore a little more when the top was put down and then back up again. Even so it was a good car that got me where I needed to go.
While I was living on 20th street before Kelvin came home I had taken it to a car wash in town that was a full service car wash, fully automatic, washed, and waxed, dried the car. I was in line along with many other people as it was December and the weather had let up some and the sun was shining. Everyone pick that cold day to go to the car wash. As I was waiting in line the guy that worked there started to tell me something, then thought better of it as there was no place for me to go. There were cars in front of me and cars lined up behind me. When it was our turn to go through the open doors of the garage, I paid the money to the man and slowly proceeded through. The car rocked and rolled. The wind for drying was strong as a hurricane. Dakota was in the back seat with his Chief’s jacket on when he started crying and complaining he was getting wet. I looked and the back windshield had blown out, water was pouring in but you couldn’t go until the green light for “go” came on. He was a “drowned rat” I was wet and the wintry air came through with a vengeance.
I left and immediately sought a garage to find out where I could go to get the window replaced. I found a garage off Pacific, close to the Belt Highway. 320.00 Later I had a new window. Two days after that someone had sliced the top above the new window and tarp I had just paid to have repaired. I had to go back and have it sewn together. Other than that the top had no leaks and as long as I didn’t put the top down too much in the Summer time it was good to go.
December 2007 the ice storm hit. In order to keep the tree limbs from the tree I always parked my car under from falling on my car Kelvin, doing a good deed, moved the car across the street under two smaller trees that seemed less threatening which in turn both fell on the car, tearing massive holes in the top and tearing off the side mirror on the driver’s side. I patched these with masking tape, the large tree I had parked it under to begin with showed no extensive damage except for a few twigs and leaves in the space where the car had been.

Moving to Penn St Again August 2004

Kelvin was fitted for his “ankle bracelet” within two days upon arriving at the little house at 1004 s 20thst. He could venture as far as 100 ft from the house so he was able to mow the yard and was granted permission to look for work. He found a job at the plant in Gower working with cement. I turned in all the wages between the two of us to Social Services and they said I would not be able to continue with the Food Stamp program.
By the end of July when things were settling and the bills were being paid I got a letter from the landlord that he had sold the house and I had to be out by the end of the month.
Kelvin told me things would be fine as we started looking for houses in the paper. One Saturday when we were both off from work we did a double take and circled around to check out a house available for rent on Penn St. It had a nice rectangle shaped living room, carpeting, large kitchen, big bedroom and a small bedroom for Dakota. On the East side of the kitchen there was a small laundry room and a door leading to a large back yard and patio. The rent was 3 times what I was paying with housing. I stressed and stressed about the expense but Kelvin assured me with the extra money he was making and my salary we would be fine. He was paid every two weeks but the opposite weeks that I was being paid so we had two weeks of pay coming in every week. We told the landlord we would take it and asked how soon we could move in. He said as soon as we wanted. We had to pay the first and last month’s rent, half the deposit and sign a lease. We started moving as soon as we got back home.
I was so excited; it was such a nice little house! The walls in the kitchen were tongue and groove wood paneling and the counter went all the way around. I needed counter space so badly. All the rooms were carpeted including the small laundry room. The walls were white except for a couple of walls in the kitchen that had green leaf wallpaper in place of the paneling.
The yard was magnificent. It was huge but no fencing which Kelvin remedied with a few scraps of fence and posts so Lassie could be free to roam the whole thing. It was the first time she would be free of that cable in three years. The neighbor to the North of us and to the East of us had privacy fencing making the job so much easier; there were only a few areas that were open and needed closed off.
By October of that year, 2004, we applied for and got a new truck for Kelvin, a 2003 Ford Ranger. The payments were 406.00 a month so again I had to figure out how we were going to be able to pay the truck payment, rent and utilities, four charge cards I had before Kelvin came home. The house was insulated and came with a window air conditioner in the living room plus we purchased a small one for our bedroom and was much easier to heat and cool than the last one. In the winter time at the old house Dakota and I almost froze to death trying to keep warm. Dakota’s old bedroom had to be wrapped in plastic so I had him sleep with me when the temperature got below zero. Lassie stayed in the basement in the winter time there, I would get up in the mornings for work, let her out then put her back in until I got home. It was very warm down there and cozy. I knew she was getting older and had bouts with arthritis. At this new place there was only a crawl space under the house where the furnace resided and the door was off the ground about a foot and kept closed at all times. We still had her dog house which I had filled with blankets but it tended to leak. It had to be really poring down before she would resort to going inside. When the weather was too cold and the snow was getting deep we would let her inside the house with us. She was well house trained and just slept in front of the big screen television in the living room.
On Wednesdays Kelvin got paid and I had those days off so I would get up early and leave about 11:30 to go to Gower and pick up his check after he cashed it and kept a hundred dollars or so for him giving me the rest to put in the bank to pay bills. I would then get paid 10 days later the following week on Friday. Everything appeared to be manageable until Kelvin lost his job.

