OK. This is awkward. I have been wanting to post but nothing seems "worthy" of a first debut official post.
So...... I'll skip the "premiere" debut and just get right down to business.
I have been sentenced to 2 1/2 years in solitary confinement. Where you ask? Colton, WA (12 miles out of Pullman, WA.). Why, you ask? I am still asking this question. My sentencing should be up pretty soon. I am hoping for early parole. I wanna get out of this place in June. Things are looking up.
Before my sentence I was living a busy, full life in Portland. I had it all going for me. Then, it all changed. Now I live in a town of 300 people. No stop lights. no stores. not even a gas station. We do have a library and a catholic church. I have 1 friend. A good friend. An amazing friend. She lives down the street from me. She pretty much is the reason I talk most days (well, I always talk to myself but she gives me a reason to, like, actually talk). She has 9 chickens. OK, she HAD 9 chickens. That is after the raccoon came and attacked one in the middle of the night. They found it dead in the morning, all torn up with guts everywhere, and she had her 12 year old son take it out to the fields, behead it, and leave it for the coyotes. I must have had shock on my face because she smiled and continued to tell me that they had a dog once that was very old, and she sent her boys out to the fields with the old dog, and a shot gun in hand. She said they popped him one to his head and did him a service by putting him out of his misery. My eyes bulged out, I giggled nervously. Her son came in right then wanting to show me a project he had done. He is my favorite of them all. He has white, blond hair, just like my boys. He has big blue eyes and just this classic country boy thing about him. He mostly always has dirt on his face, ragged and dirty shirts that are paired with shorts in the winter and his mud boots that were most likely worn by his 3 older brothers. He placed a raccoon skin on the table and said he skinned a raccoon and was now working on it. To be honest, I have no idea what he said he was doing to it. I was stuck on the "I skinned a raccoon" part. But he was proud. He quickly said to his mom he was going to send it to his brother that is on a mission. Oddly enough, I bet his older brother would love to open that raccoon skin and hang it proudly on his missionary wall, reminding him of home! Not so sure what his missionary companion would think though.
My kids are over at the Jackson's home like everyday. That is their name, the Jackson's. Seems very fitting of them. It just fits. They have 5 boys and a girl. The girl, Emily, is their last. My friend, Mrs Jackson, said she cried when she found out it was a girl. I am not sure if she cried because she didn't know how to do girls or if she cried for poor Emily coming into a family with all boys. Not just any boys. Real, 100%, country boys. Guns, dirt and all. Mrs Jackson was in labor for 2 full days with Emily, it was a tragic labor for sure! Emily can fend for herself. She was over at my house talking to me just straight about chicken guts she saw and how her cat ran off and a coyote ate her up. She is a kid where you don't need to have the "death" talk to. She sees animals come and go all the time at her house. It's no big deal. And she talks like it's no big deal. She can see animals beheaded and not blink, but that one time she was eating at my house and a piece of corn got mixed in with her mashed potatoes, that called for some serious gagging and near vomiting!
The Jackson's are the most loving, big hearted family you will ever meet. Mrs Jackson (that is what I am calling her on this blog) is like the coolest person I have ever met. She is real. Real as they come. She doesn't sugar coat anything, she can't. She has 6 kids to feed and like 50 animals to take care of.... OK, not 50, but it sure feels that way to city girl me. She never says no to my kids, although I tell her time and time again to slap them and send them home. But she just can't. She has the inability to say no, and the word "selfish" isn't in her vocabulary. I drive by and there are kids like pouring out of her house. People ask her to watch their kids and before you know it she is watching like 20 kids at once plus her own. There are kids, animals, dirt, trampolines, chickens and all sorts of craziness over there. I am pretty sure she invented the nursery rhyme "there was an old woman who lived in a shoe, she had so many children she didn't know what to do..", but lets take the "old" out and add "nice"! My kids are over there so much they kinda blend in now, dirt and all! She is a big softy but also hard as a rock. She has been through it all. She has taught me so much in just the 2 years I have lived here.
In our first house we lived at in Colton (yes, I have lived in 2 homes here, don't remind me), I could look out my kitchen window and see the Jackson's home. They were right across the street. I had a perfect view of their 2 trampolines and all the dirt piles. The dirt piles, ugh, my Nemesis. I had never seen shoes get so dirty until I moved here! I swear dirt doesn't exist in the city. But out here there is dirt no matter where you go. I grew so tired of having my boys nice school shoes black with mud and dirt and who knows what else so I ran to Walmart (walmart is another post in itself) and picked up some "mud boots". I quickly told the boys I got them some new "mud boots" and they were to wear these when playing outside.
Within 5 minutes or so I hear screaming, which isn't unusual, so I just ignore it. Half the time out here I have no clue where my kids are. Let me paint a better picture for you, just picture miles and miles of rolling wheat fields surrounding a couple houses. Picture a nice breeze blowing by that house with the sound of wind chimes on the porch, nothing else, just the sound of wind chimes and maybe kids laughing. Now picture a woman, wearing an apron walking out on the porch and ringing the supper bell, calling out to her children because she has no idea where they have run off to because she doesn't have to worry because this is a very very very very small town and no one in the world even knows it exists. That's this town. (but I wasn't that woman though... I don't wear and apron and I don't have a dinner bell. But I totally should get those....). Okay, back to someone screaming. Makenzie, my sweet 7 year old blond daughter, runs in the house and screams "the boys are stuck in the mud!!!". I look out and there are my twin boys up to their knees in mud. They are in the middle of one of the huge dirt piles! Well, I know for sure that I am not going to be the one to get them, no way. I wave to one of the Jackson boys to rescue my boys. They roll their eyes, as they should, put on their boots and basically swim through the dirt to get my boys. My boys came out but not their boots, those were stuck solid for a while. After the incident I gave it to my boys "why would you do that? Why would you ever think to walk in that huge quicksand of mud??!?!" The boys had a look of confusion on their faces. they said "you gave us MUD boots!" Ever since I have called them "your play outside and try to avoid mischief" boots.
I have so much more to write about, and I will. But for now my baby is up from his nap and I must continue my day of doing nothing in this town of isolation.
You have no idea. No idea.
