Mary T. (Pearl) – Traditions in Healthy Relationships – Part 2 – Date Unknown

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And I called my mama and I said, there's something wrong. And she says, did you season it? And I said, salt and pepper? And she said, no. She says, did you season it? And I said, well, what are you talking about? Because in the instructions, it didn't say what you said. She said, you put some grease in it and you put it in the oven and you bake it at 450 degrees for so many hours until it seasons and then you can cook in them.

Okay. Now, mama said, put some grease in the skillet and put it in the oven at 450. Now, did you hear that? How much grease, mama? So, we have the two skillets and a can of Crisco. Now, this is an apartment. Do I know what a 450 flame looks like? This one's about like this. The fire department came. Smoke was going everywhere. The next morning, found my cast iron out on the street to be picked up by the garbage department.

I went down to the dollar store and got me a little sauce pan, a little aluminum sauce pan and a skillet. I said, I can't cook with this stuff. And that's how I started, you know. But you got to find out how to do it. My second one, that was my first husband. That wasn't JD. And then the first time we moved to this apartment, had a real stove, I decided I'd make a cake. So, I went down, got me a box of cake mix.

I followed directions, did it. And I was just waiting. It was so pretty. I was just so excited. And Wes came in and I said, go look in the kitchen. And he came back and he said, why did you make two cakes? I didn't make two cakes. Yes, you did. No, I didn't. The top layer had completely moved. Obviously, I didn't cool this long enough or something. And it was sitting side by side. So, for years later, I had a whole box of toothpicks in the cake.

This is not getting away from me. One of the girls at the office, she brought me some, she would bring things to the office for us all to eat. And she made wonderful fried peach pies. And I said, oh, I've got to learn how to do that. And so, she gave me the recipe. And I said, now, remember, I don't cook. So, put everything I need to know in there. And they were installing a telephone in our next apartment.

And the guy came in. He says, lady, there's something blowing up in the kitchen. Well, she told me to cook these peaches. And then you take a spoon. And she told me how to make the pie crust. And you cut it out around a saucer. And then you put a spoonful of filling. And that means all you can do, because I was using a big wooden mixing spoon. So, that was my spoon. And I got that down. There wasn't no holes for air or nothing.

And so, when you turn them over, they'd blow up. And they were going up. Did you ever feel like a real failure, you know? You know? I tried again a few years later. And this time, I buried them in the backyard. I mean, they're just… I didn't want anybody to see. We fought over control in our house. Now, when we bought the TV, I wanted two remotes. Wouldn't that have been fun? You notice they don't sell you but one.

Because, see, that way you can sit in your chair. And if you don't like it, you can flip it from your side. You know what I mean? You know, nobody would ever got to see anything. But, man, we could have had fun. But we used to fight over control over the television. So, finally, this is what we had to do. In recovery, we got a calendar. And we put an M on one day and a J on the next. And you go through the calendar.

And so, for that day, you had control of the TV. Now, is that a big major deal in life? It was a major deal of conflict. The only problem is sometimes on a J day, there was an M program. So, you trade two M's for a J so that you can have your program. Pretty soon, you get really confused about that. And it becomes more trouble than it's worth. And then it's not a big deal anymore. You know? And that was the process that we went through on little bitty things, you know?

And then, I think there needs to be a two-step program for men with remote controls. Clickers Anonymous. Now, the man who cannot decide in three hours what he wants to have for supper, in one-fifteenth of a second, can tell you if he wants to see a program. It has to be because it's… And they're going by so fast, they can't focus. How do they know they don't like that program? How do they know? You know?

And then we had driving problems. He wanted to sit other than behind the wheel and drive the car.

[00:05:04]

So, the rule is, when I'm driving, you keep your mouth shut. When you're driving, I'll keep my mouth shut. And I can do real good at that. He can't. He had to be put out of the car one time. All you have to do is put him out one time. Then they know when to stop. You know? He says, I'm not getting out of the car. I said, oh, yes, you are. And I kicked him out. You're leaving the car now. JD has left the car.

Other relationships. When JD and I got married, Dorothy did not want me to marry anybody. She said, your marriage didn't work. And she said, you got to promise me you're not going to turn around and just do it all over again. And so I lied and told her. And I knew I was getting married Friday. I mean, I got divorced on Monday. I mean, what the hell? I don't believe in long engagements. Strike while the iron is hot.

They might change their mind. And at that point in my life, I couldn't be okay if I didn't have a him. You know, how some people are. You know, we get that way where we got to have this in our life or we're not okay. Or we got to have that person in our life or we're not okay. And I got a newsflash. The only thing you have to have in your life to be okay is God. That is the only one that you have to have.