Kelvin Comes Home After Four Long Years 2004

After all the trips to Jefferson City and Tipton on Sundays, no matter the weather, Kelvin was scheduled to come home on Sunday, the 4th of March, 2004. Dakota and I made our last trip to Tipton to pick up his daddy. He had longed for his father to come home and Kelvin had vowed to be a changed man. Every Sunday when we were not down there he would call home to see how we were doing. He sent tapes of stories for Dakota to listen to on the tape player, even if he couldn’t be there to read to him this was his way to be able to read and bond with his son he had lost so much time with. Dakota was 9 ½ years old then. I had taken him to ball games and watched him play since he was 7. He had been in Boy Scouts for a year but there were just too many things that he needed a father for and I couldn’t continue taking him or help him with making a race car etc…
We got up early, about 4 AM that Sunday morning. I stopped at Speedy’s on Riverside road before leaving St Joe and heading East on 36 highway, to Chillicothe, then South on 65 to Sedalia then eventually Tipton. I liked the trip and the drive. I had my plastic bag of quarters for the vending machine, some pop to drink and a full tank of gas after leaving Speedy’s. It was a long drive. By going that direction instead of South through Kansas City I avoided traffic and the countryside was comforting. He pointed at the cows and a few horse and buggies that we met along the way as the Mennonites lived throughout the area. We traveled South past Marshall and other small towns, under the bridge and the South 435 traffic I had bypassed. The next town was Sedalia, home of the Missouri State Fair every year in August. Highway 65 had many crooks and turns, the traffic started to thicken now and the lanes spread out into four lanes of traffic. I stopped at a gas station at the intersection where I needed to turn East on 50 to go to Tipton to fill up the gas tank for the long drive back with Kelvin. Another 30 miles and we had arrived. Every time I had to remember the left turn off 50 highway in the middle of the small Missouri town that held my husband prisoner. Is it this one or is it down further? I consoled myself that this would be the last time I would have to remember that.
When I parked my car in the parking lot we got out and I had to try to control Dakota’s movements as he always tried to be the first one to cross the highway to the building where his father had been housed the last two years. The road was a busy one and there was a hill. I knew no car would be able to see a little boy darting across the wide two lane highway topping that hill. I had to lock the car, make sure I had my purse and the plastic bag containing the quarters and round up my son so he wouldn’t end up in a hospital (I didn’t know where there was one, Sedalia I’d guessed, thirty miles back West from where we’d come). We both got across safely enough. Once inside they said for us to wait there after using their “Magic Wand” over us. We sat in the chairs, there was a small waiting room, and they said they would send him out. We didn’t have to wait too long when we saw him carrying his sole possessions. He was dressed up in new clothes his Mother had sent him to go home, had a duffle bag of sorts and wearing a big grin on his face. He had lost so much weight, was tanned from mowing the “Yard” and running around the track several miles a day for exercise and something to do. He had read all the books they had in their library, had worked in the kitchen for a time, he was always a pretty good cook. Once he had everything done, papers signed, whatever was left to do, we headed for the parking lot. The first thing he wanted to do was go to the store in Tipton to buy some snacks. He hadn’t been in a real store for four years. He had always liked to shop, unlike most men. Going to Wal-Mart was a chore since once he was there he never wanted to leave until every aisle was searched from top to bottom, in case we ever had any money to buy anything we would know how much and where to get it. His mother had been putting money on his account there so when we left he had about a hundred or so dollars to spend. He was happy, easy going and best of all he was calm. We drove back the way we had come without a rise out of him. We talked and laughed. He didn’t complain about my driving or “Why did you go this way?” He was glad to be coming home at last.

Goodbye Aegis Hello USA 800 2003-2004

After work every day I would go to Jennifer’s house and open the gate to the pool. Eric and Jennifer and Dan, Eric’s biological father, had built a fence around the pool with four to five feet high of wooden board fencing. I had a Rubber Maid chest full of the pool supplies I needed to keep the pool running as well as chemicals to keep it clean. I had bought a vacuum and various other items. I liked to stand there and watch the water whoosh out of the out take and into the pool, sweeping any debris that floated to the top. The humming of the pump was soothing and the sound of the rushing, swirling water was comforting. When I had back washed and was tired of sweeping the bugs and any leaves that still lingered on the surface I closed the gate and headed back home.
In January of that year I was told that I had lost my job at Aegis Communications Group and was receiving unemployment checks every week. The amount of the checks were more or equal to my regular pay check and I enjoyed my time off. I searched for but didn’t find another Job until July. Jennifer had applied to USA 800, a local call center, and was assured I would be able to get on there too since it was the same type of business I had been doing for the last 3 ½ years at Aegis. Callers would call the center for ads they had seen or heard on the radio and television as well as newspapers and we would screen them, taking the information and passing it on to the company they had originally called, which were our clients. I barely passed the typing course but was good enough to get hired. I had just applied for an extension with unemployment for another 3 months and due to school starting in September opted to wait and apply again in October. On October 17th I reapplied and was hired. The building consisted of an aged old apartment building downtown on the fifth floor. There was an old elevator that quit working off and on. Breaks were only 10 minutes long, it took 3 minutes for the elevator to rise to the fifth floor leaving 7 minutes for a cigarette break, 3 of which you had to use waiting for the elevator to come down, pick you up and rise to the fifth floor again. Then of course you had to go to the bathroom in that time as well, be back on the phones and take your calls without being over the ten minutes allotted from the time you signed out. These calls were easier to handle than the ones I had taken at Aegis. We had a few clients, not many then, and when call volume would go down a mandatory go home list was assigned. I lived alone with a nine year old boy then so I would get mad when they would send me home. Sometimes there would be a “Go Home List” that wasn’t mandatory, if you had your name put on it then you could go home and wouldn’t be charged any points against you. Points accrued when you just left early on your own without “call volume” being the reason, if your child was sick, you were sick or for some other reason than “the list” you would accrue a ½ point for leaving before your scheduled time off. If you called in sick and used your sick time then you wouldn’t receive any points, but if you didn’t have enough “sick” time to cover your shift and were gone the whole day you would receive a whole point. When you received 10 points it was cause for termination. Jennifer and I caught onto this very quickly and whenever they asked who wants to be on “the list”, we knew what they were talking about and made sure our names were on there. I couldn’t go as often as she could. She had a husband who worked making good money at the plant in Atchison, Midwest Grain, so she left me there a lot to suffer out my shift when all I really wanted to do was go home or to the pool and watch the water swirl around. She’d leave five minutes after she got there sometimes if they called “the list” right after we started. While she was there, we’d laugh and talk about the calls we were taking, some of them were really funny but on Sunday mornings at 5A when we’d work from 5A-1:30P, the pranks and the perverts would come out and disgust us to no end.
In January of 2004 we moved into a new building off Mitchell St, Mitchell Woods as it was called. No elevators and everything was on ground level. We had a huge parking lot in the back that was level and easy to get to in the winter time. This lot was eventually widened and made bigger to extend even further to the east and as the company grew a new addition was added to the building. Jennifer didn’t get to see the improvements they made as she quit in April of 2004, one month after Kelvin got out of prison.

