Getting The Best In Life (Word Published)

I’ve learned that 10 percent of life is awful: the walls are caving in; I’m gutted and way down at the bottom. These are for sure down in-the-valley days.

 

10 percent of life is top of the mountain-tops days. Top of ‘everything wonderful’ days! My daughter calls them pink clouds, ice cream and orgasms, finding the mythical, pot-of-gold at the end-of-a-rainbow type, days. We love these days!

 

But a lot of life, we hope perhaps even 80 percent, is boring, every day, gotta’ get up, gotta’ go to work, uninteresting days.

 

It would do us well to learn to love these boring, uninteresting 80 percent days, cuz’ that’s what life’s made of. So, cheers ~ somehow ~ to the vastly boring ones!

 

Life is never all good or all bad, all highs, top-of-the mountaintop stuff, or alternately all down, down-in-the-valley, so-low stuff. How do we get the best in life? I think it is, enjoy thoroughly those extreme high days and endure with great prayer those extreme lows. But mostly, since most of life is the boring, regular days, celebrate the heck out of a moment there, a moment here, in those boring, regular days, and I sure hope you have a lot of them. 

Parenting Is So Very Hard, In Honor Of Chaundra (Word Published)

I didn't know Chaundra Davis. But her disappearance written by hand and made into a flier caught my breath. It could so easily have been my daughter. 

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This is my original published writing about Chaundra Davis, from the year 2008.

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“When they called me and said they wanted to talk to me, I knew in my heart that it wasn’t what I wanted to hear,” said James Davis, 24 hours after learning of his daughter’s death. Chaundra had been missing for fifteen days, since November 7. The neighborhood had actively passed out photos, fliers asking for any information about this woman. She was only 5'4" and a mother of three children.

I had seen the flier posted at the Downtown Pharmacy on Saturday, November 21. She was an attractive young woman, and the photos reflected someone who was loved. It was the very next day while walking my wonderful, but active Labrador/Great Dane dog named Christopher, that I very sadly found Chaundra.

I was to learn that Chaundra had recently moved into a new apartment with her children and was working in Rockford (outside Chicago) as a caregiver. Her friends and family described Chaundra as a great cook who loved the limelight. When I hear this, that is, that she was a great cook who loved the limelight, I automatically give a big smile and a 'You Go, Girl!'

I love to hear about women who have self confidence and know they have skill and this was Chaundra.

Her father James Davis had been concerned of late because of the people she was hanging out with, but he also knew, she was an adult and couldn't be watched 24/7.

I don't know what happened and how she died. All that I know is that she had gone missing, and I happened to be the person who found her body in the water, that is at the edge of Rock River, near the train bridge. This water edge abuts the parking lot of a long ago abandoned manufacturing plant.

Someone - some someone - probably drove into the well-known empty parking lot and dismissed her young body into the river, right where it dropped off into the dam. But a floating tree caught her and held her, and she clung close to the river's edge, never going anywhere.

Chaundra had three children: two sons, Javar, 19, and Jonathan, 13; and a daughter, Jamecia, 9. She had a family who loved her and who looked for her when she went missing and who ached and will ache for a long time.

As a mother myself of a child who was very well raised and yet at age 25 got involved in meth, but is now over three years clean, I have learned something: we birth children and it is our responsibility to raise them to be good citizens. That is all we have. We don't have the right to choose what they will do, whether it is good or bad, and we don't have any control really except to try to raise them well.

For Chaundra's parents, I send them wishes that they know their acts of discipline and child-rearing were well-done, well-intended and with God's grace, the best parenting that could have ever been given to her.

To Chaundra's children, I send them wishes to know they had a mother who was wonderfully beautiful in body and spirit, who intended for them to grow into good citizens. I sadly share that we don't know why they lost their mother, but I would charge them to become the kind of citizens that make the world a better place, to make their mother proud of them.

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2020 and after readers:

I was visiting family in the Chicago area. Chaundra had gone missing and she was found and I was strangely involved. I'd spoken to Chaundra's father, a very dignified man, after I found her body and have spoken with the family a few times during these intervening years. Both Chaundra's mother and father are devout Christians. I was a Christian who'd raised my child the best I could and yet, at 25 she found drugs. I could so relate.

