kittycelt's blog: "IMPORTANCE LEVEL: HIGH"

If I had known 15 years ago what I know now, I never would have taken her up onn that offer. I never would left the only place i call home, the desert and the mountainsi love so much, heat and all.
    Well come the first of July we pack everything we own into a ryder truck and the van, say our goodbyes and hit the road for california. Boy if i had know what i was getting tinto it never would have happened. We got here july 3rd. July 5th Stan goes back to work for dominoes, and 3 days later the brakes go out on the van, stan has no way to work....so now waht do we do. were leaving in a trailer in his sisters backyard, in a house that even hoarders would be afraid to touch. low and behold the tow compnay his brother-in-law works for quits on them....so instant job Stan becomes a tow truck driver. Now I've been listening in horror to his sister tell tales about tow truck drivers and the groupies. I already caught him cheating once, i dont trust him at all and I'm hearing all these stories. My jealousy goes into overdrive. i buy a scanner so i can keep track of him. Meanwhile life isnt so peachy, His sister and i dont get along, i try to clean her house and it ends up with us being homelss in a hotel while we try to find a place to live. tomaake matters worse, 2 days after he starts driving for thee tow company, we lose all our money, food stamps his drivers license and pager for work. So his mom finds us an aprtm,ent in a drug hood but for the moment it better then nothing. Drugs getting sold out in the open a shootout over my sons head, i say enough is enough and talk to the media....wrong move....next thing i know i have cps at my door. the boys go to a neightbors for the night ans stan and i stay up all cleaning the house. the boys ocme home ...all is good. Nope, next thing my inkow someone throws a molotovie coktail in our van....we now have no transportation except the tow truck, life is great fun with a 2 year old and 4 year old in the cab of a tow truck. THen to make matters worse, i have a broken arm, the flu, the neighbors apartment flooded into the boys bedroom, i have laundry everywhere, erin decides to potty train and leaves a dirty diaper on the bathroom floor, we have a kitten who is litter box trained that goes behind our corner unti aand speakers to take a dump, and no one has ever moved the stove to clean under....so what happens.....here comes cps again...this time theyre looking for drugs and guns. guns we have, locked up safe and tight in the guncabinet with the ammo locked in a seperate drawer...but not drugs....they find a dirty house with the abovementioned items and even though my arm is in a cast and they can see im doing launry, the kids are well fed and taken care, they take the kids for a week, we have to go to court and i have cps up in my house once a week to make sure it stays sterile. judge orders mental health eval for me but cps never follows through with it.along come march and some moron decides to shoot at a dog that is in front of a bedroom that some kids are sleeping in....thats it, ive haad enough were moving. This is after the boys and i get back from spending a lovely week in arizona with my mother. we getlucky and find a townhouse in a quiet area. the landlord happens to keep a police scanner and wehn she heard that the rport on the scanner wa where we were living, she moved us in right away. we had a car now, dad had bought us one when they came to vosit for thanksgiving in the mudst of all the drama. so where moving everything with a little 2 door sedan and the tow truck as quickly as we can. the last day we are there, the health deparment comes in to ur aprtment and condemns the complex...what a laugh...and it was actually because of us because cps called the health department.
