Colorado Busted

BUCKLE UP, YALL. Colorado or bust… an adventure starring myself, my mother, Lukas and 2 cats.

Wednesday. I drug the cats with gabapentin for the first time EVER. It made Kevin slightly more doofy and WAY clumsier than she normally is, but Clyde? He turned into a drunken frat boy. As soon as the drugs began to take over, he started binge eating my mother’s cat’s selections of wet food and kibble. I started to worry about him getting car sick, I needn’t have worried at all because he barged his brains out within 10 minutes of gorging himself. Luckily, after picking through cat vomit, there were no signs of him having regurgitated the pill. So into the carrier they went. Every few minutes I remembered something else I’d forgotten and would run back in and grab it. The last thing I forgot will haunt me forever. We were within sight of the interstate when I suddenly remembered I left my safe. Picture a gun safe, only I typically only keep OTHER weapons of destruction for adult eyes only in. Guns are icky, self love is not. So I called my oldest and asked him to confirm that “mommy’s little safe” was still at the house. Much to his disgust, it was… also in the safe because I knew it’d be the one place I couldn’t lose them? All the bolts to our beds. The safe had to make the trip. So my oldest son handed THE SAFE FULL OF VERY IMPORTANT THINGS to my stepfather who was on his way out the door for work and we had to meet him in the parking lot of the airport for this exchange. I won’t be able to look him in the eye ever again, which is already difficult as he’s pushing 7 feet tall and I’m barely over 5 feet. The drive goes semi smoothly from there. For once, Lou isn’t asking every half hour to stop and pee. Small miracles. We make it to Buccees in Alabama and manage not to spend all our travel money on more Buccee Beaver swag, but I do manage to leave my phone. In their immaculate bathroom. Their very public bathroom. I panic and start pushing “find my phone” on my watch and my phone is ON THE MOVE. Sprinkle a little more panic on top. I turn one way and get closer as it goes another way much farther. Finally I hear it screaming as a manager looks up from my phone and asks if I’m missing something. I probably look incredibly deranged at this point. Settled back into the car, we cruise along through Memphis, Mississippi and then the cats start waking up out of their stupor around the Arkansas state line. Their cries start to break my heart and I think of how long they’ve gone without water or bathroom breaks and WHAT KIND OF CAT MOM AM I? So I allow Lukas to free them. Big. Fucking. Mistake. Kevin loses her mind and attempts to scale the dashboard, cave dive the foot well, and is honestly just her normal neurotic self. Clyde decides he wants to also go down to help me drive and I managed to bear hug him to my chest. His back leg sneaks free and presses down on the back drivers side window. I panic, Clyde tries to wiggle free to investigate the interstate as it flies by at 80 mph and it takes everything in me to keep us on the road, roll the window back up, shove them BACK into the carrier and then child lock the windows. We make it to La Quinta in Little Rock, Arkansas before we set the cats free for the night.

