Who do you think I am?

10/7/09 Wednesday
It’s a chilly morning. Winter is on the way for sure. Today I must see the VA representative as he wasn’t in his office yesterday. I did get the discovery request in to the court yesterday. Cherie brought home another wonderful meal from our church family. We’re getting spoiled with these fantastic meals and are looking forward to eating the leftovers. Especially the chicken casserole we had Monday. We’ll need to inquire about the recipe on that one.

I’ll go back to chopping weeds and preparing garden beds for next year. Learned the hard way that I need to spend all winter getting ready for spring planting. Not doing so put me way behind this year and I never caught up. We are anxiously waiting for the yearly CRP check as that allows us to purchase seed and supplies for next year. Plus it’s when we pay all of our taxes. There will be some inheritance money coming from dad’s estate. Actually it’s from my grandmother on my dad’s side of the family, funds he had control of regarding it’s disbursement. I don’t know how much for sure but know about an amount that he had offered years ago, through my brother Larry. I refused to sign for it unless I could talk to dad in person so never received it. My desire to talk with dad was more than my desire for money despite the fact that I was homeless at the time. It was a confusing time with the effects of the brain injury much greater then. I carefully asked my sister about that, terribly afraid it would be seen as a greedy selfish insensitive thing to bring up.

I am perhaps overly conscious of my image, of how they perceive me. But I know that for the most part I am a stranger to my family, a stranger with a precarious history. Even though I lived in St Louis a year after my brother picked me up from the hospital, he never took the time to get to know me, and even if he had I was such a mess from the brain damage it wouldn’t have given him a true picture. I so want to be accepted and liked by my family. And I so want to dispel notions and perceptions that I suspect exist that I am walking on eggshells. A problem is I only suspect these notions and perceptions but don’t really know what is really there. So it all could be an overworked imagination coupled with a touch of paranoia. What I do know for sure is what my brother wrote and said, and that wasn’t good, so I have to think he relays that to the rest of the family. I’ve got my work cut out for me, to erase a lifetime of mistakes and non communication. Plus I’m still restoring memories. I couldn’t remember many good times in my childhood but when mom showed me the models dad had built it brought some back. Dad had taught me how to build models and it was a joy we shared. I would build model boats, he put in steel shot for ballast, and we would take them to the farm and float them on the lake, where Larry and I would shoot them with the 22. We had a lot of fun on that farm.

So it’s back to here and now. We hope to drill a new water well with any funds we get. The transmission on my truck is starting to slip badly so that needs to be replaced. Then we hope to travel to Toledo where I can catch up on my two boys and many friends, particularly my former secretary’s family. Perhaps I can help Suzie access her mom’s life insurance. Also, Toledo, or northwest Ohio, is a great place to pick up used farm equipment at fantastic prices so I hope to get things vital to running this farm.

That’s it for now. Always work to do.