But anyway, so Dorothy was real antagonistic toward J.D. And I didn't know why she was mad at J.D. Because J.D. hadn't done anything to her. And they would just go, nyeh-nyeh, nyeh-nyeh, nyeh-nyeh, nyeh-nyeh, back and forth. And it was miserable to be when mama would say, come over for dinner or something. And we knew everybody was going to be there. Well, you know, it's like I'd have to translate to Dorothy later what J.D. really meant when he said that terrible remark.

And I'd have to tell J.D. what Dorothy really meant when she said that tacky remark. And I was trying to keep peace. And you know, that's a miserable spot to find yourself in. Absolutely miserable. And so I was talking to my sponsor and she said, get out of the middle. I said, they'll have World War III. She said, they'll have World War III. Whatever they have to do. But you get out of the middle. She says, they don't have a relationship.

And she said, you are totally miserable the whole time you're together, right? Absolutely. Because I was afraid he was going to say something that was going to set her off or vice versa. You know, that kind of thing. And it's like, can we all not be together for five minutes and be okay? No. Sometimes that is not humanly possible when we've got a bunch of sick people here, you know. And so finally I told Dorothy one time, I said, what in the hell is the matter with you about J.D.?

She said, you lied. And your point is? And she said, you told me you weren't going to marry him. And I said, you're mad at me and you're taking it out. She said, well, I love you. So it was easy to take it out and I said, you're nuts. You know, but I mean, see that, you never figure out somebody else's logic on something like that. Because it's, you know, one logic is somebody else's cockamamie. You know how that goes.

And so anyway, I got out of the middle. And guess what? World War III happened. I got into it one night over at Mother's for the family dinner. God, how I hated those things. It was just miserable. And so they got into it and Dorothy ended up getting mad and walking out and J.D. And I mean, it was just awful. And Dorothy would call me and I'd say, Dorothy, I'm not in that. That's between you and J.D.

And J.D. would say, and your sister, and I said, I don't want to hear about my sister. If you want to have a problem with my sister, you have it with my sister. But she's my sister. You know, you've got three brothers. Do we need to go there? I don't think so. So anyway, after a period of time went past, I don't know what happened, but all of a sudden they were talking to one another. And in a year or two, they're best friends.

And best friends they've always been since that point, you know. And I know one time, oh, I guess it was maybe eight or nine years ago, J.D. and Dorothy got crosswise and he said something tacky to her. And he later made amends. But the other day he said to me, he says, you know, I'm real grateful Dorothy doesn't remember the time I said that tacky thing to her. And I said, have you not let go of that?

And he said, I don't guess so all the way. He says, I just love her so much and I just hate what I did. And I said, but you made amends. And he said, well, I'm making a living amends too because he says I just love her, you know. But the thing is, it's like when you love somebody and you say something like that, you hate yourself more than you do what happened there. Okay, tradition three. Two or more persons when gathered together for mutual benefit may call themselves a relationship.

[00:10:05]

The only basic requirements for a good marriage or relationship are a mutual desire to be in the relationship and a willingness to make it work. One person can't make a relationship work. I've been there, done that. Got a t-shirt, you know. You can't want it enough for both of you. And why are you in a relationship in the first place? It's because we like we better than me. You know, we like to share.

You know, I think that's the reason God created us, you know. He created people because he saw that we could complement one another's life. Not be one another's life, but to complement one another, you know. And you can realize that, yeah, a person has to grow at their own pace, but sometimes when you're the only one that's doing anything toward it, you know, you're trying to do that relationship and carry it by yourself.

And there will be people that say, well, I'm willing to do this and I want this, but willingness without action is a fantasy on your part. Because you've got to take an action. Willingness, you've got to take an action. I can say I'm going to Beaumont all day long. I'm going to fly my butt out to the airport on time. I won't be getting down to Beaumont. You know, you've got to take an action. You've got to put something forth in the effort.

And sometimes we swap back and forth on willingness. You know, there's days when you get up and you just don't feel like it. You know, it's just too much effort today. I think I want to be on an island for today where I can't talk to anybody, where I won't have to know any men's at the end of the day. You know, I'm just, I'm tired or I'm this. You know, when we get into the too hungry, too lonely, too angry, too tired, I can be too hot.

You know, when you get too hot sometimes, that affects my, and menopause is just wonderful. And if you've had a heat stroke in Houston before, you know, it just makes heat just an awful thing to have to endure. So there's times when you're just not in a good place spiritually or emotionally. And I've noticed that over the years, it was my break in spiritual contact with a power greater than myself that then I began to, my emotions began to get whacked out.

My logic began to go downhill. And then my actions followed. And so we have to get well first spiritually so that your thinking and emotions will get right, so that your actions can become right. And what we do here is we learn to take those actions because we can't change our thinking. It's only when we see the results that our thinking can change. I could tell you all day long that leaving the cat alone out in the yard wouldn't work.