Thursday. I’m up before God himself can get caffeinated. I’m officially out of iced coffee in my cooler pitcher and decide shotgunning FOUR CUPS of tasty La Quinta French roast will be fine JUST fine on my stomach. I follow this up with waffles because duh… free hot breakfast waffle makers are LIFE GIVING when I have sudden instantaneous regrets. You know that scene from Bridesmaids? I was Maya Rudolf in her wedding dress mid downtown intersection. I lost both my dignity and 10 pounds simultaneously. Because I don’t learn, I talked the lovely breakfast attendee into letting me fill up my iced coffee pitcher. As I finished topping off the pitcher, despite explaining and asking her if she was sure I could do it, she points to the camera and says, “I hope you don’t get into trouble for all the coffee, they are always watching.” I ganked my pitcher full of hotter than Hell coffee and booked it back to our room to wrangle the semi-sedated cats back into their carrier so we can hit the road before she sent the cops after me for coffee theft. We left Little Rock around 10 am. Oklahoma took most of the day, but then Texas happened. First, Apple Maps decides a short cut up an incline on a gravel road would save us time (but not our sanity) because 20 mph in a VERY loaded down Nissan Rogue was not the picture of efficiency. SO I made a u-turn back towards the interstate, a decision that will haunt me forever. Four hours into traversing the very tippy top of Texas, I decided to let mom drive till sunset so I could take a nap before powering through the last leg of this adventure. Texas continued to crawl past us and as I’m begging to please God let me sleep, mom turns off the interstate and onto a two lane highway. I look at the map and see it’s the last jaunt before our split second in New Mexico. The speed limit is 75 mph and there’s literally nothing, no street lights, no signs of intelligent life, nothing. Fields as far as the eye can see. As the sun begins to set I start having flashes of Hunter S. Thompson barreling down the highway high as hell screaming, “this is bat country!” Mom assumes I am asleep, but clearly doesn’t notice me white knuckling the travel pillow to my chest with one hand and the car door handle with the other. I am struck silent with terror as she swerves and crosses lines at 75 mph in the pitch black nothingness of Texas. We have less than 100 miles left on the gas tank, still no signs of life beyond the blinding darkness and my mother still hasn’t asked to swap seats. Lukas is hungry, the cats are waking up, my three kid ruined bladder is dangerously full and I could smoke a carton my anxiety is so high at this point. It’s literally 9:03 pm before we roll up to a gas station with less than 30 miles left on our tank and while the pumps are still pumping, ain’t no one inside and the sign on the door states they closed at 9. I am not above squatting in a bush at this point and leaving Lukas to feast on the cats as there ain’t no drive thru chicken nuggets or cheeseburgers within apparently an hour of us. We do, however, pass a handful of sit down “ma and pa” type restaurants before finally stopping at the oddly named “Toot’n Totum” around 1130 pm where a sweet but pushy teenager got real sassy over Lou only wanting the dried out gas station nuggets when they also had fries, chips, and a slew of sauces to choose from. We head back to the car and drive off in silence as we were beyond done with this leg of the trip and nobody dared talk about stopping for the night… until my eyes started burning and my body decided that if I didn’t pull off the interstate RIGHT NOW I’d have about 2.3 seconds before falling asleep behind the wheel. And so I did and proceeded to force my poor mother to take over. I slept through New Mexico (good riddance, story for a different day) and I woke up to my mother pumping gas at a sketchy gas station in Trinidad Colorado while also looking up La Quintas nearby (not sponsored, just the only hotel that allows more than just dogs). This wakes me up enough to look her dead ass in the eyes and demand she get in the passenger seat because AINT NO WAY this is turning into a 3 day trip when we have less than 2 hours left of our journey. HELL NO. Over my dead body. I power smoked through two cigarettes while doing laps around the parking lot to wake myself up enough to only slightly break the speed limit safely to get to our Airbnb. Let me tell you, driving through the mountains will keep your ass alert real quick. 

Friday. At 3:54 AM I sent a message to my friend stating “Alive. Made it.” I don’t even remember sending it. What I do remember is slingshotting my bra across the room and face planting into a gloriously firm mattress. Over 13 hours of travel in one day and I had 6 hours before I needed to be caffeinated and coherent enough to sign my lease and get the keys. 4 hours later my body acts as if I’ve overslept and panic wakes me from a dead sleep. I accept my fate and chug the remains of my watered down gas station iced coffee, cry as I find my bra and force it back on and head to the house. Papers signed and keys secured I head back to the Airbnb picking up a trente iced coffee (NO ICE) and a shaken brown sugar espresso along the way. There’s no napping at this point, I have to retrieve money orders and a gajillion amazon packages from the post office and then meet my friend at the house so he can help me hang blinds because rentals don’t believe in them apparently. I release my mom and Lukas back to the Airbnb and after a few hours of putting away/installing my Amazon haul and retrieving slippery screws as they fall during blind install, my friend takes me back to the Airbnb because I’m clearly drunk on sleep deprivation at this point. I don’t even remember going to bed.

Which brings me to today, Saturday. My movers still haven’t shown up so we’ve had to extend our Airbnb and reschedule mom’s flight back home twice now. Their window of delivery runs through Monday. Which is also the only day I have to register Lou for school since they were closed for spring break last week. Monday will see me as the busiest girl alive and we’ll be living mostly out of boxes till next weekend when I can finally curl up, be cozy and unpack at my leisure.

All this insanity has been worth it to hear Lou thank me for bringing him to “the coolest state we’ve been to.” On his short list of states visited I can guarantee Texas will be at the bottom of that list and we’ll never speak of why that is ever again.

Hope yall enjoyed our National Lampoon’s-esque adventure! I hope to be mostly boring from here on out.

Selfish.

I want to be selfish. 

I want to be selfish, and adored, cherished, put first… 

I don’t want to have more kids because I’ve been there, done that, got the battle wounds and nearly lost my life 2 of 3 times. I want to be selfish and not start over. I want to be selfish and spoil the kids I have already and then maybe sometime in the next 15 years I’ll have grandbabies to spoil and love on.

I want to be selfish and love someone with my whole heart who loves me with their whole heart. I want to be with someone who only wants to adventure with me in this point of my life while I still have hopefully decades of good years to adventure. 

I want to be selfish now, not in another 20 years. I don’t want to worry about kids to wake up, to manage meds for, to stress and lose sleep over when I already have that times 3 as it is. I’m finally able to be present for the kids I have and they’re almost out the door.

I want the only hot breath I wake up to to be my cats or whomever I decide to share my life with whether that’s in the moment or forever.

