Guess Who Got A Job??...

A job is a job is a job, right? Not to everyone. The last time I worked a job outside of my home it was September, 1985 and thing were very different than they are today:

Gallon of gas $1.09

Now: $3.80
Movie Ticket $2.75

Now: $10.25
US Postage Stamp $0.22

Now: $0.46
Loaf of bread $0.50

Now: $1.98
Ground Beef $0.99lb

Now: $4.68

Average House Price $40,169

Now: $289,500

Reagan was president

Now: Obama-GAG

Terry Anderson was kidnapped in Beirut

Now: ISIS beheadings

The Food and Drug Administration approves a blood test for AIDS

Now: Ebola outbreak that is spreading

Microsoft Corporation releases the first version of Windows, Windows 1.0.

Now: Windows 8.1

There were no cell phones or pagers and dial up network was only something we had in our home because Bill needed it for work. We actually had to have a cradle and a plug the phone receiver into the cradle to get connected, but it was a way he could work from home before the internet was born.

I was a TBS operator and you may ask what in the world was my job, I was a phone solicitor, the annoying person calling asking for donations and money. I was also just about 3 months pregnant with Jennifer and we were days away from closing on our very first house. We had a poodle dog named Champion and a cat named Tatty.

They say if you dream a thing more than once, it’s sure to come true…

~Sleeping Beauty

I have been a homemaker for 29 years and I have taken great pride in my house and my family. My parties, food and treats are legendary and well are my holiday celebrations and decorations. It has been my greatest privilege to stay at home and raise our girls and support them as they grew. But life, with children they grow up and move out and have families of their own. While I still see my girls (well two of them) often it is not the same as having the extra people and conversation in the house on a daily basis.

All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.

~Walt Disney

I am very thankful that I was able to be at home with Heather during cancer and that I could be her caregiver without having to quit my job or it being a financial hardship for our family. In spite of everything that happened I really would not give back that time I spent with her, being her protector, nurse and Momy.

So what kind of a job would I fit into? I could be a personal trainer, or a nutritionist but those require schooling that for now I am not ready to spend the time to do. I applied over the summer at the Disney Store in Scottsdale but because of my family vacation cruise in December they refused to hire me. We have a Disney Store at San Tan and in the Chandler Mall. Jenny, my favorite Disney Store worker moved from San Tan to Chandler Mall several years ago. Jenny and I struck up a bond and I made her cry over Tangled. Bill goes to the mall nearly every day for lunch and figured out who Jenny was and began being my publicity manager.

Three weeks ago I had a group interview and then the following Sunday I had another smaller group interview with Jenny. After a back ground check and lots of waiting I am proud to announce that I am the newest DISNEY STORE CAST MEMBER!! I have my first job in 29 years and I am thrilled. For right now it is seasonal but the store has 2 part time positions that they will hire in January form the seasonal employees. Now I get to prove that I am the woman they want to continue working come January.

For with each dawn, she found new hope that someday, her dreams of happiness would come true.

~Cinderella

Yes, I stuck to my guns and did not cancel the vacation/cruise in December because of my job. I understand retail is busy and all employees are needed, but I have had this planned since LAST October. Jenny is willing to work with me and she completely understands the reason and meaning behind the trip. The Coombe/Shannon/Galusha-Luna/Akers and Dennis family will be heading to Orlando on December 10^th (Heather and Sunnie’s birthday) the 11^th will be a day in the Magic Kingdom and then we leave for a 3 days Bahamas Disney cruise. My goal is to work at the Disney Store forever so this will be the last Christmas vacation I make. But in the end it is just a job, but this is a job I will be awesome at and enjoy.

All you need is a little faith, trust, and Pixie Dust

~Peter Pan

49? Really?...

Heather loved makeup, perfume and designers. Of course all three of those things go hand and hand together. I knew she was very into finding the unique and limited editions of makeup and perfume as well. She once searched every Dior makeup counter she could until she found a limited edition compact of pressed powder. She loved perfume and her favorite statement was that a woman is never fully dressed until she had her perfume on. Heather also loved to wear perfume at night so that her sheets smelled good.

