Okay...to be honest, January tends to seem to last forever - maybe because it's cold and miserable most of the month? Maybe because you start dreaming of warmer weather when you can get outside and do something without freezing half to death? Or because of the fact that your already starting to get tired of the cold and the month just seems to drag? I'm going to be optimistic - we are already a quarter of the way through it!!! Yeah - and I'm already ready for spring!
Well...we are entering a new year, with lots of changes. Doug has been keeping himself busy setting up a "different" computer system. For a man that really wasn't a "computer person" a few years ago - he has come a long way! He started reading a lot of the on-line help on computer repair and going to the video's on-line, and has learned a lot. His regular computer is the one he got a year and a half ago - with Win7 on it, but he also wanted one with XP to do games on. Our neighbor bought a used computer from a character that I call "Whistle-Britches", and it didn't work right from the very beginning. He took it back a couple of times and the last time the guy took out the good modem and replaced it with a generic one that didn't work. Gary finally gave up on it and bought a different one from a used computer store in town. He gave the Whistle-Britches computer to Doug, and Doug spent days cleaning off files, defragging, running CCleaner over and over, and finally had it working pretty good. Then he discovered that the CD drive was not working - so he took one from our "computer graveyard" and installed it into the XP machine. Last year he had found a great splitter that allows you to hook up two computers to one monitor, keyboard and mouse, and just switch between the two by pushing a button. He added that to the setup and with a few adjustments, things were working. Next came trying to figure out how to get the XP computer on-line - and after a lot of thinking, searching, and trying to figure out a solution - we ended up at Radio Shack, and our trusty friend there mentioned that all we had to do was add an ethernet plug from the Netgear router hub - DUH! Somehow - neither one of us even thought of that! Now - it works great!!!
Yesterday I got a message from Brandi - someone stole her identity on Facebook, opening an account using her last name first, and then first name, and even stole the picture of her and Molli and posted it as theirs - which was weird! I had received an email asking for Jones Brandi to be my friend, which I thought was odd but I thought maybe she had forgotten her password or something and just opened a new account - especially when I approved her and saw that I was the only friend. What I didn't see was that the person was a male, born March 9, 1979 (wrong birthdate). I sent a message on FB asking her what was going on - and the person answered by saying "What's Up?". So when she sent a text saying someone stole her identity - I told her to call me! I wanted to be sure that the person texting was actually her...LOL!!! It was, so I logged into her account and reported the person and sent a message to all of her friends that had added the "fake" person letting them know that this was not really Brandi! It's a crazy world we live in - and that kind of thing is just a little bit scarey!
We chatted a while - and I told her about her brother disappearing off of facebook, along with his wife. I also told her that I've had it - no more games with him, no more forgiving and forgetting, I am totally out of trust and really don't want him around me. I assured her that I love him - he is my son - but I do NOT like him at all. The thing that I didn't tell her - and I need to, because I've done so much thinking about this, is that Andru is NOT the person we thought he was, maybe he never was. She remembers her brother, the kid with a heart, the kid that cared about people...but he has been gone for a long time. The first time, before Kenny died, we blamed Sally, thinking she was the bad influence. Then the next time we blamed Cindy, she broke his heart, and was a disaster in his life. Then the next time we blamed Shauna thinking she was keeping him away from his family. Then we started blaming Venus...but the truth - the whole truth the whole time - is that each and every time - the one consistant part - was Andru. It's NOT anyone else's fault - it's all him, and who he is. And that is kind of tough to face - but it's the truth. Nothing could have done anything different, no one can "fix" things, all you can do is face the fact that he is not the person we all thought he was. His "family" - meaning his parents, sister, cousins, aunts and uncles - mean nothing to him. Even his own son means nothing to him, because he is a financial burden that he doesn't want. It's really sad...and it reminds me of Kenny telling the kids, every time that they would get into it, that someday, they would be the only "family" they had left (meaning when he and I were both dead and gone). That was one of the things that Kenny was so wrong about - because Andru never cared about "family"...or if he ever did, he stopped a long time ago. It took me a long time to understand that...and at some point I need to share that with Brandi. Actually, she has gone through a lot, from a different perspective, because he totally shut down their brother/sister relationship a long time ago... In life...people can affect others in so many ways. We just have to learn to deal with the things that are negative - not letting them be detrimental to our lives, and remain positive about the blessings that we have on a daily basis.