The 18 Ft Pool 2002

In the spring of 2002 I sold enough long distance service to choose from the various prizes they had for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place ECT... I asked Jennifer which prize I should ask for and she said the 18 ft above ground pool with all accessories including an inflatable shark, beach ball and assorted beach towels. She said we could set it up in her back yard as she owned her own property while I was renting.
I was working one day when Sonya, the head of the communications group in the St Joseph area sat down beside and listened in on the call. She said she thought it was very good. I asked her about the prizes and when they would be given out. I told her I knew I had sold more long distance service than anyone at that time and I wanted the pool. She said she would consult with my supervisor, she told them to release the pool to me and that I could take it home that day. On my lunch break I called Jennifer and she had her husband, Eric, and his father, Dan, come by in the van and try to load it that day after work. The pools, the ladder, liner, were packed in a large box but the shark, beach ball and towels were loose and the shark was huge and inflated! We had a time trying to deflate it. It refused to go down easy. After awhile it bent enough to fit it in the back with the kids.
We dropped off the towels and shark at my house then took the big box over to Jennifer’s. We opened the box and took out the instructions. There were so many instructions and parts, rims, walls and the liner. Dan and Eric couldn’t rap their minds around the work that was involved. First they needed to dig out a level area; Jenny had told them where she wanted it, in the big back yard below the fenced small yard. This was the most level ground; they got the measuring tape and the shovels, the rake, and a level for exact precision. This took several weekends, and then came the sand and the leveling process began again.
By the first of July, 2 months after I had notified them the pool was up and ready to fill.
The pump and filter was made in one piece and fit on the side of the pool. It was virtually worthless and the algae began to grow. It was impossible to keep clean. I bought different types of algaecide, large 3 inch tablets of chorine and a vacuum. This was starting to run into large amounts of money which I wasn’t used to spending. Jenny and Eric helped out with the cost and I decided to call some pool places to see if I could get a used sand filter as we had had on the farm with the 24ft above ground. I called a place on St Joe Ave and a man said he had a used Jacuzzi sand filter that would be able to handle all the water and that I would need a pump he had just rebuilt. The sand filter was 120.00 and he would sell me the pump for 90.00. This was a great savings as we had priced new ones which cost more than a new pool. He came over and installed the set for free and I asked about a skimmer which he said he could order a new one for 35.00. He didn’t charge me anything for the installation. By the middle of August the water was sparkling clean. On September 1st Eric decided it was time to shut it down even though the weather was still in the nineties. We didn’t want to wait until it got cold to do it of course but it looked so good and I had waited all summer to see the clean clear water it was heartbreaking. I came over after work every day to check the pH and chlorine levels, back wash the filter and mostly stare at the water surging out across and around the pool. Finally I relented and switched the filter to Winterize and watched the water flow out of an old fire hose and down across the yard into a drainage ditch. I had bought a cover, between the three of us and the kids we were able to tie it down for the upcoming seasons.
By spring of 2003 I reluctantly began to unfold the cover and had to gasp at the ugly black water beneath. Limbs and leaves covered the top and had torn open a hole in the cover allowing the leaves and debris from the fall and winter to clutter throughout the pool. I started sweeping the water with a pool net which had an extension pole attached, stirring and filtering and back washing. I added shock treatment, tested the chlorine level and made the necessary adjustments. We filled the pool to the brim once the dark water started to fade to a pea green hue, started the filter and prayed a lot! By mid June it was ready.

Our Trip to Las Vegas 2002

In 2002 I had won the trip to Las Vegas by selling more long distance than anyone else. Jennifer and I went to East Hills Mall to the travel agency to pick up our tickets. We were flying Southwest Airlines and picked out a motel with the least expense. I had won 500.00 and Jennifer helped with the expense for the rest. The 500.00 paid for the air fare and the motel. I notified Aegis Communications Group that the time best for the both of us would be Friday the 11th of September. I arranged to have that day, the weekend, and the following Monday off, the day after we got back from the trip.
We arrived late Friday night with the time change and checked into our motel room. It had two twin beds, a small bathroom and a phone. There was a huge window but nothing to see but other motel rooms and the parking lot which we took a shuttle bus to and from the main hotel and the motel room. We called the guys back home to let them know we had arrived and were unpacking. I turned the TV on and watched the news and weather. It was going to be hot, hot, and hot in the 100’s. I noticed there was a pool but hadn’t brought a bathing suit since the travel agency had said she didn’t think there would be a pool.
We did a lot of walking to and from the main hotel and played a few slot machines.
We went to bed early on Friday thinking we would get a good night’s sleep then start walking the strip on Saturday.
We walked and walked from one hotel to the other. We hit all the big hotels; MGM was way down the southern end of the strip. It cost 2.00 every time we took a bus but sometimes if it was the same bus we took down the strip the bus driver would take us back without charging us. It was starting to get expensive so we decided to walk most of the time. Jennifer started getting blisters on her feet so we exchanged shoes. My feet didn’t hurt but my legs and my back was aching I could hardly stand. One hotel we went into I won 15.00 and put that money back into the machine but Jennifer who was sitting right beside me won 90.00! We used that money to ride the bus and eat on.
We decided to eat at the Rain Forest Café. It was so beautiful with wild animated animals, trees and a waterfall. The ceiling was decorated with stars and the moon. The food was expensive so we ordered a specialty platter for one and decided to share. It was 50.00 for that one platter, plus desert and the specialty glasses for our drinks we got to keep, they were 5.00 apiece. We bought souvenirs from the MGM gift shop for everyone.
The highlight of the weekend was the Legends. An Elvis Presley imitator plus other celebrity imitators performed. We sat at a table and had our drinks on the balcony. After the show we met “Elvis” and had our pictures taken with him. He was from Lee’s Summit Missouri and said he couldn’t believe we were from St Joseph so close to his hometown.
We wanted to see the aquarium with huge sharks at Mandalay which was inexpensive. It was enormous. It was like being under the ocean with glass all around, large sea turtles as well as the sharks, tropical saltwater fish, it was magnificent! It made all the aches and pains and blisters all seem worthwhile.
We visited New York and took pictures of the Statue of Liberty, rode the train ride at Excalibur and Caesar’s Palace. We saw a man on a bicycle who was taking passengers down the strip in a cart he pulled behind him. We got in and had him take us a few blocks so we wouldn’t have to walk so far. It always felt so good to sit down! It would be freezing inside the hotels but when you stepped outside the heat would knock you back so that you had to find another hotel to cool off and play the slots again.
On Sunday we were packing for home. We took the shuttle back to the main building and waited for the shuttle to take us back to the airport. I had 20.00 left and was a little sad that I didn’t win big. We had such a good time just the two of us. When we arrived back home I took the 20.00 and went to the River Boat in St Joseph on Monday and doubled it! I ran straight to the bank to keep myself from putting it back into the machines!