It would of course not dawn on me till after she died that one of the perfume bottles that she had purchased was a limited edition at Victoria’s Secret and it was by Anna Sui. The face or doll shaped bottle line is called “Dolly Girl.” Just like what I would call her, “my little Dolly Girl.” So in 2006 she purchased this bottle and used very little of this perfume.

There are 5 different Dolls in the “Dolly Girl” perfume line:

Dolly Girl

Lil Starlet

On the Beach

Ooh la Love

Bonjour le Amour

“This limited edition for 2006, named Dolly Girl On The Beach, brings us a breeze of tangerine, peach, sparkling lemon, apple, marigold flowers, apricot and bergamot in the opening, mixed like a summer juicy cocktail, followed by the floral heart of freesia, rose and lotus, and ending at the base of a bright tree, amber and musk.”

I remembered in the weeks after Heather died that I looked up Anna Sui and found out the name of the perfume was Dolly Girl. I realized then why she had purchased the perfume; for her love of the beach and for her love of my nickname for her “My Dolly Girl.” I had not really thought about Anna Sui, or Dolly Girl perfume for the last four years. Suddenly a gift for my birthday brought me to tears as I instantly knew then meaning behind the gift. Wendy, Sunnie and Snooks bought me the pink original “Dolly Girl” perfume. She told me that was payback for making her cry at graduation when I gave her the Heather ring.

“Dolly Girl” is a miraculous creation of Anna Sui, in floral fruit composition and was launched in 2003. It is romantic and modeled with a dose of fantasy and memories of the creator, while she was still young, playing with her mother’s perfumes and trying on her clothes. Playful and eccentric, this perfume offers juicy fruit cocktail in its top notes made of bergamot, melon, apple, cinnamon, the notes of elaborate floral garden together with accords of magnolia, rose, lily-of-the-valley and jasmine.

My gift from Jenn, Paz and Babes (Ellie) was photos of my Babes and getting to hold her and enjoy her. I had not seen her in nearly two weeks and I could hardly wait to get my hands on her. She is still just as sweet and cute as she was, maybe a tiny bit bigger but not much. She slept through eating lunch at the India Oven and was awake for a bit once we got back to our house. Mimi got out the playmat and I got to feed her a bottle too. The nicest thing is no diapers and I give her back when she gets fussy. (not really, Mimi takes them even if they are fussy) I got my first card with the baby hand print in it. When Jenn was a baby for my first Mother’s Day in 1986, Bill drew around Jenn’s tiny hand in my card. Since that day every card received by Bill or me always had hand prints drawn in them. It is really nice to see Jenn’s hand, then added Heather’s hand and then all three with Wendy’s hand. I have cards with Snooks hand prints in them and now with Ellie. It is a tradition I love.

look at me..I soooo pretty

Turning 49 was not difficult and I don’t mind sharing my age, it is only a number and not the state of my mind. Several things have changed in the past few weeks. For one, Bill moved back home about a month ago. We are taking it slowly and things are going very good and we are really happy. This was a good time of reflection and growth for both of us. Honestly it feels like we are newly married and trying to get used to living with each other. I believe this was the best thing for our marriage and we will be stronger for this time apart to figure our own selves out. Some people do not understand why I asked for this nor why Bill would put up with this. It has been suggested that he should have just walked away from me and been done. It was never my intention to walk away from over 32 years together and go find someone new. For those who do not understand I cannot begin to make you understand and that is your loss.

Several weeks ago I added jogging to my workout routine. No, I have never jogged nor did I ever think about jogging in the past. I have been going to the gym for over 3 years and have very strong legs and lungs. I took as class my junior year in high school called physical fitness PE and I was expected to run a mile. Even by the end of the semester I could not run the entire mile without walking some. SO I challenged myself one night to go for a run and just see how far I could go and I went for a 1.24 miles. I was shocked as I really enjoyed it and felt great. Then I began running 1.50 miles and now I am up to 2 miles three times a week. Bill had been running with me and we are enduring the heat at night to run. We have our first 5K in October for Be The Match Bone Marrow Registry. Our next event will be the TinkerBell 10K in Disneyland in May next year. We will be running through Disneyland and California Adventure and it should be an amazing run to do. Currently we are running about 11.30 minute miles and that is good enough for me. I have run 3.1 miles or a 5K once and know I can do it. For now this is something fun and different and it gets me out of the gym.

yes I ran during the day. I have more energy and look forward to cooler weather

better than sitting on the couch. We walk 2 miles afterwards too

“Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer. But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying.”