    we get all settled in and cps stops coming around as much. but with the other aprtments being condemned we let a coupl  and their children stay with cuz we couldnt see the kids on the street, DISASTER#1. neither did anything, didnt help with the bills or food but went out to eat and not taking us, wouldnt get a job...so boom stan says out you go. here comes july again. 2 years 4 moves later and im seriously regretting coming to california. and my mental status is going from bad to worse. Mom comes and takes me and the boys to see robin and bobi and robin and i make peace at long last and had a really great time. My big heart, and dumb brain, DISASTER#2 here comes barts sister,and her 2 kids. She at least cleaned. But she also liked tow truck drivers. Soon enough her husband joins us and he at least got a job. Halloween rolls around and they up and disappear...poof. Things settle into a somewhat normal routine and are going along peacefully...when I get a cancer scare and decide that WE are going to quit smoking. No problem for Stan...me, theres a problem it lasts about a month then im sneaking smokes in the bathroom. I finally tell Stan and decide than 1201 January 1. 1999 im through, quit, done. The house is amazingly clean. Things are going along and here comes January 15th...the start of the further descent into hell. Im watching Erakas girls so she can ride with allen and spend some time with him. the phone rings and i answer it the rest of the night goes something like this...."Is this Laura McAllister...Yes, it is...The is the Fresno Police Department. I'm sorry to tell you but your husband has been in a serious accident and is on the way to the hospital with serious injuries." Click I yell everyone get your coats on now a i run next door and beg them for a cigarette. I get the kids all loaded up and haul ass to the hospital. I leave them in the car and run in, but hes not there...ok, so somehow i beat the ambulance . i go back out tot he car and wait for the ambulance to get there...schreech...heres one of the tow drivers, he jumps out bawling like a baby, im so sorry im so sorry....my panic level is rising...where in the hell is he? they took him to a different trauma center and im supposed to go back to the aprtment and wait for eraka to come get the kids and allen will take me to the hospital...i beg a couple of cigs from him and haul ass back to the house....im pacing, calling my mom and his mom and trying not to freak out the kids. eraka gets there, takes all the kids and i snag a couple of cigs from her. Allen drives a big flatbed you can hear coming a mile away, im in the cb damn near before he get it stopped. i grab his cigs and asks what hes hes waiting for. he hits is lights, runs every red light to the freeway and makes it just under 10 miles in a little over 5 minutes. im out of the truck before he has it stopped. i get in and after a couple minutes of lost looks and me in neaar hyesteria, they figure out he is in xray and take me to his room.. They let allen back and we both pace. allen fills me in on what happened as far as he knew...Stan had his truck parked facing into traffic was standing beside the truck, trying to lift his floor jack down when this car comes barrelling down the street hits stan in the side, rolls him between the car and the truck and tosses him under the back of the truck. A passerby stops gets in the truck on the radio and starts yelling for help. Well here comes stan out of xray, hapy because they had finally taken the c collar and back board off, but they have cut his clothes off his lower body is a solid mass of bruises, the worst of which i had yet to see, his ankle is HUGE and turned wrong and theres blood everywhere. He has a huge bandage on his side. We finally get xrays back and he has a spiral fracture of his right ankle. they move us to another room so they can put a splint on him. meanwhile here come all the drivers one or 2 at a time trying to keep my spirits up...alllen and i smoked a pack of cigs between the 2 of us in about 4 hours...doc loads stan up on pain killers, puts some staples in his side, splints his ankle, gives us crutches and finally sends us on our merry way. Now comes the funny...well not so funny then but it is now..part. Stan, who is not a little man, in the middle of january, in 2 hospital gowns, stoned out of his head on crutches, trying to climb up into the high ass cab of the tow truck...why no one thought to get a car i dont remember but we finally get him in the truck me in the truck and a much slower ride back home with me alternately crying and laughing, cuz the best part is yet to come...we have to get him OUT of the truck and into the apartment, thank God we had a town house....well allen manages to step on stans foot trying to help him in the house, at which point allen starts crying...we finally get him in the house, where he stumbles across the living room does a face plant on the couch and doesnt move. Allen gives me a pack of cigs and finally leaves. i get some blankets, get stan covered up, make a bunch of calls and then i collapse in the recliner...the next thing i remember is stan screaming cuz he has to go to the bathroom and keeps falling off the crutches...i go get the office chair from the kitchen and roll him to the bathroom, where even more fun is him rtying to stand and pee. one hand on the wal and one on a crutch. And thus beggins 8 months of hell and torture/
