Well enough with the sad. It's downright depressing everytime I open my blog and I see that still up there.

Classes started yesterday. More fun at DMACC. I spent almost 13 hours on campus. 10 hours on the phones and three hours in class. Joy is me. By the end of the day I was ill, physically ill. My headached and I was sweating a type of cold sweat. I figure it was a combination of exhaustion and a lack of solid foods. I had breakfast about 10:00 am, a ham and egg and cheese on an English muffin. I also had a Dr. Pepper and Taffy. It wasn't really any more or less than I eat or do on a regular basis but my stomach and head didn't seem to care.

This morning, after a few hours bordering on restless sleep, I was feeling a little better. Actually, after I threw up around 1:30 last night, I went downstairs and took out some porkchops. I fried them up after I got out of bed this morning. Not a bad breakfast. Renee looked at me in disbelief when I offered her some for breakfast. She's really more of a cereal kinda gal. Much to my surprise, she did eat one. I think she mostly did it in an attempt not to feel guilty. I ate the remainder for lunch today.

There was a martial arts theme on the Discover channel today. I watched about 45 mins of it, I've seen all of those episodes before. I mostly watch for the fat Aikido instructor. It's amusing to watch him take down black-belt after black-belt student with a flick of his wrist or a twitch of his elbow. Good stuff. Although, the ninja with a Scottish accent is always worth a chuckle.

I'll write more in the near future. I got busy at work and couldn't finish this.

Sad.

I had hoped not to be the first one, aside from Mom2, who updated on the subject. I had hoped that either Kara or Rob would at least mention it in their blogs before I did. If you don't know to what I'm referring, then it's not important that you know.

It's been a weird week. I didn't find out about the situation until Monday, when Rob told me and I read Pam's blog and email. Since then I've struggled to comprehend the gravity of the situation. Actually, I struggled to understand the facts behind the situation in the first place. A crank addict? Wow. I was thinking marijuana, but nope. She's a tweaker. Wow.

Marijuana wouldn't have surprised me in the slightest. Afterall, her Myspace page has a comment from one of her friends (paraphrased): Too bad you're in Des Moines. Now I got no one to smoke with.

In the past, I've known other crank addicts. Sad, pathetic individuals. There's a chance my uncle is on the garbage. He lives in a camper down in Hopeville on my mom's land. A former coworker of mine was too; every time he left the office he moved 100 mph. Could barely hold a thought for more than two minutes. His eyes were constantly darting back and forth. He lost his family and his house. And his teeth, eventually. When I first met him his teeth were only partially eaten away. The teeth automatically made the suspicions cross my mind. Fucked-up teeth is an auto-flag. But those two were different. I never had any personal feelings towards either. Both were barely more than acquaintances.

She is different. She is an important player in my past and my character. I've only really been able to formulate a single thought about her situation:

Sad.

So much promise, so sweet, so much compassion for the downtrodden. Surely she'd make a great mother one day. I was excited when I first learned she wanted to be in the nursing field. It seemed like a perfect fit for her. But then in my mind a lot of things seemed like a perfect fit for her.

The last time I spoke with her in person, I mean really spoke with her, we got into an argument. That was a long time ago. Far too long. She told me that I had no right to insert my personal opinions, that it was her life and she was not the innocent little girl everyone wanted to believe she was. I guess she was right. Over the past few years, I've thought about that night. Wishing I had handled it differently. She was and is, as I said, one of the major reasons I'm the person that I am. Through mistakes I made in the past in the way I treated her, in school, after school, various other places, I learned to be a better person, a better man. There were times I ignored or downplayed my various levels of relationships with her, something I never should have done. In essence I had betrayed her. Hurt her. I realized I was wrong and have since always sought to improve my behavior towards all people, and especially women, both friends and strangers.

Even recently, I've discovered imporant personal lessons from her. I contacted her via email. I touched base with her first, before anyone but Rob, about Rnee's and my plan to have a baby. I did because of her past influence on me. I wanted a chance to get to know Lilly, too. I spent this last summer babysitting for my lil'est niece, Angelina. I enjoyed my time with her immensely. I liked feeding her. I liked the idea of having a role in her life. I wanted the same chance with Lilly. A chance to know someone I identify as a niece. Something I should have done a long time ago. But time has a funny way of escaping a person. Much like with most of my nieces and nephews, I thought to myself, "This really isn't a very good time. I'll be able to do it next time." And next thing I know my nephew Anthony has aged five years and is starting kindergarten. The same had started to happen with Angelina. Then I got to spend some serious time with her. Then Renee and I started having serious talks about having one of our own. Something that alone has changed a lot of my outlook on things in general.

One of the things that I started to think about were the people who influenced my childhood and my life. She was among them, I hadn't talked to her since the fight. She was at my wedding, something that surprised me. It was a very pleasant surprise. I was afraid she'd be the one person I really wanted to be there, who wouldn't be. What better way to announce some very happy pre-news, than to let it get out through an old, very good friend? That was just more than a month ago. Among the news, I also apologized to my past reactions to her drama. Yes, I had been critical. I didn't apologize for that. Her actions then, as they are now, were inconceivably wrong. I apologized for being as outspoken about it as I was. But it was a battle, I chose the defense of her mom. Lies and false accusations, specifically designed to injure, are one of the few always-inexcusable actions. There is never a valid or acceptable end to justify such means.

