JustaKrusen/ Mrsjustakrusen

Feels great..sunshine, changing the drapes, cleaning, snow going away, tomorrow I want to do yard clean up… ahhh another winter is slowly leaving. This photo is last Easter… wonder if the snow will be all gone this Easter???

I am kinda glad for today. I finally felt good enough to deep clean. The past 6 weeks I had been knocked down and dragged out by an upper respiratory infection that really kicked my ever moving butt.

Today is the first day I have had some energy. We were going to have Jeff, Amanda and the boys come out for a new recipe Easter Meal—totally non traditional… but the boys are sick, and Jeff has to work… so we changed the meal ideas to burgers on the grill and veggies… and will catch up on our DVRed programs later…Hope the lil guys feel better soon…. .

As life goes on, I have come to appreciate feeling good… cuz when I feel lousy—I feel super lousy. I want to take time and start going through some boxes of stuff I have packed and sort what is really important and what is not.

When people can live in a car…. camper….. they have really sorted out all their stuff… I am definitely a ways from living in a camper!. But what things really will mean anything to any one else after I am gone? What things would just end up tossed in a dumpster- without anyone knowing it’s significance? Not that I plan on dying soon… but life does not go on forever! But there are a few boxes we moved in here,,, and no one has touched since…. so they have my sights on them…

I am thrilled with spring time, no garden this year… time for camping…. Riley is better, I feel good… Mark is getting a second opinion FINALLY on his neck pain/dizziness…….and tomorrow is Easter…. church in the AM… and than we are going to cook a small turkey breast, and just enjoy each others company. Maybe get a walk in…

maybe hit Oswego and watch a sunset appear….

Thank God… I am feeling alive again…. this past 6 weeks SUCKED!!. Love to all, Mrs Justa alias Cindy

I read a book a few weeks ago and it has created all sorts of emotions and thoughts. The book was written by a survivor of child abuse. This is the cover of the book…

I kid you not, it was VERY hard to read, but I was not going to stop. WHY?? Because this poor little boy..who miraculously made it through years of torture to become a man—well he could not quit from what his life was.

As I read this, my heart ached, I was so darn angry with social services and the mother… with the brothers and step dad…. 

The presentation of how things were on the outside of the house, in no way were really what was happening behind closed doors.

As I read it, I thought that most kids probably never grow up to share what they went through, to show they survived… No , I am thinking most kids would have died in the torture. The mom put on a front that the child was evil, the child was aggressive, the child was mean, the child had problems, the child was mute… AND it was easier for those on the outside to label the child instead of trying to figure out what made the child act the way he did…

I think we  do that in society.. we tend to take the easy way out. This got me to think about Riley… our dog. She had such lost sad eyes when we brought her home that day from the kennel…..… She cowered when you called her, she shook and trembled if she thought she was in trouble, she had a sense of fear to her…

She had horrible separation anxiety, she panicked, she hyperventilated, she literally freaked out if we left the house.

We made comments about “That is why her previous owners abandoned her” and “She has issues.” ///But ya know what—we did not give up on her…( We almost did !!)fortunately we got thinking and  we did not just accept the way she was as a final.. That breaks my heart at the thought that we almost gave up on her.

After her 2 weeks in early winter at the K9 training camp—2 weeks of not seeing her, of her being treated well, but like a dog… she is okay now. We can leave her in the house, no crate or cage….  and go out for up to 6 hrs..she is fine. We do not have to limit her access to rooms.. she is a calmer dog…. , and seems more controlled  now.. It was what her previous owners did to her that made her how she was… not that she was bad.

She is a sweetheart… she loves to be with us,she is GREAT with people and the grandkids….. she is playful….  but now it is ok when we leave. She goes to doggie playcare 1 day a week, and they say she darts around for the entire time, frolicking, running.. non stop.

How many kids…. how many pets… have we as a society let down? Why… because it was easier to say they had the problem… than to figure out what made the behavior….. easier than to try to fix it…

yep, that book will live with me for a very long time… And Joe Peters’…. wherever you are…. I am so sorry for the let down you must have felt over and over again.and thank you for sharing this …. it really opened my eyes…

Love to all… Mrs Justa alias Cindy

Last night we were playing words with friends against one another. It was around 11 at night. We had the scanner on , and there were some faint angry voices. I thought it was background in the scanner, but when I turned it off..it was actually people yelling at one another. Mark had heard it first, and I was kinda blowing it off… but than I realized it was cause for concern.

So we shut everything off, turned off the lights and started looking out in the darkness.

Immediately I am thinking the worse— we have people who just moved in across the street on Friday night—I am thinking   “Great—we get to listen to people yelling at one another all the time” I was thinking about how this quiet country life was about to change.

But alas—it was a neighbor who lives quite a ways back from us—his driveway however runs along the entire length of our property. He is divorced and I guess his x decided to come over for a visit. It sounded like he did not expect her too….

He does not plow his driveway often-and gets up and down it okay… her NOT SO MUCH.

She drove off the driveway and was stuck. And she was really stuck. Her idea of getting out of the bind was revving the engine and spinning the tires.

He was screaming at her- he did not want her there, did not invite her and once she is unstuck—basically in not so nice tone—get the heck off the property.

We eventually went over to see if our pick up truck could help and we brought some salt over…but our pick up almost got stuck at the foot of his driveway-so we knew that was not going to work… – Mark is not really able to push and shovel her out—so he offered to try to drive her vehicle while the neighbor pushed it..and later they switched and he threw salt under the spinning tires while the neighbor rocked the vehicle.

Eventually it got out..and through it all… all the screaming and ugliness that they were sharing with one another before we went out there. I thought about life. How  for some people they  meet someone, they think it is true love, they get married, they have kids… and down the road of life it turns into this shouting obscenities- displaying total hate for one another. What made the switch? did they not feed their relationship through the year..and all of the sudden love turned to hate?

When we make a commitment—we need to nurture the commitment, feed the relationship, never stop talking, tell each other when something is bothering you…. for if relationships are not fed, treated carefully— they corrode… they crumble… and you end up with this. ..Just a thought…. Mrs Justa alias Cindy