And because I’m selfish, I don’t want to entertain forever with someone who can’t imagine being selfish about their time with me being jeopardized by schedules and school meetings and “are they meeting their milestones” or “do you think they’re doing drugs, have bad friends, etc?”

My heart shouldn’t feel this bruised knowing that I’m possibly releasing the one person who will inevitably break my heart again. The one person I would continue following to the ends of the earth for. Maybe someone else could fill that role that one person has filled in my heart and head for the better part of my life, but would I want them? Would I be able to say goodbye? Again?

This sweet life is too short and no days are guaranteed. I just want my heart to be content with every beat that’s left in it.

Happy Birthday

The problem with having a super sensory dense memory is that I can still feel you under my hands. I can still taste your skin and smell the citrusy earthy scent of your soap of your youth.

I can’t wait to re-explore you, like driving a backroad that’s been since paved in the 20 years you’ve been gone. You know the curves, where the potholes and blemishes should be. You know how the sun hits in the early evening but now the trees are taller and have filled out with their adult limbs and fuller leaves and colors. 

I can see the “you” I remember from then and I’m so excited to retrace the paths of this older you. 

The grass is only greener where it’s been watered.

 I have spent the majority of our timeline supporting you. Supporting your dreams, supporting your habits, supporting you mentally, emotionally, physically and financially. 

As children came into our lives I shifted my focus on supporting them. I shifted funds, asked for help, drained what little retirement I had to make sure they were financially covered. It didn’t just cost me money, but also mentally. It robbed a lot of time I could have spent enjoying them and being a positive presence in their lives and instead presented them with a mom who was so stressed out and stretched thin that THAT is who they remember when they think of the time we all lived under one roof.

The mother they have now, they weren’t allowed to have then and that breaks me. Meanwhile to them, you’ve been living your best life for nobody but yourself and as much as I want to shelter them from that, they’ve reached an age where they can see your mugshot, look you up on social media, hear second hand about your life from those you surrounded yourself by. People who weren’t them.

You came out of that “situation” last year looking to make amends, to be “better” for them and yourself. I sucked up my pride for the “big picture” and at times begged you to just be present. The times you did show up, you all but squealed tires leaving.

If you want to relocate, to go wherever the wind takes you, fine. Do it. But don’t drag them down on your way out. Don’t leave them wanting more and then dip out. They didn’t ask to be here. They didn’t put in a special request to have us as parents, but we wanted THEM. We owe it to them to support them in every way imaginable and I’ve been covering the tab for both of us this entire time. When do I get to say “enough?” Where is the line you have to cross for me to get legal involved again? Who will bail you out then?

The amount of child support you pay for three children is the average amount for one in this state. I know because I see it first hand when mom’s come in to lease with me. I don’t hold you responsible for their healthcare. I don’t hold you accountable for the holidays or time you’re supposed to be spending with them and you find excuses to not follow through.

We have 18 summers with each child. 18. Why aren’t you making that a priority? Why aren’t you running towards them like the house is on fire and you’re the only able bodied adult who can save them? I often feel so sorry for you that you don’t get to experience this love, this absolute joy that is simply being with our kids as often as I get to be in their presence.

As a former child of an absent parent, my heart breaks more for them because I never wanted this for them and if you’d asked me 20 years ago if I felt you could ever do the same to our kids I would have fallen over dead if I knew then what I know now.

What would have happened if my father didn’t die right before the oldest needed oral surgery? What if the property never sold before another needed braces? Maybe I manifested the timing without knowing. What I wouldn’t give to have 10 minutes with my father to just hold him, despite our rocky relationship. I still just want my dad back. Will our children feel the same when you’re gone for good?

Jeffery Lamar Greer

Jeffery Lamar Greer

6/16/1959 - 8/28/2023

On the evening of Monday August 28th, 2023, our Daddy, Jeffery Lamar Greer, was welcomed home by his Mama Tillie Kelley Greer, Father Billy Lamar Greer and sister Patricia Ann Greer along with many grandparents, aunts, cousins and other family members who proceeded him in death.

Jeffery was a loving Father to Tiffany Greer (VanVorst) and Jenna Greer as well as “Papa Jeff” to his four grandchildren, Logan VanVorst, Lillie VanVorst, Lukas VanVorst and Riker Jackson.

He was born in Columbus, Georgia to Tillie Kelley Greer and Billy Lamar Greer on June 16th 1959. He spent many childhood years in the Phenix City and Alexander City areas surrounded by his expansive family. He attended Benjamin Russell High School and continued on in his late teens to join the Army. Upon leaving the Army he married Sherri Baker in June 1980 and proceeded to bring their daughters Tiffany (1982) and Jenna (1988) into the world. They settled in Fayetteville, Georgia in the mid 80’s closer to Sherri’s family.