When I left the cat alone, the cat went away. So it was taking the action that made me see something differently. And when I'm not in a good place, I tell him, I'm not in a good place today. And what that says to him, or if he says that to me, we know because we've sat down and talked about that, that means don't put a lot of decision making. I don't feel like up to having to handle major projects today.

I don't want to have to do major anything. I want a day off, please. Don't put a lot of demands on me emotionally or any other kind because I'm not in really great shape today. You could get bit. You know, maybe not physically, maybe so. Who knows? But you've got to communicate where you are to the other person. That's like, you know, I got up one morning and J.D. was, and I said, you know, I'm sorry you're having a bad morning, but I'm going to have a good day, go with God, and I left.

You know, I don't have to stay there because if I stay there, I'll try and fix him. See, so I have to take actions against what I know my sickness will tell me to do. There's unhealthy reasons for staying in a relationship. I bet we could name one for every person in this room. In my first marriage, I stayed there. I was trapped because of fear and emotional and financial insecurity. You know, a lot of women will stay for financial security, especially if you have children.

You want to make sure that they're taken care of, and you want all the things that the finances can provide. You'll put up with a lot of crap for that. I never had any kids, and I still put up with a lot of crap. You know, I'm telling you. Then confusion, not knowing what to do. You know, it's like, what should I do? And I just hate it when I get somebody that's new, and I try to sponsor them, and they say, I don't know, should I get a divorce, should I stay?

Should I get a divorce, should I stay? I said, I'm going to solve that problem. Really? Yes, you're going to stay for a year. All things being equal, if you're not having physical abuse, you're going to stay for a year and try to work on you and see what happens. So now you don't have to worry about, should I go, should I stay? You're going to stay. What if I don't want to stay?

[00:15:01]

Get another sponsor. Because we don't have the sense enough to make an informed decision when we come here in that kind of chaos and confusion in our mind. They tell us, don't make major life-changing decisions for a year. There's a reason for that. Experience has shown that we do things that we wouldn't do if we'd have waited later on. And then we have those regrets. Well, I never got to see if that would work or I never got this and that.

And believe me or not, their life will go on. Just because you're not there won't stop that. And then I had this materialistic thing within me. I love my things. My things, to me, were my signs of success. And I didn't want to give any of them up. You know, in a divorce, you have to split things. No, you can die. I'm keeping my things. And then there's pity instead of love. He needs me, feeling sorry for him, feeling sympathy for him.

That's not necessarily love. Okay? Then there was that pride, that little voice ringing in my ears. Don't come home crying to me. Believe me, old girl, I won't. I will walk through hell first before I will say I made a mistake. And I did for eight years. I knew two weeks after I was married, I didn't want to be married to this man. Now, that's a horrible thing to realize, you know. Two weeks you've been married and it's like, oh, made a mistake.

It's not like Jack's. You can't just go over. You know, it just doesn't work that way. But I wanted to. It's like, can you just blink and go back in time and not having done that and why did you do it? Well, mama was so against it. You see, and my life was rebel, rebel, rebel. You know, my mother gave me 18 years of music lessons. She wanted me to be a concert pianist. She wanted it too much. If she hadn't wanted it so much, I would have been.

Because I loved it, but I rebelled because she was going to make me be. Nobody makes me. See, that dig in stuff, man. And so, but I'd turn around and try to do that. Now, if you're in a new relationship and someone says, tell me about your boyfriend, what do you say? Oh, well, he's handsome and he's so cute and he's got this hair and he's got this little duck tail in the back and he's just perfect and he's got so much of the most wonderful quality that all of them have potential.

And I'm put here on earth to help him develop that potential. I'm a potential developer. Good God in heaven. Okay, you get the piece of paper, you're married. Now let's change him. Mr. Perfect now has flaws. It's like, I told my sponsor, I said, one of the things that JD does is I said, it's not necessarily the great big things, it's the little things, it's the fleas and ticks. It's not the major things, it's that just everyday little stuff that just gets under your skin, drives you crazy.

He cannot squeeze toothpaste properly. She said, what do you mean? I said, he squeezes it in the middle. She said, well, get two tubes of toothpaste. No. And she said, why not? And I said, because he needs to learn how to do it right. I've been trying all these years to get him to do it right. She says, maybe there's not a right or wrong way. Oh, I brought in the second tube of toothpaste and I gave it to him and he said, for me?

Now that sounds so silly and we all laugh about it. I can't tell you how many fights started in the morning over the toothpaste, because he would get up before me going there, squeeze the middle, you know, and I'm one of these rosy pretty hands, you know, and I'm having to rearrange the toothpaste before I can even squeeze it out of the tube. It didn't matter we had two bathrooms, he'd brush his teeth in my bathroom, derotate me.