A Home of My Own 2001

I had filled out an application at Housing Authority and was waiting in line for that to be approved. By the end of September I had received my approval in the mail. All I had to do now was find a house that they would approve of and a landlord that would accept. A two bedroom house for Dakota and me the limit was 425.00 for the rent. Anything over that would not be approved by housing. I looked in the paper every day with the help of my daughter. I saved my money so that when I did find a place I would have the first and last month’s rent and a deposit.
When I got home from work one day she notified me that she had found a house on south 20th street. It took us a while to find the house. The landlord was sitting in the kitchen with a pile of applications to go through. His son was outside painting the house white. It was a quaint old one story with a full basement, a front porch, a deck attached in back overlooking a wide spreading back yard. There was a hedge row surrounding the north side of the back yard and a short hedge in the front separating the street from the small front yard leading to the front porch.
I remembered the front porch swing Kelvin had bought me for my birthday one year that Jennifer had at her house. I thought about flowers and where I would plant them. This house would be mine, all mine. I filled out the paper work and talked to the man sitting in a chair in the large kitchen. I told him it would be just Dakota and I living there and how housing worked. In a few days Jennifer told me that he had called and the house was mine if I still wanted it. I couldn’t believe with all the applicants, with housing stipulating their rules that I had been chosen. Now all I needed was to pay the storage bill and get my stuff back home where it belonged. There was a stove already there, a gas stove, I had an electric counter top stove that I wanted to use but he said he wasn’t doing the wiring for 220 in the kitchen. I would have to use the small gas stove already existing. There wasn’t much counter space so I shoved the electric up against the existing counter on the north side of the kitchen for the extra space. I had a washer but needed a dryer; he had a dryer but no washer so that worked out for both of us. There was no fencing to keep Lassie inside the yard except for the hedge but on the East side to the driveway there was no hedge and on the South side there was a house with a family of kids, dogs, Rottweiler’s, at least four big ones and no fence in between. I bought a cable about a hundred feet and staked Lassie out in the middle.
There was a small shed in the back close to the driveway in the southeast corner with no door. There I stored the Sears Craftsman lawn mower, the weed eater and other various tools used for gardening. It wasn’t long the weed eater and hoe, a shovel went missing. I put the lawn mower under the deck and put the remaining tools in the basement. The lawn mower quit working so I had to go to the new Wal-Mart on North Belt that had just recently opened its doors and bought a refurbished, small red one. Easy enough for me to start and push myself. I no longer had Kelvin to care for the yard any longer. In the Spring I bought flowers, Petunias mostly, and planted those in the front of the front porch and the tulips I had planted the fall I moved in 2001 were starting to sprout up. I bought rose bushes to plant in the back yard. They refused to bloom and died shortly thereafter.
The cast iron lawn furniture I had had since I lived with Charles on the farm when Clyde was renting the trailer from us, (he had bought it for me instead of paying the rent one month as I had asked him to, it was the same price) I put on the deck, put an umbrella through the hole in the table and sat out there, ate breakfast, and watched Lassie play as much as she could to the extent of the cable. Dakota would throw a soccer ball high into the air and she would jump up and bat it with her nose. I felt so sorry that she had to be cabled but she wouldn’t voluntarily stay in the yard otherwise.
I worked hard at selling long distance for AT&T and won prizes. We had a contest in the spring of 2002 to see who could sell the most service. The winner would win a trip to Las Vegas! We had a map on the wall with little pegs representing our airplanes. So many sales equaled so many miles and the one to get to Las Vegas first won. I left everyone back in Denver and was in Las Vegas first so I won the trip for two taking Jennifer with me.

Dakota Gets a Taste of Baseball 2001-2004

I was just remembering a day back in 2001 when my little 7 year old brought a friend home from school who asked me, "Is Dakota going to sign up for baseball this Summer?" I asked how would I sign him up and he said he got a slip at school to sign him up and it cost 55.00 to register him. I thought, "I'm rich, just got my income tax refund", I actually had 55.00 to blow on the kid.
We headed for the Church up the hill where they were taking registrations. They told us he would be on a team called "The Little Rebels", so I paid the man. On our way to get a glove, bat, ball, socks and shoes! They gave us a hat, and a shirt.
After the first few practices I thought he needs a new bat, yea, yea, that's his problem so went and bought a real cool, titanium bat, one the ball could make a real "zing" when he hit it out of the ball park!
He did hit it hard and got a few RBI's and a HR or two! Course the pitcher was a skinny mechanical robot thing that was set to throw slow balls. He laughed, I cried, everybody was happy!
One day I was sitting in the bleachers, our team was in the outfield. The ball was hit, up, up it went high over everyone's head and blam! It landed in the hands of one of our own little boys' glove! I shouted, "Way to go! What a catch!" A woman turned around and looked back at me and said, "That was your boy!" My son? Dakota? Dakota Blake?"
I jumped off the bleachers ran to the coach who was laughing so hard because we were ahead at this point, probably 28-5 or something, and I asked, "Was that Dakota that caught that ball?" He nodded, "Yea, good job!"
Still not believing my ears when the inning was over I asked Dakota while we were on our way to the concession stand to get a "suicide", that's a drink where all the drinks they had were mixed together in one cup. He said, “Yes, that was me!” My heart was bigger than the Grinch's when it grew and grew, well you know the story.
K-ball was so much fun, for me that is, that year. They only lost 3 games went to play for the championship and lost, sadly. It took 2 whole games. That’s how many you had to lose to be out of the championship game.
They played until August that year! Rain or shine we were there! I cried when it was over and couldn't wait until next year! Next year came and he was a little less enthused about being in summer baseball. We registered, 60.00 this time. Bought the gloves the socks, the bat glove etc… the game was over by June.
The next year I had to practically carry him to the games. He stood like a little weenie holding his legs together, hoping for ball four so he could walk to base. He knew if he got on, he could run the bases. The pitching machine was gone and the little pitchers couldn't hit the side of a barn, missing their mark by an arm or a leg, thigh etc… Starting to think he needed a bigger titanium bat!
One day his father actually showed up to one of the games and called me at home to say "Our son just got a home run!" Really! I can't believe I missed it! He had hit an in the ball park home run by tapping the ball, bunt, about 3 inches off the plate. The Ump cried, “Fair Ball!” He ran to first. He ran to second. The pitcher couldn't find it! The catcher couldn't find it. They finally found it, threw it to first! Dakota was on second and heading for third! He slid into home and won the game’s ball that day!