    I manage to get him out to the car annd back to the hospital for follow up where while checking over his xrays to decide what theyre going to do about his ankle, we find out hes fractured his pelvis...no more crutches its wheelchar time. They decide to do surgery in a couple of days outpatient so he can go home that night. Well we figure out my car isnt goinng to work cuz its a 2 door and very small. We arrange for another car to pick him up and get him home, another hialrious comedy of errors due to his drugged condition. i get him in the recliner with a urinal and i colapse on the couch. Well we sort of settle into a routine using the office chair and a crutch and him in the chair andme on the couch. and the beginning of child terrorism. the boys quickly realized that especially if mommy wasnt home they could get away with anything cause all they had to do was run up the satairs and daddy couldnt. I had moved our matress downstairs because he couldnt get up teh stairs and i couldnt sleep when he wasnt next to me. Then he got an infection and i had to give him iv antibiotics at home, which was fun because i had get up every 3 hours to give it tohim. that lasted about 2 weeks. slowly he started getting better, but had pain in his thighs that nobody could figure out. Finally they stuck a needle in and sucked out a bunch of liquified fat and blood. The accident left him with misshappen thighs and and hal a butt cheek missing due to the fat being squished. Having him around 24/7 started to get old real fast and we would fight...alot...so i started going out usually with eraka to drink and sing karoke. It got to be a routine. Then came Easter, Start of DISASTER#3...i get a phone call from mom telling me her and dad would by the next afternoon on their way to seattle, bobbis house had burned to the ground. Fortunately no one was hurt. My boys bless their hearets went through their room and made a box of toys for the kids and i got up early and hit the store and made up new Easter baskets for them. I was still doing all the driving and we drove out to the truck stop to meet them. It was a quick meal and they were on their way...here comes June again...by now im really hating march april and june.. i get a call from bobbi, shes pregnant and wants to come live with me....alarm bells ringing in my head...but i say go ahead. so now we have bobbi and her 3 kids living with us. we get her an apartment a couple of doors down that whole mess ended in disaster, now im starting to hate halloween too. Bobbi picks the kids up from school and disappears...were calling all the hospitals, the police everything cuz shes a very high risk pregnancy...nothing...vanished from the face of the earth. Phone rings aat 2 in the morning..mom...seems bobbi just showed up on her front door...she didnt like Californias rules for getting foodstamps and stuff and decided to go live with mom...dad comes out and we pack up her place and its goodbye and good riddance...no more helping anyone out.
    By this its decided that Stan willnever be able to drive a tow truck again so once again were back on disability payments andhes back in school. we get a bike for him to ride cuz now I have to go to work. I start working for Uahul..and things just seem to move along, Hes doing great in school, graduates and starts teaching at the same school...imove to a new job in uhaul....we muddle along take a trip ti arizona to see my brother get married...plan our 10 year anniveraary renewal of our vows, by now im in my third spot at uhaul and hes working for a technical temp company picking up whatever jobs he can. Robin and the girls come down for the wedding and mom and dad come out...we just keep muddling along...then comes October...uhal starts cutting my hours, so i pick up aprt time work at the corner gas station. this works well for a month then i finsihed my shift at uhaul run home change and am about to walk out the door to go to the gas sation when i get a call asking me to go work at a different uhaul that night. when i tell him i cant he gets mad and hangsup on me..3 days later i get fired from uhaul...no biggie, gas station wants to give me more hours anyway....which was good because i liked the job better, was closer to the kids and just generally more convienent. here comes superbowl sunday...4 in the afternoon, all is quiet everyones at home watching the game...parking lot full of people getting gas, and i get a gun stuck in my face..well back when i had the cancer scare and started getting weird stan got me into mental health and told them to medicate me or keep me...so im under doctors care, already haiving problems with nightmares and anxiety after the events of 9-11 and i get robbed at gunpoint for 53 dollars...
    As i look back at it now 7 years later, i can see that that was a pivotal point in my mental status.