The Most Powereful Man in the Country...

“There is no tragedy in life like the death of a child.

Things never get back to the way they were…”

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

I came across this quote and of course it had such meaning that I had to do some research to find out if he had a child died during his life. Sure enough he did his first-born 3 year old son, Doud Eisenhower or “Icky” to his family had died. I figured that a statement like this had to be coming from a man who knew the deep down hurt and pain of the death of a child.

After he and his family relocated to Fort Meade in Severn, Maryland, his mother hired a sixteen-year-old servant girl who had been recovering from scarlet fever. In December 1920, shortly before Christmas, Icky caught scarlet fever from the servant. Though his mother tried desperately to save him, even calling a specialist from Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore Icky died on January 2, 1921. His father then referred to this incident as "the most shattering moment of their lives, one that almost destroyed their marriage".  Mamie and Dwight blamed themselves for Icky's death; had they checked the girl's background, they would have found out that the girl had scarlet fever. In his biography of Eisenhower, Stephen E. Ambrose wrote:

These feelings had to be suppressed if the marriage was to survive the disaster, but suppression did not eliminate the unwanted thoughts, only made them harder to live with. Both the inner-directed guilt and the projected feelings of blame placed a strain on their marriage. So did the equally inevitable sense of loss, the grief that could not be comforted, the feeling that all the joy had gone out of life. "For a long time, it was as if a shining light had gone out in Ike's life," Mamie said later. "Throughout all the years that followed, the memory of those bleak days was a deep inner pain that never seemed to diminish much.

This great man who was the 34^th President of the United States and a five star general in the United States Army that served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces and of NATO personally felt the pain and it stayed with him his entire life. He NEVER “got over it.” He never “moved on” nor did he ever forget his son and the terrible loss his family had incurred. One would surely expect the President of the United States to be able to move forward and not allow this to effect his life and his marriage. He had more important things to do with his time than to reminisce the few short years that he had with his son.

On January 7, 1921, less than a week after his death, Icky was buried in Fairmont Cemetery in Denver, Colorado.

Lester and Irene David said:

Forty-five years later Eisenhower, by then a national hero, flew to Abilene in an unpublicized trip. Dressed in a charcoal-gray suit, his deeply lined face pale and taut, Ike stood bareheaded as the body of little Icky, taken from Fairmont Cemetery, was reburied beneath the marble floor of the little thin-spired chapel of buff-colored stone on the grounds of the Eisenhower Center.

After this, he was moved to the Eisenhower Presidential Center. His parents were buried next to him. In 1967, Eisenhower would look to Icky's death as "the greatest disappointment and disaster of my life, the one I have never been able to forget completely". For the rest of their lives, Dwight would send Mamie flowers on Icky's birthday each year.

Could it be that such a powerful man could be so broken and shattered that he never recovered from the death of his son? He actually honored his wife on the very important day of the birth of “Icky” by sending her flowers to remember and memorialize the day, the very important day that his son was born on. How could this man say that his greatest disappointment and disaster was the death of his son? WOW! What powerful words. If Dwight D Eisenhower did not recover from the death of his 3 year old son, why am I expected to “get over’ and “move on” with the death of my 21 year old daughter. I had Heather 7 times longer than he had his son and him and Mamie never recovered. I think that if one of the most powerful men in the history of our country had a hard time dealing with the death of his son I should be allowed the same courtesy. All grieving parents should be allowed this honor of being able to talk, share and grieve the way we need to without judgment.

A Special Day?...

“Some people don't understand the promises they're making when they make them," I said. Right, of course, but you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is. 

Love is keeping the promise anyway.” 

