Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness around the world.

April 25, 2006

Today’s announcements

A very special Happy Birthday goes out to Joy Taylor

Now onto the good stuff!

Today’s Queue Stories

~**~**~

"Real Women Don't Do Housework"

And other conflicting falacies of Reality...

 Jan Verhoeff

You've been there, in that moment when time warps through your normally calm, cool, collected self and beats a pattern of redundancy on your brain while your children focus intently on the malignant pose of refusal to meet your desires.

Obedience.

It's what childhood rejects.

A tense moment when I asked the kids to get started on their chores so we can spend a portion of the next day packing to leave, resulted in chaos and mayhem. Work had proven too much, my websites (the ones I had worked so hard to make a profit from for several months) were suddenly hacked and missing. Totally and completely MISSING.  As I sat there facing the reality that we weren't going to be ready to leave at the appointed time, stress increasing and mentally imploding, I contacted the airport for new ticket times.  I gave us another day.

I quickly rebuilt my websites, using online readily available content from a free ezine publication source (I'd tell ya where, but then I'd have to kill ya). Then I tried again, using a different tactic.

In order to be ready to go, I need whatever chores are still incomplete, done. I'm going to give you an hour to get them done and I'll start packing. If your chores aren't done and you don't have clean clothes, your rooms picked up, and the house reasonably organized, I'll call and cancel the trip and we can just stay home.

My loving daughter rolled her eyes and went back to the book she was reading, one leg swinging pendulously over the arm of the chair she was sitting in, the other folded under her and hidden from sight. My son picked up another boy scout folder and started sorting through his collection of Boys Life Magazines. They were scattered across the coffee table and much of the couch while his defiant little face looked on, viewing their exteriors and ignoring me. My other son sat placidly in front of the computer clicking on a video game that kept boinking, popping, and recoiling in my head. Every tick of the clock grew louder as I worked my way through that hour. I had finished packing my duffle for the flight, and sat it on the floor by the front door. There was an entire collective sigh as I walked back through the room and clicked on the computer. I had work to finish.

I IM'd my friend online and told her to play along on the phone call I was about to make. Thirty minutes of halting sighs and collectively rolled eyes later, I made the call.

"Hello. Yes, you may help me. I need to cancel some tickets."

"Yes, confirmation number 34QRS7384472, I need to cancel three of the seven tickets." I paused for effect. "Yes, that leaves 4 in the cabin."

"Okay, the additional charge will be deducted from the refund?" I waited a moment longer, four faces peered up at me as if I'd lost my mind. "Oh, I can pick up the refund at the registration desk?" I asked. "Good, I'll have more cash for my trip. Than you." I babbled on.  "Okay, repeat that confirmation number please? 71RSL2283715, Thank you so very much."  I hung up the phone and immediately redialed. 

"Carmen, can you watch the kids for four days over the weekend?" Pause. Carmen is saying, "Sure what are you doing?"

"I had planned a trip and was going to take the kids, but they have decided not to go." I paused again. "Yeah, just kid stuff, I guess. I'll bring their school work with us, and I'm going to give them some extra reports and stuff to write so they'll be busy, you won't have to do too much while they're there. Maybe wash some clothes, or they can wear their dirty clothes, they don't seem to care much." The kids were moving from their positions, one of them actually attempting to get my attention as he began to put away his boy scout folders. "Well, yeah... I would assume they'll wish they'd gone, when I get back. I'll have pictures and there's always the stories. I never go without running into some celebrity or political figure."

Activity in the house was at the rate of warp speed. I heard the washer come on and saw more motion than I'd seen in a month. Click. I hung up the phone.

"Mom, I'm not staying with Carmen." My daughter spoke up.

"It appears you have no choice." I responded flatly and went back to work on the job at hand.

"There's nothing to do there. I'll be bored to death." She rolled her eyes again.

I wondered. Do girls just wake up at the age of 15 with rolling eyeballs and that bored forever look on their faces?

My son was muttering, "If we had a Dad that cared enough not to abandon us, we'd have someone to stick up for us." He finished his work and carried his belongings back to his room. As he wondered back through he pointed his finger at me and said, "If you'd married someone who cared we would have a Dad who listened to us."