In our last communique, she was angry that her parents wouldn't take her to see her dying great-grandmother. She told me that everyone wanted to make her seem like the bad guy, and for no reason. Normally, any sentence that displays that many absolute values, immediately flag themselves. But, I wanted to believe her. I chose a stance of blatant naivety. I wanted it all to be some giant miscommunication, or caused by confused times and dates, or even an intervening of fate that failed those involved. I wanted it to be anything but a lie. Of course, my wishfulness was that and nothing more.

Now I don't know what to be. I have an idea of what most of her family is feeling. I know what my wife is, disgusted. I would be disgusted if it was almost anyone else. The deception makes me angry, but that's over-rided by something I would describe only as sad. Profoundly sad.

See, Pam is ready to forgive, if not forget. In fact, I'm sure she'd like very few things more. But Pam must have a level of compassion and love that I am barely aware exists. A mother's love, probably. I am not currently capable of such things. I'm not angry so much as beyond belief and sad about the whole thing. I'm torn between two driving personal views.

There are a handful of creeds that I try to keep in mind at all times. The first and foremost is, "Once family, always family." I make very few true friends and view them all as family more than friends. Once I've made the decision that someone is my family, they will almost always be deserving of my near-absolute loyalty. It doesn't mean we always have to get along or agree, but that when things get bad, I'll be there for you.

There's only been one instance that the last creed has been overridden. Minus the details, it was when a person makes a concious decision to break the covenant and then have the adacity to use a substance as an excuse. That time it was alcohol, not meth. That time, I tried to work past it and just never could. That relationship slowly died. I can deal with honest mistakes, stupid decisions and even malicious acts, as long as it's countered with earnest regret.

I don't know what to think of this. Meth is such a dangerous drug. It kills physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually. For now I will remain sad. Sad for her family. Sad for her daughter, Lilly. Sad for our friendship. Sad for her.
*On a more personal note:

But life goes on. Renee and I will, god willing, soon have a child (hopefully a boy) ;p. A child who will learn the lessons you taught me, even if s/he never knows you. A child who will never be allowed to know the the person you currently are. But a child who will know about his/her aunt Sandy as my friend and, hopefully, as a strong person who overcame a very bad, rock-bottom situation.

Unfortunately, serious damage has been done. Renee doesn't know the Sandy that I once knew. All she has seen is four or five years of irresponsible and reprehensible behavior and parenting. She had a tough childhood, something she won't allow any of our future children. Any naivety on my behalf will be more than countered by her skepticism and distrust. You may always be family to me, but I doubt you'll ever earn Renee's trust. Without Renee's trust, the kids will never know you as any of those things. I'll make sure they know *about* you, but it will be the *person* they'll miss out on.

I hope beyond hope that this won't be the case. I want my child to play with cousin Lilly as much as I'll want them to play with cousin Shaun or Tori or Angelina or any of the rest of them. But a *lot* of things will have to change before that can ever happen. You don't have to be the "old" Sandy, just a responsible Sandy.

Well the summer semester has finally ended. Rarely have I been so happy for anything to end. There is bad news wrapped within this glorious announcement, however. Beyond the unfortunate incidents leading to yet another semester at DMACC, is that I didn't do terribly well in either of my summer classes. This is truly disappointing in that I was just offered a scholarship through DMACC of $1000, one that I fear may now be revoked because I've dipped below my B average. I'm hoping that there's a grace period, or something, of a semester that won't immediately disqualify me for it.

If it doesn't, it's not a huge deal because I was only planning to take two classes this semester, and that's my fall back plan. I'm mostly planning on phoning in an effort good enough for a B, if that's the case. The scholarship is nearly enough for a free ride. So, if I did get it, I'd put in a lot more effort.

What a sad conundrum.

In more domestic news, Renee and I are nearly ready to commence painting. Ya know, as long as "nearly" can be taken to mean, "a whole lot of talk and a little bit of actual planning." (Hey, it's only been 13 months since we moved in ;p)

For starters, we're converting the office into a prospective baby's room/nursery/testing ground. Renee can't get on her company's insurance until November or December, so we have a little while, yet. To achieve this, we're moving our love seat and Rnee's glider rocker up into that room. We're moving my L-desk down into the living room. We're getting rid of her Dell computer and converting my desktop to be her work PC. We're leaving at least one of our desks up there, so we have somewhere to work and also as a prospective workstation for when the kid gets older, and so that I have somewhere to work on my laptop, if I have to be in there with the kid at some point. This is going to be the first room that we do anything with. Since its out of the way, we're going to use it as a guinea pig. We're planning on tiling the entire house, and since neither of us have ever done it, we're going to start up there. I'd also like to do some sort of texturing thing on the walls, but we may or may not do that.

We don't like the carpeting. Too much hassle to keep clean -- besides, its imbedded with dog fur. We broke our 'cuum some time ago and its just sort of degenerated down into a compound of fur and carpet threads. It's kinda gross, but far too complex to get it all up. We'd have to pretty much go over the entire area of the carpet with a friction brush to get it up. That's far too much work for my tastes.

Meh, I'm bored, gotta go do something else.