You know, it was just nutty, nutty little stuff like that, you know. And my mother had made them the same as you made your bed, now you lie in it. Oh my God, that just like to kill me with that first husband. I mean, they really like to kill me.

[00:20:02]

You know, it's easier to stay with the known than it is to jump out in the unknown. Even no matter how bad the known is, you know what it is. And it's when the fear of the known becomes greater than the fear of the unknown that you'll do something different. When the idea of it's never going to be any better than this finally sinks in, then you're willing to do something different. Now the things that I did that killed that relationship, that first relationship, if it had even had a chance, first of all I was in love with the idea of being in love, fell in heat about the same time, you know how that goes.

And you mistake lust for love, you know. Not bad, but it didn't work. Anyway, there was the fear and dishonesty, especially about my feelings. I never said I feel, I always said I think. I didn't let you in to know about my feelings because if I let you into that sweet, soft inner side, you might hurt me. So I always use logic out here. Now logic and feelings go like this. They are not on the same plane.

If you're going to talk feelings and I talk feelings, then we can communicate with one another, then you understand. If I am telling you logically why you shouldn't feel that way, that's going to irritate you because it's going to tell you that your feelings, which you've already felt, are not valid, which you know they are because you felt them, you know. And so when you've got someone like me, you'll give up rather than fight the fight, but you'll get the resentment and all these things, and then you get even.

Now I have a tendency to have obsessions, you know, like my yard. And the first obsession that I, in doing my inventory, was when I was a little bitty kid, and we had a big, big yard and we had lots of fruit trees, and in the backyard we had a big pear tree, and the next-door neighbor had a pear tree, same variety, same size. They were planted about the same time. There the next-door neighbor's pear tree was behind the fence because they had a little dog that would bite you.

You know, the big dogs bark, but the little dogs nip, nip, nip, you know. And so it was more exciting to go over and to run in the yard and try to grab a pear and get back out without getting dog bit than it was to just get one out of our backyard. Now many times I got dog bit. And back in those days they made you put up your dog for ten days to make sure it didn't have rabies or something. And the neighbor suggested my mother, I be put up.

But her pears tasted better than the ones in our backyard. Stolen fruit tastes better. See that excitement, that little dark side, you know, living on that excitement, you know. And that's like when I went to clubs. My husband played in the band. He was the lead guitar in the band. And I would go into the clubs with him to play, and while he was playing, I'd troll the room. And it's more exciting out here, this little flirtation that you're doing.

And besides, everybody knows you're married, no big deal. Everybody knew I was married except me. You know, somehow that just didn't register too long, you know. And I loved the attention I got from men. Now, my relationship with my father was, Daddy made everything okay. Anytime I had a conflict with Mama, Daddy would come in, step in, and he would take care of me. And Mama would say, you can't do it, and Daddy would say, oh Pearl, there's no reason why she can't do that.

And he would come, and he was my hero. And I think somewhere in my mind, I got the idea that a man can fix everything and make it okay for you. And I tried to find Daddy in these guys, but I never picked a Daddy like my Daddy, you know. These guys that I picked needed help. They were not the helper, they were the helpee. You know, I never could, my picker was broken, you know. So, another thing that will really kill your relationship is to have mental unfaithfulness.

This is where we fantasize, you know, gosh, isn't he cute, I wonder what it would be like with him. Nobody knows, I'm thinking, it's just me. You know, and so then you begin to, and once you make your fantasy person over here, then you start comparing what you have against the fantasy. And he never comes up to measure, I can tell you that. You know, he's tired tonight, I know somebody who wouldn't be tired.

You know, I know somebody that would be willing to do that for me. You know, those are things you don't say, but they're going on up here.

[00:25:01]

It's all going on up in your mind, but what you're doing is, you are chipping away, chipping away on your relationship, because the more your mind and your emotions are somewhere else, the less they are where you are. And that, and the thing about it is, when you start pulling away, your husband will notice, or your boyfriend or whatever, they will notice that you're not there. And it's like, you begin to do your wifely things through a sense of obligation, or doing it just to get it done, rather than to be an active participant in your relationship.

And then I began to avoid him, I was unavailable. I was reading late, I can't be in bed right now, because I'm in a really good part of this book, and I really can't put it down, because you really don't want to go in there and do what you need to do. Don't want to do there, so you just, you avoid it, you know. And then you physically and mentally and emotionally begin to block them out, block them out.

And then all of a sudden you get into control. Now, my sponsor told me, she said, a good place to find out where your relationship is, think about how it is in the bedroom. And I said, I don't control in the bedroom. She said, you don't, you control in every other area, why wouldn't you control there? And I said, I just don't. So I talked to JD, and he said, oh God, yes. He said, it has to be when you want it, where you want it, how you want it, with the lights out, after 11 o'clock, I didn't know I had so many rules.