"It's not my fault your father contributed to a gene pool he had no intention of sticking around to raise." I muttered the words under my breath, wishing I could state them outloud.

"Like the sperm donor who abandoned us would make a difference anyway?" My younger son was busy packing the clothing he had just carried in from his room into a duffle with his own name tag on it. "Mom was going to take us with her, until we refused to get ready." His realization of what was going on was astounding. "She might be able to get those tickets back if you'd just stop grumbling and get ready to go."

I focused on my work, finishing the job at hand, listening out of the corner of my ear.

"Sperm donor?" My daughter breathed out the one phrase that had caught her attention. "I suppose that's right!" I could hear her eyes rolling as she wrapped her mind around that thought. "A walking, talking, two inch test tube of semen with bad attitude - perfect description for the prick who walked out on us." She nudged her brother as she walked past him a few moments later.

"Well, it really is about time we realized that Mom has been here and cares about us. We keep misbehaving, and it isn't her fault." He spouted wisdom far beyond his years. "He's always spouting how mom should have married someone who cared, and didn't abandon us. Well, he not only abandoned us, but he abandoned Mom too." The house got silent as they finished their tasks and began to fold clothes and pack them into duffles that would be carried onto the plane later.

"I guess maybe instead of blaming Mom for our troubles, we need to start focusing on the good stuff we have and the fact that she cares and hasn't abandoned us." The older one of the boys was commenting now, not mumbling. "It's really not fair for us to abandon Mom because we get upset about him leaving. He wasn't very nice to us when he was here."

"He was a big jerk dummy who expected Mom to just wait on him." The younger one sized him up in a couple of words. "Oh yeah, he worked, but all he did at home was yell at us and tell us to go to bed. It wasn't like he wanted to spend any time with us or anything."

"He even told Mom that she was forcing him to spend what little time he did spend with us." My daughter with the rolling eyes remembered. "The only times he ever spent with us were when he wanted to show us how smart he was."

"He was a door knob." The younger one piped up again, rolling his own eyes. "I remember when he took us to feed the ducks, one time, he kept telling us how to toss just one cracker and make them fight over it, instead of letting us have some crackers to give them. He wanted to control the whole duck thing, and we just wanted to feed the ducks like we did when mom took us." His voice took on a less sarcastic note. "He seemed awfully shocked that we'd been there before, when he was telling us every little thing to do and we finally said, 'Dad, Mom brings us here almost every time we're in Pueblo, it's not like we don't know how to feed the ducks.' And he said, 'You guys have been here before?' Duh, yeah, you think she just makes us ride around in the car and do nothing?"

"Yeah, he finally got the balls to go with us and thinks he's god because he suggests feeding the ducks." The boys are on a roll. "He takes us to the store and buys one box of crackers, which he puts under his arm at the park and pulls out one tube, eating half of them, and telling us to pull one cracker out at a time, and watch the ducks play and fight over it."

"It was kind of like when he'd leave every morning for work and tell us to 'torment Mom today'. He got his pleasure from watching others suffer." My daughter spoke up again. "He was a real sick puppy."

I watched in the mirror behind my desk as I typed. She wiped away a tear, and another, and another dripped off her cheek and left a dark spot on her red t-shirt. 

"Mom, I'm sorry we don't listen and do what you tell us to do." My younger son crawled onto my lap at the computer desk. "We get upset that we don't have a Dad, and forget to appreciate that we have a Mom." 

"Me too. Mom, I'm sorry. Sometimes I get selfish and think about all the stuff I don't have, instead of appreciating what I do have." My older son was looping one arm around my neck and standing close by. "We really should be appreciating you and working hard to help you out, instead of being resentful and whiney and making you do extra work."

"I really don't want to stay at Carmen's. She has no TV and her kids are disgusting." A rolling eyed teenager stepped into the fray and started talking. "Do you think we could get the other three tickets back? She probably won't notice if our clothes are dirty, they'll be cleaner than anything at her house."

I cocked my head to look at her.

"Okay, that was bad, because she's not really dirty, just weird." She agreed, grinning.

"I didn't cancel the tickets." I admitted. "But... I'm not going to continue tolerating this apathetic behavior. Either you get it together and start doing what you're asked or I start taking privileges."