From the Rock River Times, Jan. 25, 2018 -- The man accused of killing his 38-year-old girlfriend in 2008 was found guilty after a two-week trial. He was sentenced to 70 years. 

James Edward Williams, 52, was found guilty of first degree murder and concealment of a homicidal death nearly a decade after Chaundra Davis was found November 22, 2008, in Rock River. She was strangled to death. 

From the  Rock River Times, "He treated her like a piece of garbage and threw her into a watery grave," Marilyn Hite Ross, chief of the criminal bureau in the Winnebago County State's Attorney's Office, said during closing arguments.

My response to the State's Attorney's Office, for a fact. It was more than a watery grave. Rock River was nearly frozen cold. After all, it was November, in Chicago.

Daddy (Word Published)

Daddy, your two girls are okay. I'm now older than you were when life was too much. You have a great grandson, your only great grandchild.

Sarahjoy Recovers Again (Word Published)

Sarahjoy Atop PT
In A Jumper Course
(Jerry Mohme)

Her family including her husband banned Sarahjoy from her main love, riding horses. But, she came back to a full life including getting to ride again. It's a hard story, hard, but good.

Hey, additionally, her husband Joseph also had a new life, in my mind. I suddenly loved him. Goodness, he became the best son-in-law to ever walk the earth. The clouds opened, even the sun shone differently.

Around 2016  it was obvious something was wrong with Sarahjoy.

The most glaring incident to my daughter and I, the one that slapped us in the face, the one that we could not ignore, was when she was in the arena completing a jumper course in October 2016. 

When a horse and rider are competing in the sport of jumping, all competitors arrive the day of the event and there's a set course of jumps in the field, or arena. Riders don't know how the pattern of jumps will be ridden, but the jumps are there.

The jumps may actually not just be the typical pole and rails jump, but water jumps and riding up a grass berm to the jump. The horse is being tested for its athleticism and agility while the a rider is being tested for accuracy and responsiveness. Moreover, how well do they work as a team.

 Typical Horse Jumper Course

A more standard 'test' for the rider is that prior to each class (each riding course) a diagram such as shown here is posted. Here there are nine different jumps in the course and each course runs differently. In the pattern shown, the rider approaches jump one going north to a right bend to jump two going southeast straight to jump three and completes as shown. But while the jumps typically remain where they are, the next course the rider undertakes on this same course, may now go jump three to jump one, to jump nine, to eight, etc. Before each course, the pattern changes, so the rider memorizes the course typically five to ten minutes before each course. The rider is sometimes allowed to walk the course (without her horse), but with or without the ability to walk it, the rider must estimate how her particular ride will navigate the various course challenges and count the number of strides between jumps. 

Sarahjoy could no longer do that memorization test. She was atop the bestest horse, most talented, but she couldn't do a very basic part. Over and over that day, the riding team would enter the arena and she had to pull up ... she didn't know, couldn't remember the course. SOMETHING IS WRONG, we knew. She had no clue where to go. It was gone. That ability was gone.

Sarahjoy literally in a gutter

What I thought was dexterity that her hands were failing her, trying to enter a phone number written on paper in front of her, into her phone, was actually issues of memory and recall also. She'd say, 'ok, 888-485-5021,' and when she'd try to input it, it was gone. So, then she'd try, 'ok, 888.' When she'd try to input the easier number, it was gone. 'Ok, 8.' Nope not even one digit could be remembered for a few seconds. Always gone.

An avid reader all her life, now, if she tried to read a book, she'd read a paragraph and not comprehend it. She'd read it two, three times and it was impossible. On her best days sometimes the writing was English letters, words, but sometimes, she says, Chinese symbols appeared on the page.

These were other symptoms.

She was tired all the time.  

 

She had NO problems falling asleep. When she did fall asleep it could be for 18-24 hours at a time, each time, day or night and it was never enough. If she had to be somewhere at a particular time, we had to start trying to wake her up hours before her 'wake up' time. 