When I was younger, having affairs, it wasn't a big deal, you know, wherever you are, I mean, that seems good enough to me. And it was like, it was a dog yummy type thing, you know, you're a good dog, you get the yummy, you're a bad dog, you don't get the yummy. That was the kind of attitude it was, if you did something that irked me during the day, you can forget it. I see some other guilty folks around this room.

And you know, that's when I found out, too, that foreplay doesn't start in the bedroom. It starts way earlier in the day, you know, way early in the day. You can't fuss and fight, fuss and fight, fuss and fight. And see, we tried that for a long time, fuss and fight, and try to make up in the bedroom. It doesn't go that way, because you're taking all of those feelings in there, and you may be getting a physical release, but you are emotionally not getting what you need.

You're using sex in a way it wasn't intended. Then there was such a thing with my first husband, there was abuse, physical and verbal abuse. Now, I was the abuser with JD, but in my first relationship, I took a lot of crap off of my first husband. Now, we're in another country, you're so many thousand miles away from home, and you don't know anybody. You can't go back home, because she said, don't come back here, you know.

And so I'm doomed there, I'm doomed. And so you put up with things you wouldn't normally put up with. And so we got into a big fight one night, and I called him an SOB, and he took it very personally for his mother. And I didn't even know it meant that, you know, I just heard, and when we got in the military, there's a lot of language I had never heard before, you know, and it became just every day, and you hear that stuff every day, it has no value whatsoever.

And so I called him an SOB, and he says, don't call me that. Well, see, you can't tell me what to do and what not to do. And so I said, son of a bitch, son of a bitch. And so he looks at me, he says, I'm telling you, don't you say that again. I said, son of a bitch, son of a bitch, son of a bitch. And he just knocked me flat, he hit me in the face and knocked me flat on the floor, and I'm laying down there, and I look up, I said, son of a bitch, you can kill me, but you're not going to win.

It ain't going to happen. I played this with my mama for years, I know this one. You know, and he looked at me, and I said, it takes a big man to hit a woman now, doesn't it? Well, big man has to go to sleep, and big man can wake up with an ice pick in his guts. He move on to the base for a week, you know. And see, I had always said I will never live with someone who hits me, and I did. And when you start compromising your belief system, you're doing terrible things to yourself.

What they do to you is one thing, but what you do to you by doing that and keeping yourself in that situation, that's your fault. And then, like I say, I began to make excuses instead of taking responsibilities for my action. And then I had the disease of more, because I lived on excitement, and I couldn't get enough of it, you know. It's like the alcoholic who walked into a bar, and there's a big sign behind the bar that says, oh, you can drink for a dollar.

…behind the bar says, all you can drink for a dollar, he looks at it and says, give me two dollars worth. You know, that's the thing. And then, you know, it was fantasy world. I'm living in a fantasy world now.

[00:30:07]

I'm not living in the world I'm in. I'm making up a world, you know, we call that denial here. And I didn't know that, but there's an old, old joke about it, and it's about a priest and a Jewish rabbi and an Al-Anon all died and went to hell. And they're down there discussing the situation. And so the rabbi looks at the priest, and the priest looks at the rabbi, and then he says, what did you do to get sent here?

And the rabbi says, well, it was pork. Our next door neighbors were a Christian family, and they had pork chops one night and had me over for supper, and I got the taste for pork. I know that has to be why I'm here. He looked at the priest, and he said, why are you here? He said, well, it was sort of like that. It was the next door neighbor's daughter. And I got a taste of that, and I just couldn't seem to keep those vows.

And they looked at the Al-Anon, and they said, and what did you do? She said, what are you all talking about? And they said, what did you do to get sent to hell? And she said, it's not hot, and I'm not here. Another thing was, I was spiritually bankrupt. Absolutely no guidance other than what I found between my ears. Absolutely. And I made a lot of bad choices in my life. A lot of bad choices. And one of the things that my mother did that really drove me nuts on a continuous basis was she was bitchy about everything.

Mama griped and complained and bitched about everything, and God, I became exactly like my mom. And that is like an erosion process. It's like throwing acid on a relationship. That bitching and constantly, and you try and block it out, but it's just awful. And that also reminds me of a story about a little girl that became, she went into the convent and she became a nun, and she had to take a vow of silence.

And after she'd been in there for ten years, the Mother Superior called her into her office, and she says, you've been a good and faithful nun for ten years. We're going to allow you to say two words. She said, bed's hard. She says, that's right, the beds are very hard here. Go back and pray. So after ten years went past again, they called her in, and Mother Superior said, you've been here twenty years. We're going to allow you two more words.