September 11th, 2001

On 09/11/2001, Monday morning, I was getting ready for the Communications Group
I worked for, taking calls for companies, mostly a large credit card firm, helping customers make their credit card payments. I had never worked on a computer before and hadn’t taken a typing course since the age of 15. When I was hired in June of 2000 the girl working behind the desk in Human Resources told me to apply in a small room, not much bigger than a broom closet. The only thing I saw was a desk with a menacing-looking computer. I had taken the written application and they wanted to see how fast I could type. I went back to the Human Resources desk and told the girl, not much older than a teenager, that the only thing I saw was a computer and I didn’t know anything about computers and didn’t know where to start. She said she would set it up for me and said, “There, it is all ready for you just start typing the best you can in the allotted time. When you are finished I will check your time and let you know how well you did.” It took time away for errors. It was a story about a little girl who lived in Kansas with her Aunt and Uncle and her little dog Toto. When all was said and done I had typed 12 words a minute after subtracting the errors I had made. I was unfamiliar with the keyboard and wanted to slide the carriage over, but there was no carriage to slide. I was ready to walk out and never come back. To my surprise she said that didn’t matter for the work intended and I had a training session the following Thursday after I passed the drug screening. I was hired.
On this day 09/11/2001 I was rushing around getting ready for work. The Television set had the news as I always watched Good Morning America. They were going on and on about bombs and the Twin Towers. I paid little attention. I had to get Dakota ready for school and take him there. He was in the first grade at Hall Elementary. He had gone to Pre School for two years since his birthday was in October, whatever age you were the first day of September, even though he would turn six in October, he had to wait the following year when he was six in September to attend first grade. On the way to school he talked over and over about the bombing of the Towers in New York. I thought they were talking about the previous attempt some years before on the basement of the Towers so thought it being old news didn’t listen as carefully as I would have. In the car the radio blared constantly about the bombing and more information to come. I listened all the way to work and wished I had paid more attention when it was on TV.
Jenny had made the room as comfortable as she could, knew how I liked to tape my soap opera and Regis and Kelly during the daytime while I was at work. Everything I had owned was in a storage locker on the North Belt Highway. She set the VCR up and even had a small television set, twin bed and a night table for me and the things I liked to put there at night, a roll of toilet paper for blowing my nose, my nose spray and an alarm clock.
When I would get home at 5:30 I would rewind my shows and watch them, keeping to myself and out of the way as much as possible. It was crowded but comfortable. Her father-in-law, Dan, had been sleeping there but relinquished the room for me and stayed in a camper trailer in the back yard. Her son and daughter, Domenic and Kaitlyn stayed together in the same bedroom as they were under the age of five years.
I liked my new job it was so easy once I got the hang of where the letters were again on the keyboard. We mostly used the 10 key pads anyway so I didn’t have to use the letters much. When E mail became popular though, we had to start getting their e mail addresses too and boy, talking about hunt and peck! I was soon pecking with the best of them, using one finger on one hand and two on the other. I’d get some serious looks from teenagers who had typing and computers in high school. I was almost fifty years old and it had been a long time since I had sat in Daddy’s old Plymouth and typed out my stories on my most prized possession, the blue portable that Daddy had bought me for my birthday so many years ago. I cried and Daddy cried too. He had to go to bed to keep anyone from seeing him cry. He’d never want anyone to see him cry. I had never gotten anything for my birthday or Christmas that I had wanted because of the expense and never expected to get that typewriter. He had bought it in a second hand store in St Joseph when we lived on Johnson’s place a year before his death.

Dakota Takes A Fall 1999-2001

One day when Chuck and I were in the living room listening to the stereo, Chuck was practicing his Karaoke performance for Karaoke night at the bar, we heard screaming and yelling coming from the basement. We rushed to see what had happened and Dakota was covered with blood. His father had been asleep on the cot that Chuck usually slept on, when he was awakened by Dakota screaming. He had fallen off the last three steps leading to the basement as there was no railing there at the time and hit his head on the raised concrete surrounding the floor jack. Head wounds bleed easily and his head was gushing. Kelvin couldn’t stand the sight of the blood and told us to take him to the hospital in my convertible. Chuck held him while I drove out of the garage. Dakota was starting to feel a little better and fondling the dashboard and poor Chuck’s hair, covering everything he touched with the red gooey coagulation.
When we got to the emergency room the receptionist/nurse asked us, “Can I help you?”
Dakota and Chuck looked like the videos from the Vietnam War we used to see on the television screen from the sixties. They had dried blood in their hair, on their clothes but Dakota was certainly the worst and it was obvious he was the patient. I just looked at her staring blankly back at me as if I hadn’t just brought in a victim from the Vietnam War and said, “He fell down the steps and hit his head, he needs stitches.” I tried not to scream at her. She said the Doctor wanted to put staples in his head instead. Dakota, by this time, was playing and getting drinks at the water fountain to the other patient’s horror and just plain being his naughty self, getting into places he shouldn’t be and having us, mostly Chuck, chasing him down the hall. He had long gotten over the pain of his fall and the bleeding had stopped. He still had a long gash in his head and would still need those staples. The problem now was how do we hold him still long enough for the Doctor to do it?
By the Grace of the Almighty the staples were in and we could breathe a sigh of relief. I told the Doctor I was still a nurse according to the State of Missouri and instead of bringing him back to have the staples removed I could remove them myself as I had many times in other patients at the hospital. They gave me a staple remover and pretty much said “Go for it”.
About a week later when I was sure the site was healed I had Chuck hold him and I proceeded to remove the staples. The first few came out easily enough but the last two were deep and uncooperative. After enduring the screams of my little son and the grunts and groans of my older son I finally got them out. A railing for the stair case was added after that episode.
One morning at 5A Kelvin came in and woke me to tell me he was moving in with David. Alone again and on the prowl for happiness I couldn’t find.
By spring of 2000 he confessed to me he had been dealing and selling drugs again and wanted to keep me out of it and safe by moving out. He spent the whole summer at David’s house before the DSF came and put him in jail. I knew I needed a job so I applied for a Customer Representative answering phones at Aegis Communications Group. By September the 8th of 2000 the court decided Kelvin needed shock treatment and sent him to prison for 12 years.
I had too many bills to pay and not enough money to pay them all. 7.50 an hour was the starting pay. I had the rent and the utilities to pay, credit card bills I had had since I worked at the hospital and my car payment to GMAC. Not counting full coverage car insurance. We had spent his paycheck, the savings, and my last check, all of Dakota’s change and money we had put in an old milk jug that Kelvin had promised him we were going to use to take him to Disney World, all to try and pay his way out of jail just to find out it was only for a few weeks of freedom before he went to prison anyway. I struggled all year to pay the bills and keep up the payments. In the winter between 2000 and 2001 I started to pay half the rent to pay the gas bills at the same time. By July 2001 the landlord decided that wasn’t going to fly and told me I would have to move out.
I borrowed the money for my gas bill from my mother-in-law, about 500.00 which she gave me with no questions asked. I rented a storage unit for my furniture and moved in with Jennifer and her family on September 8th 2001.