Her memory was also affected in ways you might think are concrete knowledge, can't go away. She'd been a professional horse person for decades, her knowledge of horses, vast. Yet now if a beginning horse rider would ask her something simple about the horse, she'd tell me, 'I know I should know that. That seems like something I should know.'  Simple chitchat and daily conversations were difficult, highly embarrassing for her. She could no longer speak clearly. She'd often ask me, 'did I answer that right, did I sound confused.' 

As her mother I knew there was something seriously wrong with her. Others, also close to her though, just thought she was unmotivated, she 'needed to apply herself.' Try harder. Nope. Mommy knew.

And of course anxiety enveloped her. She was living in a cloud of who am I, what have I become, and how do I get out of this.

I knew she needed to see a neurologist, have an MRI, she needed to see a doctor. But she didn't have any health coverage. She was married to a brilliant CPA who had health coverage, through his employment, but she did not. 

At one point I talked with social services and was told that if she separated from her husband (who's income exceeded applicable wage limits), she could apply for disability assistance which would include medical benefits. 

I didn't have the money, without Art, money had been tight for a long time. In the beginning the issue for her husband was it would be $500 monthly to add her to his medical coverage. Yeah, us women are costly, us women with the indoor plumbing, the baby-making stuff. Kinna' an irritatin' part of life. 

Finally, after too many months?///xxxx/?    in my mind, after waiting til he could afford it and then having to wait for the appropriate 'sign up period,' Joseph signed his wife up for health insurance through his employment.

After weeks and then months of various tests including the MRI, we learned she'd suffered a mild stroke. 

A stroke often occurs as a result of trauma, such as a car accident or ... horse accident. A horse is a half ton animal that can feel like a car hitting you.

Throughout Sarahjoy's equine career she'd experienced four concussions, or  traumatic brain injuries (TBI), all horse related but interestingly though, none were from falling or being bucked off. 

A Google search tells me TBI/TBE .... is part of a larger category of brain injuries collectively known as acquired brain injury (ABI). ABIs include any brain injury which is not hereditary, congenital, degenerative, or induced by birth trauma.

Her first concussion occurred when she was trying out a horse to purchase in Riverside County, California. No riding helmet on, she was riding down the grass median of a small road. Some kids in the adjacent orchard shot the horse with a BB gun.  The horse reacted of course, running away wildly, like a bullet. The horse fell at some point taking 11 year old Sarahjoy down head first on the asphalt road. She was with my best friend Melanie, a horse woman, who called me in hysterics from the hospital not able to talk, just cry and shriek. "It's bad, it's bad! Hurry."

Art and I walked into the Kaiser Hospital Riverside (same place I'd been as a teenager after a horse incident left me with a broken wrist) emergency room to find my child. It appeared her head was horribly deformed, the bottom right side of her face, was gone. I fainted.

When I came to it wasn't so bad, thank God. The top of her head, the crown, was so swelled like a cantalope on one side, it gave the impression the lower half of her face was missing.

Upon coming home with instructions for treating and observing her concussion, the only seemingly somewhat long term affect was she had a lazy eye, wandering when she was tired. Corrective glasses were prescribed.

The other three concussions were  1)  when she was underneath a horse, body shaving (????) it, the horse very swiftly jerked it's leg (perhaps to get at an annoying fly) and kicked Sarahjoy in the head, 2)  while trying to catch and halter a colt, he ran her over instead, and 3) _____??? Yes, horses can be dangerous, even to someone as experienced in equine behavior as she.

The public is more aware of TBI's because of public focus on major league football players experiencing head trauma, repetitively, which appeared to then become life changing incidents. 

My first experience with TBI's was reading about National Football League's Junior Seau. He was a favorite of Art's and mine. Seau had played for the San Diego Chargers, was a linebacker known for his passionate play, was part of Super Box XXIX. I thought he was superbly talented and charismatic as all get out.