I glanced around the room, mostly in order again, and their clothes either washing or packed and ready to go. "Now, go finish your chores so I can finish this job and deliver it before we leave. Scoot!" I swatted the youngest one on the behind as he scampered away to finish his packing and get ready to go.

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~**~**~

The Fight At The Gas Station

 Richard Sims

My wife and I were getting ready to go on a trip, we  was down at the gas station filling up our van minding our own business, when these two guys drove in, they started laughing and pointing at us. So I ask them what was so damn funny?

Then the big guy gets out of his car, tells me that my wife is fat and I am ugly,

so I said well hell Buddy have you looked in the marrow lately your face

looks just like your butt, then I said no I take that back your butt is better

looking and it's got a hell of a crack in it too!

Then it elevated into a full scale fight, the big guy was punching me out with

his face just trying to beat up my fist. Then the city police came and after

talking to the clerk at the station they hauled the big guy off in the police car.

Now I have bandages on my fist where that big guy beat me up with his face,

and no one called the doctor to see about my poor beat up fist. I just don't

know what this world is coming too, with big mean guys running lose beating

people's fist with their faces. My word!!!

About Me

I am Richard D. Sims 48 years old, I was born in a small town called Granby, the oldest

mining town is Southwest Missouri. I am the youngest out of five children ( The Brat )

I am just a simple back woods country boy, I wear Dan post western style boots and

western shirts, wrangler jeans and my black western hat. I am a jack of all trades yet

a master of none, I have found out I can do most anything and what I can't do I am willing

to learn.

Poetry Section

~**~**~

Relax and Enjoy!

Joyce C. Lock

Don't close a door that isn't closed.

Don't try to pry open a door that is bolted shut.

God has everything under control,

He will do the most loving thing possible,

and He makes all things beautiful in time.

So, relax, live, and enjoy today ...

and let God take care of the rest.

© by Joyce C. Lock

~**~**~

Report for Duty

Joyce C. Lock 

When praying, "God, help me,"

We appear before Him as a victim.

In standing before God with such questions as,

"What would you have me do?" ~

We are reporting for duty.

The battle does belong to the Lord.

Though, we're a part of His army.

When we take the step God provides,

He does the rest.

© by Joyce C. Lock

~**~**~

  Sharing the Joy

Joyce C. Lock

Share your seed and watch it grow.

Then, you'll know the joy of giving.

Share yourself and your whole life.

Then, you'll know the joy of living!

~ * ~ 

I have no greater joy than to hear

that my children walk in truth.

3 John 1:4

© by Joyce C. Lock

http://iam.homewithGod.com/glimpsesofgod/

This article & or poem may be used in their entirety,

with credits in tact, for non-profit ministering purposes.

Senior Writers

Chief writer: Sharon Bryant

Agee, Vance; Apted, Violet; Baker, Kathy; Batt, Al; Berry, Nell; Blaine, Pamela; Boda, Ginger; Buhagiar, Victor; Cassady, B.J.; Cavalera, Robyn; Crider, Mark; Deming, Barb; Doherty, Maria; Gilbert, Robert, Jr.; Goodier, Steve; Braun-Haley, Ellie; Harris, Kathy Anne; Hunt, Sharlett; Hymes, Christina; Jacobson, Gary; Kiser, Roger Dean; Kerens, Claudia; Kevin, Tim; Jenkins, Pamela; Liles, Norma; Lily Jodi Flesberg; Lock, Joyce; Marlor, Janice Bumbalough; Mazzella, Joe; Morris, Deepak; Ojeibge, Georgewaters; Petry, Dianna Doles; Roberts, Susan; Shiveley, Debra; Shaw, Bob; Sims, Richard; Streidel, Saskia; Swarner, Ken; Vaknin, Sam; Verhoeff, Jan; Walker, Bill; Walker, Joe; Warner, Gordon, K; Walsh, Sue; Weymouth, Barbara J.; Whirity, Kathy;

Wainland, David; Westerfer, Clara; White Robert;

Storytime Tapestry Staff

Carol Roach - Founder/publisher

Thelma Hartselle - Co-Founder, Moderator

Clara Westerfer – moderator

Bob Johnston - moderator