Mischievous Dakota 1997-1998

When Dakota was two and a half years old his father picked him up and placed him inside the Blazer to go to wherever he went those days. I was outside on the patio getting ready to put the leashes on the dogs for one of our many walks to the park on 10th street. He started the truck and remembered he’d left his billfold in the house and slammed the door on the vehicle and went inside unbeknownst to me as I had my own agenda with the dogs. I had bought a little Shiatsu puppy from a breeder in Osborn after mourning the loss of the Pomeranian, Foxy who was never found after our trip to California. With our work schedules I was unable to potty train him properly so as he got bigger I had started leaving him outside in the fenced yard with Lassie. His name was Scruffy due to the long shaggy multicolored, buff and brown spotted hair all over his body. I looked up in time to see the truck lurch forward and head down the hill straight into the neighbor’s teal green Geo. The car was an exact replica of the one I had traded for the red Chevrolet convertible. I used to admire it from the window and missed my Geo Storm.
I stood wondering why he headed straight for the car as it seemed to be on purpose. I looked up and shaded my eyes with my hand to get a better view when I saw Kelvin come out of the garage with his mouth hanging open and knew immediately that Dakota had sent the car rolling down the street heading for Penn St.
The Blazer was pinned against the side of the Geo on the driver’s side heading South from 14th St. Kelvin ran to the truck to check on Dakota as did I. Dakota was crouched in the back floor board crying and waving his arms, sure that his Daddy was going to do him bodily harm as I was as well. Instead he told him to not to be afraid he was going to get him out of there. The neighbors came out of the house on the corner to see what the crash was about. The driver’s side of the Geo Storm was pushed in and the door wouldn’t open. Kelvin managed to separate the two vehicles. It was a young woman’s car who, like me, had adored her car but seemed to take the accident in stride and was very cooperative and understanding. The motor vehicle department sent Dakota a letter and said his license was suspended for 60 days! We got a laugh about that one since Dakota was only two and wondered if that would hurt his chances of getting a drivers license when he was sixteen.
There were other times that were trying with Dakota. He would run to the neighbor’s house on Penn street and play with the kids at an apartment building there. He had a Nintendo at home and discovered the phenomena was rampant in other kid’s homes as well. He was pretty good at it at the age of three . It was difficult for an adult to beat him.
There were times when we would turn our backs and he’d be gone. Kelvin would panic and call the police who would comb the area in their police cars, up and down alleys, every parking lot.
One day I was walking down the street two blocks over from our house looking in every yard and alley. There was no sign of him. I headed back home to find him in his father’s arms talking to a policeman who had found him in the lot a couple of blocks South surrounded by a high fence and guarded by a big German Shepherd. He said he was in there after climbing over the fence and playing with the big dog. He would climb trees and fences like he was born to a family of orangutans.
One day in the summer when he was 4 years old he disappeared and even the police couldn’t find him. I knocked on doors and walked and walked, Kelvin drove around and around the area. The police also drove around. No one had seen him. I finally stayed inside the house in case he were to come back on his own. I walked from window to window and door to door. It was a big house. It had three entry ways, one on the South side of the living room, one on the East side of the living room and one leading from the kitchen to the patio and the back yard on the North side. The last time I peeked out of the back door on the North side as a police car pulled up and the man said, “Isn’t that your boy there?” I looked and sure enough there was Dakota standing on the patio. I asked, “ Where did you find him?” He said “He came out of the play house.” He had been in the back yard the whole time, hiding.

Bullet Gets a New Home 1999

When the court said Kelvin had to get a job so he could have his child support debited from his check we lost the Social Security Disability that I had automatically deposited into the checking account. I was earning between 200.00 and 400.00 on my own with Care Givers and had to pay the bills with that. That money only came in every two weeks. Kelvin got a job working for Defenbaugh Industries in Johnson County Ks. He got up at 4AM, picked up his friend David, the second husband of Kelvin’s first wife and soon to be ex-husband. They were the best of friends and together they drove the long distance to work every day. David was the driver and Kelvin was the helper, the man who hung onto the side of the truck. They drove all over the Kansas City area picking up trash in residential areas. They worked until they got done, sometimes coming home in the middle of the day. They were paid by job so the pay was the same and he earned a weekly paycheck. Before coming home on Fridays he would stop at the bank and deposit an amount into the checking account minus the amount he needed for gas and lunches for the week.
When I got the news about Care Givers and the lost wages there, in January of 1999, I stopped looking for work as a nurse and decided to be a stay at home Mom for Dakota. I had lost so much of his early years when working for the hospital and with no references now for nursing I was at my wits end on what kind of job I could get now. The only job experience I had was nursing.
The boarder in Savannah had raised his rates for the stable I had been keeping Bullet, my horse, from 75.00 a month to 100.00 a month. Kelvin’s Cousin Kyle had a farm south of Faucett Missouri and asked us to put the horse there free of charge. We had to fence off the property with hot wire or portable fencing. There was a large barn and a free flowing creek running through the property from an underground spring, that meant no more breaking ice in the winter time as it never froze too hard that the horse couldn’t break it with his hooves himself. I had a lot of experience with fence building from years past, knew what to buy and we started right away. When the fence was up and the battery was installed I contacted Mr. Duncan and he put Bullet in the trailer and hauled him for me for a fee of 20.00. We unloaded Bullet at the next farm’s driveway where the barn was after receiving permission. I kept the tack, saddle, bridle, halter, brushes and blankets in the barn as well. I kept up the vaccinations and gave them myself now but it was hard to find a Ferrier for his feet. Kelvin knew a bull rider from Oklahoma who could keep his hooves filed but he was always on the rodeo circuit and very hard to find. When he did come around he would take his pointed cowboy boots and kick Bullet in the stomach if he flinched just a little. I always held the halter and talked to him to keep him calm. That only made the cowboy angrier because he said I had babied the horse too much and that was making it hard for anyone to do any work on him. I hadn’t had any complaints before. In the winter time we bought hay from neighboring farms and piled it in the Blazer about 10 bales at a time. We would have to go as far as Savannah to get hay as farmers, again, were not keen on parting with their hay. Every year they would say it’s going to be a hard winter and they needed the hay for their cattle just in case. No matter how warm the previous winter had been or the forecast for the present year it was “going to be a hard winter!” Past experience told me they were probably right but what would we do without hay?
In the summertime the lush green pasture at Kyle’s farm was a treat he hadn’t been used to since Mr. Duncan had several horses boarding there and green grass was far and in between. He had fed hay most of the summer and small amounts of grain. Bullet was always slim and trim, not skinny, but the saddle would stay on after a couple of tries. Now he was in Horse Heaven and became so fat and greasy the saddle slipped around and riding was near impossible. Every few minutes I would have to get off and retighten the saddle, walk him around, retighten again, ride for a few minutes and do it all over again.
In August of 1999 I placed the horse in the St Joseph paper and sold him at a loss of 500.00.