At only 43 years old, Seau committed suicide, shooting himself in 2012. Horrid stories were being released that posthumous brain studies were showing chronic traumatic encephalopathy, (TBE) a disease, being found ...  in other deceased former NFL players. Unfortunately, to date, evidence of TBI/TBE is still only found after death. Believed to be the result of repetitive head trauma, it can lead to dementia, rage and depression.

I don't know why Sarahjoy wasn't wearing her helmet that day, a seemingly odd fact, but, the following is also true. Inside every riding helmet, at that time, was a warning label that said, this helmet is for 'decoration only.' Those old helmets were just hard plastic shells covered in velvet. They were stylish, but they didn't even have chin straps to keep the cap on. Safe riding helmets just didn't exist, then. Perhaps she should have been wearing a ... football helmet. 

So, back to the year ____???///, Sarahjoy and I'd spent the morning with her neurologist  finally reviewing the various testing results. He said, she'd had a mild stroke.

It must have been a last minute thing that Sarahjoy'd called asking me to accompany her that morning to get the results of those important medical tests. Maybe at the last minute Joseph couldn't accompany her. Joseph and I weren't talking/coordinating, but behind the scenes, we were all 'trying'. At some point my innocent injured child Sarahjoy said they were planning on meeting at McDonalds for casual lunch. I remember when she mentioned us joining up with Joseph, I immediately was nervous and felt awkward, my accompanying her that morning was so last minute.  She shared it was something they did often, which of course is cute, but I didn't know and  I'd never done anything like it, lunch with my daughter and son in law. Joseph. He and I had a strained relationship, unfortunately and that morning in the car with my daughter, on the way to our first lunch together, I had to own my part of that. Okay, babygirl, here we go! Sarahjoy texted Joseph to confirm time for fancy McDonalds lunch.

While driving there, I texted her father, Mr. Christian Man, that his daughter had experienced a stroke, he texted me back confused, who is this? Who are you talking about, thinking it must have been an errant text.

We ordered food, sat down and she gave Joseph the documents from the doctor. Joseph is a quick study, but while he read, Sarahjoy said in tears, "I've been trying to tell you something's wrong."

Continuing to read with seriousness, Joseph finally dropped the papers and wrapped his big arms around his wife now crying harder than she.

That's when I fell in love with Joseph. He didn't know. He just didn't know. But, her dad didn't even know. So much for, 'hey, try harder!'

I took my cheeseburger outside, giving them privacy and so I could think. Lord. Lord. I felt so much better, overwhelmingly happy that she had her man on her team. He just didn't know. 

She can't hit her head again. It's too fragile. On the other hand, horses help her, they're vital. For her. Lots of girls love horses, she lives and breathes them.

Let me go back in time. Sarahjoy's and Joseph's relationship wasn't turbulent. Over a number of years they'd only broken up once to my recollection.  They dated when he was at University Of New Mexico pursuing his bachelors, then pursuing accomplishing his passing CPA licensing. ____?? He was younger than she, he owned his own home that he shared with college friends. He'd sold that house and purchased a nicer, bigger home where they lived together in Grand Prairie, Texas. 

But there were ways that despite that they'd been together for ___?? years and were engaged, the home she shared with him had the appearance that she was like a renter or something, certainly not an engaged-to-be married couple. 

The oddness showed its ugly head when three days before their wedding Joseph told Sarahjoy that he needed her to sign a pre-nuptual agreement.

I thought the timing odd and controlling. It 'felt' controlling in a bad way, to me, but I'd personally had issues. For a fact, at minimum, certainly the timing was off.

I also ached that my daughter, like me years ago, was entering into an abusive, controlling relationship, similar to my marriage to her father. I was frightened and couldn't control those fears. I didn't attend their wedding, which broke my daughter's heart. It was not an ideal time.

But they'd pushed on. And these days, Joseph was Super-Joseph. I was now giving accolades for her splendid choice of men. Ahahaha!

But, now we didn't want her on a horse. Ever. Again.

At this point Sarahjoy only owned PT. Glendonwyn Prince of Thieves, aka PT. Or, the infamous PT, Prince of Thieves. 