~Fault in our Stars

My birthday has come yet once again, only this year I get a holiday for my birthday. When I was younger and in school I loved being able to tell everyone that I had an official holiday for my birthday. Honestly when I was younger I never really gave much thought to my birthday as to what it really meant. I don’t think that I really thought about it till I had children of my own. My birthday was the day my mother gave birth to me. The day my mother went into labor and pushed me out of her body.

"Baby Betsy- me-3 days old 9/4/65

To me personally I have always tried to make my daughters and grand daughters feel like their birthdays are the best most special days in the world because to me the day I gave birth to them was one of the best days of my life. I never want any of my girls to feel that their mom or Mimi didn’t care about such a special day; the day they drew their first breaths and began to live on the outside. Such a huge special day really cannot go by as just a normal and ordinary day.

What about the woman that tried to trap a man who never loved her by getting herself pregnant on purpose? What about the lies and deceit that goes with that? Then what about the male pig who thinks he is God’s gift to all womankind sexually? Knowing that he is married and has his own children and wife at home but enters into a long sexual affair with one if not many other women in 1963-1965? What happens to the child that was conceived out of a union like that? The baby gets thrown away like a disposable paper plate with less care than wadding up a napkin to throw it in the trash container. The baby is the innocent one in all this and that baby was me.

9/29/65

However, I do wonder if my lying horrible, trashy DNA female and sperm donor think about me on September 1^st. I wonder if they wish things had turned out differently. I wonder if for once my female DNA gestational unit wishes she for once in her life had taken a stand for me and said I love you and will do anything for you above all things. You know the self-sacrificing love that most mothers have inside them. The only reason why I finally was allowed to even meet her was because I was moving across the country and would never be about 2 hours away again. She had to go to her family and get their opinion and approval before she could make a decision. Then I was introduced as a “friend” of the family. The following year I was the shock value that she dropped that I was her daughter and I recently found her. That is not love, that was being used for her to have the attention drawn to her. When Heather got cancer Jane could not even find the guts or courage to come see or support me, a lying, hiding, cowardess woman that I am grateful that she had no part in my life. How can a mother love 5 kids and not 6? Ask my mother Jane Betsinger Becker she can tell you all about it, but she won’t do the talking she will allow her daughters to argue for her and let them fight her battles.

As my 49^th birthday rolls around I am happy about it for the first time in many, many years and looking forward to being with MY family on my special day. I am reminded as the day gets closer and closer about the one that is not here to celebrate with me. The card and gift and hug and kiss that I will not be receiving on my special day. As my birthday comes I am reminded of my own daughters that I gave birth to and I just have to wonder does Jane feel anything? Anything at all on such a special day?

9/29/65

I had a few special days with my sperm donor for my birthday and I thought that we were making memories till I learned that he just wanted to have sex with me. It is a great comfort to have your genetic father tell you he cannot get you pregnant and he has no sexually diseases. I was breathing a sigh of relief over that. My 40^th birthday was spend with Harry Blackburn and looking back now I realize that he was showing me off and bragging about me like I was his trophy wife or something. It was way overboard the opposite way. I was given too much attention in the wrong way. My sperm donor has no clue what love what true love means. He has never loved anyone or anything more than himself and his money. But I do wonder does Harry feel anything? Anything at all on such a special day?

6 weeks old-10/14/65

I am proud of the person I have become and that I stand up for myself. This is a self-taught trait that I learned thru life of hard knocks. I was given away the day I was born and placed into foster care for three months. There was damages done to me as far as the love and nurturing a baby needed in those first critical weeks. I stand up and speak my mind and you know exactly where you stand with me. I have recently been told that since Heather died I feel like I can say anything. Well, yes, since Heather died all bets are off and I will do what I want to when I want to. No, you don’t have to try to understand and I know you won’t so I won’t waste my breath trying to explain. Only my true friends and family (which my family has no blood relation except for my children) understand what it means to have a child die. It is unnatural and goes against everything we have come to believe as truth. My future was changed forever April 20^th, 2009 and I was not asked nor did I give my consent to have this life makeover.

These four photos are the only photos of me from my birth on September 1, 1965 and when I was adopted on December 20, 1965. My foster name was baby Betsy.