Food stinks. She said, that's right, we don't have the best of food here. Go back and pray. So after thirty years, they called her back to Mother Superior's office, and she said, you're allowed two more words. She said, I quit! She said, good, you've done nothing but bitch since you've been here. You know, we have the disease of selfishness and self-centeredness, and selfishness says, what I want more, me, mine.

And self-centeredness says, it's all about me. I am in the center of self. You like that one? Somebody passing over there. These are things that kill your relationship. These are things that just eat and eat and eat away, and those are the things you have to become willing to allow God to remove. And God can take these things. You know, have I quit bitching? Not altogether. You know, this is a program of progress.

You know, compared to the way it used to be, it's a lot better. Even J.D. will agree to that, you know, it's a lot better. Is it where I want to be? Not yet. But I'm working toward that. Do I have slips? Of course. Of course, you know, we're human beings. You know, I was sharing with Linda just a while ago that this has been one of the most frustrating weeks I've had in a long time. She's had one too.

And sometimes it just happens like that, you know, and you just try. I had been dealing with a health care company. Yeah, that's enough to make you want to cut your wrist to start with. And J.D. has sleep apnea, and the company which he was getting his equipment from has not been able to bill us properly in 13 months. 13 months. And every month you get the bill, and it's always wrong, and you have to call and get somebody, and they tell you to do this, and then when you get next month's bill, they say,

[00:35:00]

well, you didn't pay this month's or that month's. Would you believe here in September of 2004, I am still billing bill for August and September of 2003? Every month. And at one point I told them I wanted them, and they audited it, and they did it by hand. Everything we'd paid as opposed to everything we'd charged, we'd overpaid. The next bill that came was right. The first right bill. That was in March.

And so the other day I had had a very frustrating day at work. My computer had a virus on it at work. Somebody had gone on the Internet and got a virus. And so I was just going behind, and then I got home, and there was the bill, and I opened it up, and I wept. I just wept. I said, there doesn't seem to be a solution, God. I just want to kill somebody. I'm so frustrated. It is just such a frustrating day.

I'm just, you know, what can I do? And then there's a knock at the door, and it's my brother-in-law, who I haven't seen in 15 years and would have been just as thrilled to have 20. And so I'm going, God, is this a sign? Is it time to jump off the bridge? And what's so funny, I found out the other day, I was talking to this girl I sponsor who's a state trooper. A lot of people go to our interstate bridge and jump off the middle, and that's the shallowest point.

They just get hung in the mud and drown. They don't die from the fall like they think they're going to, you know. But anyway, I digress, I digress. So I come back home, and then I got on the web, and I wrote the website of this company and explained to them in great detail, trust me, you know, a two-page epistle as to why I was not happy with the service, and I got an email the next morning saying someone would get back with me.

And so I had prayed about it, and I said, I have just made the decision that I'm not going to pay another penny until it's right. And if they want to turn me over to credit collections, so be it. I've had it, you know. And so then yesterday morning, bright and early, the phone call came, and the girl, and I'm explaining to her, and she's saying, well, you know, our billing is done by a central billing service that is not part of our company.

They job it out. And I said, get another one. This one isn't working. And when J.D. went to his sleep doctor, which was this week, he said that one guy brought in his sleep machine where he'd beat it to death with a hammer because he was so upset over the thing. And I said, I relate to him, only I wouldn't beat the machine. I want to see flesh bruised. You know, anyway, because of all the agony and the hours of time spent.

And so I'm explaining this to this woman. And she says, do you have all this document? Oh, do I. I am organized if I am, nothing else. And she said, could you fax me a copy of all of these bills and the amounts and whatever? And I said, I would be glad to. She said, we have checked with the company, and they show where you've been calling in every month. And I said, yes, they should. And so she sent me back a note and called me later in the day, and she said, you know, you're never going to have to pay us ever again.

She says, we have decided that we are going to pull you out of the system, and every time your insurance company pays, we're going to accept that as full payment and write off the rest because you've spent a year in hell. And I went, I would never have thought of that solution. Oh, that's it. And I started crying. She said, are you upset? I said, it's a good deal. I said, that's an answer to prayer.

Thank you so much, so much. You know, and she said, okay. You know, it's like she, because I was grateful, because I would never have thought I would. I didn't mind paying. I just wanted to get it right. You know, when you're being billed over and over again, and the charge is $23, and they've got $262 there because they're not crediting you for every check you've written. You know, it gets old. And so that was God's solution.

So I thought that was a pretty good solution for God. And I told her, I said, you know, I heard this from my husband who was at his doctor's, that they are in the process of trying to find other companies that the health insurance will take in order to get away from this. So in all sincerity, y'all really should rethink what you're doing about this payment system. And she said that they have been trying to get them to do it for a long time.