Not feeling confident in much, a much-diminished Sarahjoy asked me to accompany her to the barn for a while to minimally (hah ... nothing in horses is minimal) help her caretake for her beloved, her extremely talented, exceptional current PT.

I did that as often as I could, often sitting on a plastic chair, next to them, using the equine's ice wraps on my back to deal with my horrific and constant pain. Didn't matter to her, she just wanted someone with her.

Joseph alternated with me. When I couldn't go with her, despite his long business days, often times in the dark and freezing cold, Joseph went with his wife. Not once, not twice. There was a new Joseph and he was committed to loving and protecting his wife.

After time, Joseph shared with me, that just grooming PT, just being at the barn, in that environment, she was communicating better, was opening up, there were seemingly more moments of old Sarahjoy.  The sometimes tedious mechanics of caretaking for her horse, her love, finding again something she knew, since she was eight of nine. She was temporarily letting her confused and damaged brain relax, and try to find a way through this.

It would disappear on the way home, often, but the equine exercise was proving to be the perfect therapy. So it was decided that PT the wonderful, exceptional young horse was her one and only ride.

Independent C Farms

Then Joseph wanted her surrounded by less anxious-making environments, so they started looking for horse property. He wanted to be able to go to work and come home to his wife on their own property.

Then as she was improving over the years, it was decided that only horses that she judged 100% safe were ones she would only ride.

So they bought a horse training facility/ranch on 38 acres and she's working her tiny ass off. But she's so much better. She's operating her training business, Independent C Farms, again, from their new ranch. The training business is Independent C Farms, but since the ranch is in Ferris, Texas, the entire ranch is called Ferris Wheel Ranch.

DRAFT  DRAFT She was a better teacher than rider, and she's a good rider, a great rider. Now, perhaps it's the opposite. Okay, there are athletes who are good because they're physically natural, don't have to learn the how's and why's of a given task, tell them how to do it and they do it. They don't need or have a natural desire to learn the how's and why's.  She's a better rider than teacher, because ...  SHE LEARNED TO JUMP NOT BY A NATURAL SKILL AT IT BUT BY UNDERSTANDING  and breaking down each component and incorporating it, doing it. EACH PART OF RIDING AND SHOW JUMPING. AND LEARNING IT. TEACHING OTHERS SHE WAS A NATURAL AT BECAUSE SHE WAS NATURALLY TEACHING WHAT SHE THOROUGHLY KNEW. 

Sarahjoy and VW

And you know what else? Look at this lil cutie. 

Engelbert Alexander Mount. Or, VW. 

(See,  medical insurance is important.)

Sarahjoy is short, a small framed woman. 

Joseph is huge, 6'4" ?????? ////  When she was pregnant carrying her son, popping out bigger and bigger, she commented to Joseph (in that way that pregnant women do ...) "It's because of you, that I'm carrying a Volkswagen!" Hence, the nickname, VW.

So, I've retired from pickleball at great sadness, but look at this lil cutie! Sarahjoy is my only kid, at 41 she gave me my first grandbaby. It will be my only and that's okay.

I help with this precious boy, how could I not? Sarahjoy is much improved but she's nowhere near 100%. Everything takes longer, her brain isn't hardly at its best. I complained to her that making me a grandma in my 60's isn't right, isn't fair. I love being in the Gramma Club, but at 60? Come on!

I babysit my precious VW probably three days a week, if that's what you call it. It's really being allowed to love on this lil man even though physically it's really hard. VW's other grandparents also help. 

It's a real turn around. Joseph is ultra patient with his wife. At minimum, she runs her training barn and is a good mom. Right now laundry, housekeeping, anything related to running her life or her home besides the above, etc. is swept to the side, not talked about. Thank God he understands and really loves her.

Did I tell you I love her husband?

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Competing bridleless, PT on mag cover ???? because PT more natural at less restraint, where put after stroke, caretaking for PT only could take all day she was so slow

she's still slow, she's methodical - part of used to be a natural, better teacher? slow, less productive in life, fam steps up