An Old Blacktop Road 1998

I usually worked from 2P until 10P when I was sent to this location. On this particular day I worked the day shift. At lunch time when everyone else was in the cafeteria I stayed on the floor waiting on new meds from the pharmacy to come for a new patient I had admitted. While waiting for the delivery another patient was out of Oxygen, her cylinder was empty and I was unsure how to take the top off and replace it on the new tank. After rolling the old tank to the storeroom and wheeling the new cylinder on the dolly we set the tank up and exchanged the top. I reset the gauge for the order for Oxygen flow just as the delivery of meds came. I had to count the medications and sign for them, start an IV on the new patient, which I hadn’t done in 7 years. The other LPN who came in to take over my shift at 3 P helped and together we got the line in her vein. The aide that was helping with the Oxygen had the tank ready and I finished my charting and gave report to the LPN. I drove home in the daytime for once. The sun was shining and I could see the winding turns on the old blacktop road. It was wintertime and the old route had no street lamps, the ditches were steep on both sides. One day they had assigned me to work back at the usual time of 2P-10P on New Year’s Eve. There was a lot of ice on the roads, the snow fell leaving 8 inches of the white slippery stuff everywhere. The newspaper headlines showed a car coming off interstate 29 to Northbound 169, sliding in a ditch and other such wrecks all over the city. I called Caregivers and said I wouldn’t work that evening because of the snow and ice. I didn’t want to try to make it to Stanberry, 50 miles away, on that blacktop road, and then try to make it home in the dark. We didn’t have cell phones and I wasn’t sure if Kelvin would come to rescue me that late at night when he always got up at 4A to go to work in Johnson County Kansas for Defenbaugh’s Trash Service. He went to bed at 7:30 in the evening and stayed there until he had to go to work the next morning. I worked PRN and that meant as needed. I didn’t have to work if I didn’t want to unless I needed the hours. If you didn’t go to work when they found work for you too many times then they would give jobs to other LPN’s who would. It was hard for them to find LPN’s to go to Stanberry because of the distance. On Monday I got a call from Caregivers telling me I was fired because I had an aide set up the Oxygen tank for the patient while I was busy with the delivery man from the pharmacy. It was against their policy for aides to remove the top paraphernalia on the old tank and place it on the new tank. The patient just wanted her Oxygen and was happy when the supply of Oxygen came flowing through the lines continuously as ordered. The aide and I had congratulated ourselves on a job well done! I found out later that the aide, being afraid they would fire her, had told administration that she had told me it was against policy, and that she wasn’t supposed to do it. The nurse was the only one that could. I believe it was the long trip on New Year’s Eve on an old slick black top Road I refused to travel that cold snowy night that was my downfall.

Kelvin and Oxygen Tanks 1998

In September of 1998, Kelvin got news that his step-father was in the hospital and was dying. The bone cancer had spread to his brain. They wanted to gather the family together so his family had purchased tickets for the plane ride back to Sacramento for him. He was to pick them up at the airport. He gathered his bags and was gone.
When he came back the relationship was strained even more and I stayed in the kitchen most of the time and Kelvin had set up cots in the basement for him and Chuck on opposite sides. Kelvin’s bed was next to the door leading to the outside and outside that door was a vestibule and steps leading straight up to the street. I slept in the big waterbed alone in the large bedroom. He came and went as he pleased sometimes staying out all night. One morning I couldn’t sleep. It was 6 AM and he wasn’t home yet. Soon I heard his Chevy Blazer pulling up to the curb outside the basement door. I went to yell at him and saw that he had been drinking which was no surprise. All his “buddies” had gotten back together again and he was on a down hill spiral.
One morning about 2AM I awoke to yelling and started to the basement to see what was going on. Upon entering the stairs I could hear and man and a woman’s voice so I started down and yelled, “What is going on here?” I could see a half naked girl and her boyfriend was wailing away at Kelvin on the bed who made no attempt to fight back and appeared to still be sleeping. He was using an old broom handle and was putting large red whelps all over Kelvin’s back. When I asked again what was he doing he said he came down the steps to the vestibule and opened the door to the basement and caught her, his girlfriend, in bed with Kelvin. Kelvin appeared to be asleep and only groaned when the broom handle slapped against his back repetitively. She constantly sang her song of nothing happened and continued to put her blouse back on. I told them to both leave and never come back and told “Linda” never to call him again. When they finally left and I could get Kelvin awake long enough to talk, he said he didn’t do anything and was asleep and too drunk to do anything anyway. She had come down the steps from outside and let herself in. I’m sure he unlocked the door for her because I had checked that the door was locked when I went to bed at midnight, Kelvin was already home and said he was going to sleep. Chuck said he didn’t know anything and had been asleep on the other side when she came through the door. He said he didn’t see anything and didn’t hear anything until her boyfriend, who had followed her there from the bar, came in and started yelling and looking for something to beat Kelvin.
They never called or came over anymore. The boyfriend kept leaving messages all over town that he was going to kill Kelvin and ended with a Malta Cocktail thrown at the motorcycle I had bought and on a different occasion set the roof of the Blazer on fire, inspiring a police cruiser to stop and wake us up one night to let us know his truck was on fire. The motorcycle was almost destroyed but he paid someone he knew to repaint and replace the wiring. It was as good as new. The police was able to put out the fire on his truck’s roof.
After the death of Emily, Caregiver’s had me back in nursing homes to work. Every nursing home had a different policy on what to do so every time I moved to a different home I had to get used to new policies and what was acceptable in which nursing home.
When I had worked those six years at Heartland we had respiratory therapy to come in and change-out the Oxygen tanks. We had some but little training on the big tanks in nursing school almost 10 years before but we as nurses had the nurses’ aides switch the tanks when they became empty or we called respiratory therapy. Mostly the patients that needed Oxygen were on Oxygen concentrators that used the room air and never had to be replaced just the amount of liters adjusted to doctor’s orders. Only the nurses could adjust the amount of Oxygen. In nursing homes they rarely used concentrators and we dealt with the large steel cylinders. One day I was sent to Stanberry which is about 50 miles to the north of Saint Joseph, on a long, winding hilly black top, North Route 169.