And she says, it's documenting cases like yours that's going to help us to be able to do that at some point. So, you know, the thing about it is God has solutions you wouldn't think of, but I had to get to the point where, you know, I used to, I would just go berserk on them, but I've been trying to work with them to no avail, to no avail. So finally I had to take an action. Okay, let's end it for tonight.

And we'll be back here in the morning at 10 o'clock,

[00:40:02]

all of those who are able to stand a little more. Thank you. Ain't she great? Can't wait till tomorrow. Because we've kind of changed the schedule a little bit. Get her wound up first before she can come talk. Breakfast is not 830 like it said on the thing. It relates to things that we all have to deal with. And she does it with such dignity and humor. It's wonderful. And I'm just so grateful that she's here.

And she said, cut the bullshit so I can talk. I understand. Introducers introduce, speakers speak. Yes, ma'am. Mary Pearl. Thank you, Jan. It's just so hard to live up to such glowing introductions sometimes, you know. I think, who are they talking about? Dignity. Dignity. And you should have seen my dignity a while ago when Linda came in my room and she says, it's 941, are you going to get up today?

And I said, my alarm is set for 9. And it was, and it was on. I have no idea. Thank you, God, for the extra sleep. I needed it. But that's when I did one of my power prayers while I was jumping up and running. I said, thank God I took a shower last night. I wouldn't have wanted to smell me today if I hadn't. Anyway, I am grateful that you all are all back this morning. I didn't scare anybody when she was talking about in her first year of sobriety.

I spoke at a conference in Arizona several years ago of an international conference of all the doctors in the Fellowship of Alcoholics and Autists. And after my talk and everything, I went to the bathroom and I was, it's so funny, you know, when you're in the bathroom, you hear all this comments and conversation going on. They have no idea who's behind the stall doors, you know. And this one says, whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo, that Al-Anon scared the hell out of me.

And I thought, you must have needed that badly. Another time I was going to speak at a place, and there was two ladies sitting at the table where I was seated, and they said, we're going to get to hear another suffering Al-Anon. So when I got up, I told them if they'd like to leave before I began to suffer, I'd be okay with that, you know. It's all tacky, you know. But I love to play with people. I love to play, but always remember, somebody's listening when you're making those kind of comments.

And if you don't know who you're talking about or who's in there, it might behoove us sometimes to keep those to ourselves. I've found that it's very embarrassing. I've had that experience myself as well. I'm pretty bizarre on a normal day, but when I get under stress or real extreme nervousness, I get a little more wah-ha out there, you know. And fear does that. It just brings out bizarre thinking in me.

And I hear myself say things sometimes the same time you do. There's no thought process involved. It's just there it is, you know. Well, hello, who said that? Sounded like my voice. I went to the men's maximum security prison in Arkansas. They had done a petition that they wanted me to come, and I said, nobody asked me if I wanted to go. They just called me and said, you'll be speaking at the prison such and such.

There was no invitation. It was just sort of a there it is. A little about that. Anyway, I went down there. The day before, there was a hostage incident at that same prison. It's the one that they did in the movie Brubaker. It's a real nice prison. I was wondering where I was going to be buried out there when it was all over with. Anyway, I got there, and I was very, very nervous, and they had an armed guard on either side of me and the warden in front of me and the assistant warden behind me, and we're making this little wedge going through and hearing all those doors slam behind you and all these various places until you got in where they have a real secure room where the Alcoholics Anonymous meets there at the prison.

Right before we got to the room, there was a man standing in a doorway, and they said, whatever his name was, John, we'll say, this is Mary Pearl. She's come to speak for the Alcoholics Anonymous group, and he says, oh, you're going to carry the message, and I said, carry the message? Hell, I'm going to save some souls. And he looked at me, and he says, well, I think God does that. I'm the chaplain.

So you see, it goes around both ways, you know, I hear it and I do it, you know.

[00:45:01]

Okay, tradition four, each partner should be autonomous except in matters affecting the other partner, the family, or relationship, or society as a whole. Now autonomy, I don't know, when you came in the program, I don't think I'd ever heard the word anonymous too much, and I certainly don't think I had ever heard the word autonomy. And I'm going, why do they give us all these big words that are so hard to pronounce and everything?

But what does it mean? You know, what does autonomy mean? And autonomy means I am self-governing. I have the responsibility to do whatever I want to do. I have the freedom to do anything I want to do. But with it comes the responsibility for what I do. I can say or do anything as long as I'm willing and able to take the consequences for what I say and do. And I don't know about y'all, but I've always wanted a free ride.

I want to be able to say and do what I want to do without having to take the consequences for it. You know, that's like a little child. A little child, you say, don't do that, and they do that. And you say, don't do that or I'm going to whip you. And then when you get through and you do it and they whip you, you're wondering, why did that happen? Because there was a consequence for that action, you know.

