a Bit about Me.

My Life
I married Mike in 1963. It was the end of his senior year and the end of my junior year. We were 17 & 18 years old. We both came from dysfunctional families and we were determined to have a family of our dreams. We had two daughters., 5 ½ years apart. Mike started working in Pipeline construction that his family had done a couple of generations before him. He was adopted by this family at the age of 4. I was from a family of 8. My father was an alcoholic and my Mother was a stay at home, could not drive, no income very tolerant woman. I was determined to break the chain of addiction that ran in my family. As it turned out the family I married into was as bad or worse than the one I grew up in.
Mike and I grew up together. He had a lot of the old fashioned ideas of his grandfather. A woman shouldn’t work…ect. Getting married was the only goal I had . Pipeline const is a seasonal job and there was never enough money to get us thru to the next job. It was okay for me to work at something that would supplement us until the next job and then I would quit and be a stay at home mom. I worked as a waitress at the local restaurant many different years. Never had any training and never started a career. Looking back it just seems like life happened. My Mom had a stroke, I moved into the house with Mother and Daddy to take care of her. That was in 1991. I moved her and Daddy into a nursing home two years later. None of the 5 siblings I have were willing to help. Daddy died in 1997 and Mother in 2000. I always stayed at home though the school years. The kids and I traveled to wherever Mike was working in the summers. We have been in every state except Hawaii and to Old Mexico and Canada. There were lots of good times. In many ways I have had a blessed life. We just never seemed to accomplish much. We had a house (built on land left to us by Mikes folks) that had never been finished. We camped a lot. Mike liked to hunt and fish and we lived his life. As time passed , I found myself almost re-living my Mother’s life. I was married to an alcoholic and had no training to be able to support myself. I have two grown daughters who do not want to raise their children in that invirment . I felt a need to set a better example for them to follow.
I was broken hearted to learn that my husband of 40 years would rather move than make any changes about his drinking. Family gatherings had become big drama events because of his drinking. The kids began refusing to gather at our house. In 2003 Mike agreed to move into what we call the camp House. It is just down the road on the other end of our property. We agreed that if either of us felt a divorce was necessary we would do the simple changing of deeds. He went back to work and I also got a job. The same one I have now. I stay with a wealthy Lady in Dallas who is in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s. I’m going on my third year there and she and I are both better than when I started. I still don’t know how I got to where I am. I just know that it is not all that bad. Mike has been working in Houston now for 2 years. He has continued to pay the regular bills and his union retirement gets deposited into our account. We have managed to stay friends and talk almost daily. He has saved enough money to build himself a cabin across the creek and I have been able to finish the house I live in. That is if you ever really get finished on your home. Seems I keep a project going all the time. I love working in the yard , I think that is a start as to telling you who I am………right now.