After his divorce from Sherri, he spent some time back in Alexander City with his Mother. There, he would spend his time with his girls playing hours of Crazy Taxi "We gon' HAVE some fun!" He would also take, specifically Jenna, on many trips around the area visiting historical and family land. Many visits included exploring his hometown. After the loss of his mother's twin, he and his mother relocated to Phenix City closer to her one surviving sister. From there, he would travel back and forth back home to his girls and grandchildren were born.

We had almost 10 years with our father before he passed. He was able to watch his grandkids play soccer, softball, baseball and take the stage for both awards and plays. We were all lucky to have been influenced by his musical taste, faith, and endless love of history. If you knew him personally, you'd know that he spent years tracing his family back "across the pond" on via the Mayflower but also deep into the Cherokee Nation. He was very excited to find family and be able to trace their geology to find the familial connection between them and spent hours on both Ancestry.com and 23andMe.com playing a form of "Human Sudoku" confirming his years and years of old school research visiting libraries, vital records offices and graveyards.

 

We, his children, will miss him dearly. In the weeks since his passing, it has been increasingly startling to realize we can't just call or text him. We will no longer hear him yearning for GOOD food, something he was robbed of more and more as his illnesses progressed and that man could make a mean cornbread that had friends and family who would fight to have him at their table at holidays.

 

If you have a good memory of our father, music that reminds you of him, or of a recipe you just know he'd have loved, please comment below so we can look back on this legacy he's left behind.

Checkmate.

 For 2 and a half years you have kept me all to yourself. This started with a chance flirtation; a sudden twist of words, the corner of your mouth turned upward giving away your momentary intentions.

Words passed between us in invisible ink, disappearing hours after reading, I have nothing to fall back on… nothing to reflect upon now that it’s actually over. No souvenir of our time together aside from a mostly empty jar of massage cream. 

You once warned me of men who would want me, who I was and wasn’t allowed to play with. You took them from me, pulling your politics into my separation of church and state. We shared one kiss, one I asked for in an effort to taste me lingering on them. You would wait days, weeks between invitations into your hands and take away the moments I shared with men who wanted more than my flesh.

I told you that my bed was “Vegas, baby… what happens here stays here.” And then it suddenly wasn’t. I still hear his voice in surround sound, telling me to tell the truth, telling me he’ll call me when it’s safe, telling me he’d been demoted because of us. Us. Because of you. It wasn’t your place.

You were selfish then. You are selfish still. I spilled everything just a few weeks back, still silly bitter that you were moving away. I spilled all my frustrations that you had this way of twisting and tying me in knots and then bring the strings holding me together so close to being untangled just to knot them back together again. How it was a jerk move and I didn’t understand your reasoning, what did you get from this? Where was your reward? Should I have been disrespectful? Should I have lured you to “Vegas?” Opened my mouth to use my big girl voice as I once told you to do the same with your big boy voice? Should I have asked about her? Made you say her name? Would this have carried on as long as it did?

I looked back on our conversations, seeking to see the grey areas between the black and white on the screen. Everything that meant anything was written in invisible ink and I see that now. I see that I’m too late to raise my voice. I’m too late to make that move. Too late to whisper “checkmate” in your ear as you have me tortured against your front door, denying my exit. You should have used your words and I shouldn’t have overstayed my welcome.

Fool’s Gold

In a world filled with so many options of “social” media, I feel so alone. I miss the days of actual friendships. I miss the friendships I thought I had.

I’m so good at being independent and alone. Too good. Alone is comforting until it’s not. When I’m overwhelmed and over stimulated, alone is a thick blanket I can pull up to my chin and wrap myself up in.

I don’t have relationships that I can just pick up the phone and bullshit with someone, there’s always a clause I overlook somehow.

I’m not ready for a partner or anything long term romantically. I want someone I can be apart from but be together when we’re able. A plus one, but only when a plus one is actually necessary. I miss the friendships I thought I had.

I have a few “friends” but the stars almost never align for us to meet anymore. There’s only one who makes my stomach feel full of butterflies. I want him, but I also know that I wouldn’t if I ever had him. 

That guy. I swoon over him in my sleep, I see him and want to wrap my hand behind his neck and pull him into me. I want to make out with him, but know that in doing so I would jeopardize the kinds of feelings I have for him and he’s completely off limits despite his ability to sweet talk me out of my pants. 

Then there’s the new guy. I met him years ago when I couldn’t do anything but gawk at him and curse myself for having a separation of “church and state” or in my case “work and personal” life. Now that he no longer falls under the “forbidden” category and we’ve since matched on a dating app, it’s been brought to light that he’s also been intrigued by me. Once again, though, nothing is lining up just right to allow us to meet up,

I’m just done with life right now, I’m done with the games leading up to the grand finale.