A New Beginning 1993

The next two weeks were spent going to work, picking Kelvin up after work and going home to my trailer in Wathena. One evening after dropping Kelvin off at his apartment, I was sitting at the nurse's station getting ready for the evening's med pass, when a panicked Kelvin came off the elevator, stating," My apartment building burned last night and all my things are ruined!" His downstairs neighbor had been drinking and had gone to bed with a lit cigarette. The upstairs apartment above him, Kelvin's apartment, was smoke damaged. The fire had been contained in the closet where Kelvin had kept memorabilia such as pictures and letters from his mother. His clothes hanging in the closet were stained with water and the strong odor of smoke lingered on them, including his shirt he had gotten from his cousin Kyle, who had been in the Navy. Kyle had sent him a shirt from Singapore. It was a white shirt with blue Asian style designs on it and he was especially fond of that shirt. We had it cleaned and it was good as new. The firemen had gotten there quickly but deemed the apartment building uninhabitable. He had to find another place to live.
I didn't want to leave him hanging since he had no place to live, his family lived in Sacramento, California, so I told him he could live with me until he could find some place else to hang his shirt, so to speak. He thought about living with Kyle, now out of the service and settled with a new wife who was pregnant with their first child. I was hesitant in getting involved again so soon after the "fiasco" with Bill.
He never moved out and I liked having someone to come home to after work. He filled my head with tales of horror stories that were reminiscent of a Hollywood movie, action adventure. I should have listened and realized the things he was telling me were true, life experiences. I dismissed everything as I would after watching a television program, I could always turn off the set and go back to my real life and never think of it again, but this was a life he had lived.
He had a dog named Crusher. Crusher was a Pit Bull. He would only listen to Kelvin. He was a fighter and hated cats. He said he loved Pizza and would go crazy when Kelvin would show him a Pizza box. Kelvin took Crusher with him everywhere he went. One day he took Crusher outside, not having a fence around the yard and knowing his hatred for cats and other dogs, people etc, he had him tied up in the yard with a strong chain or cable. It was Summer time and in the summer in Missouri and Kansas the heat index can quickly get over 100 degrees and the humidity was thick as a blanket on a cold winter's night. It was 10:00 in the mornig when he put Crusher outside. The phone rang in the house. He ran inside to answer it. It was a buddy wanting to reminisce about the goings on of the previous night. He said he was on the phone for about 45 minutes. Off the phone, finally, he went back outside to get Crusher. It was already getting excruciatingly hot, Crusher was used to being in the house with air conditioning. He found his dog lying on the ground, barely breathing. He rushed him to the veterinarian's office. Crusher had died of heat prostration. The vet said because he was used to air conditioning, the period of exposure to the heat was more than he could bear. It was a long time before Kelvin could wrap his mind around the death of his best friend. He knew others who left their dogs outside all year round. They had gotten used to the gradual rise in temperatures or the sudden drop to below zero weather in the Winter time that the Midwest experienced. I had always kept Pebbles in the house when it was too hot or too cold. Our other dogs and cats were usually kept outside, Charles wouldn't allow them inside, but they had access to barns or sheds, trees that provided adequate shade. Kelvin lived in the city where it was hotter than the country, the heat from the buildings, pavement and cement kept the temperature at least ten degrees hotter or more.
In January of 1993 Lee ann, who lived in the trailer park by the Belt Highway, told us about the trailer in the park that was a double wide. It was very nice inside and out. There was barely a yard. It was 375.00 a month. I didn't know how I was going to pay that high of rent when the rent I was paying for the "cardboard" box I was living in was 175.00 a month, uncertain every month how I was going to come up with that. Kelvin said his disability check would start coming in March. We could use that to pay the rent and all I had to pay would be the utilities. It had central airconditioning, and a good furnace for the Winter. It was insulated and very warm.
While I was at work I got a call from Kelvin who said the move was done, and I just had to go to the new trailer when I got off work. It was so pretty. It still had the new trailer smell, new cabinets. A built in washer and dryer. No more laundromats for me!
In the Spring we bought roses and gladiolas for the scant yard. Kelvin built a fence around it for Pebbles.He spent his days planting the roses. We watched the flowers grow and bloom. A man he knew that lived in the trailer court worked for a construction company and helped Kelvin build a deck leading up to the front door. I bought a swing and he hung it on the deck for me.
In March he asked me to marry him one night, lying in the bed after love making. I questioned his sincerity of the matter due to the timing of the proposal. He said he felt as if I had saved his life the night of the apartment fire. If I hadn't taken him home to be with me, he would have been asleep in the bed. He couldn't go to bars anymore or get into any trouble due to his parole. The firemen said if he had been home he would have died of smoke inhalation. He said he loved me and didn't want to live without me ever.