And the same thing's true in a relationship. Now I have to ask myself, is this going to hurt my relationship or just make my partner angry? Now there's a big difference there. Now I don't go out to try to make JD angry, but there's certain things that if I feel like it's the right thing for me to do and what have you, then I'll go ahead and I'll do or agree to do whatever. And JD may not like it. Like for instance, he'll say to me, do you have to go?

He hates for me to leave home. You know, he says, I just hate being left here. And I said, well, you have, you know, have a job to, I know I have a job to do because JD is very kind and loving and he takes my place in my sister's role, caregiving situation when I'm out of town. And you know, that might not be what he wants to do, but that's what he does. And you know, the thing about it is though, I'm not worried about making him angry.

If this was going to affect him terribly in some way, if he was not going to be able to do some of his commitments or whatever that he has, I would make other arrangements for someone else. But you know, just because he doesn't like something doesn't mean, I can't go around all the time worrying if this is going to make him not want to be married to me. And if he didn't want to be married to me because one weekend with my sister, well then I think he's got a problem, you know?

And yes, he certainly would. Yes. Anyway. So what I do with something, an autonomous action, if I'm not sure about it, first of all, I run it past my sponsor. You want to run it past another pair of ears other than your own. Because every time you hear yourself say something, it'll say, yes, that's a good idea. Because that's what you want to do, okay? And my sponsor will say, well, I really don't think that is a good thing for your relationship or I don't think that would be a good thing.

And then I have to give that weight. And then I pray about these things. Now, you've got to remember, your mind is a very dangerous neighborhood. Don't go in alone. Don't go in up there alone. That's the reason a sponsor is so important. So very important. And you know, when I wasn't using a sponsor was when murder came to mind. And I thought about murder for about a six-month period. And it became a very acceptable thing.

It wasn't a big deal. It was self-defense, justifiable homicide. All those words came in my mind. Murder did not. Taking another person's life was, that's the thing to do. If I can't live with him, you know. And if I've already gotten rid of one and I have to get rid of number two, what's the common denominator there? I'm not thinking about that. I'm not thinking about there's anything wrong with me.

You see, I thought the problem in our lives was his drinking. And when he quit drinking and our lives were still messed up, obviously I was wrong about the drinking. It was him. He has to die. You know, when the girls did that song, Earl's Gotta Die, I understood totally. You know, because it's really an act of mercy for the rest of the women out there, you know. Don't want to send him your way. And there's always the what if he got rid of me thing and got somebody else and lived happily ever after.

That's not going to happen. Not after all the hell I've been through. If there's any good to be had, it's going to be here. It is not going to be somebody else gets it, you know. It's like I told JD, if I feel like I'm going to die, I'm going to break all my favorite stuff. But when your thinking is broken, and I'll admittedly tell you my thinking is broken,

[00:50:01]

try not to use it too much. You know, don't try. And one of the most terrifying things is when somebody I sponsor calls me and says, I've been thinking. Because you never know what we're going to do, you know. But in order to be autonomous, first of all, you have to know who you are. If you're going to have a freedom to use you, you got to know who you are and what you're all about. And that's what the steps are about.

And first of all, I'm a child of God. I'm God's kid. I'm more than just Mary Pearl who speaks in Allen. I'm more than just an Allen I remember. I'm more than just somebody who works for an attorney. I'm more than just a sister, a daughter, or what have you. I am the child of God. Now I have to look at my, now my autonomous actions will be very destructive when my character defects are in play. That's one of the things.

You know, when you're in contact with God a lot, your autonomous actions are not going to be so bad because your big supreme director's in charge. But when your defects are in charge, when you get up that morning and when my need for excitement or my obsession or whatever is kicked in, then what I do is going to be very tainted by those factors. Like for instance, I was an impulse buyer and a compulsive shopper when I didn't feel good.

I used shopping as a feel good. I don't know if any of y'all have ever done that, you know, but you know, you feel down, go buy something. That'll make you feel good. Well that's okay if you have the money to do that. Now J.D. would go out and he would spend money in drinking and fines and hit and run accidents and all this kind of stuff that we didn't have. And it would irritate me he spends money we don't have.

Well if he can, so can I. Now is that, what is that? That is insanity, you know. And that's also getting even. If you go out and do that, so can I. And I would go to the malls and I would rape the malls. And I showed you last night. It's very simple. You walk by and you go, God, that is pretty. You know, geez, I'd really like that. I've got to have that. I need that. And with that, you go and you buy it and you take it home.

And maybe even later that night, but surely by the next day, I look at that and go, why in the hell did I buy that? I don't even like that. I didn't need that. Why do I have that? Now what do you do with that? Give it away. Because you don't want evidence of your screw up right there in front of you. You know, you just don't. Now, it never occurred to me, take it back. Why? Why would I not think of taking it back and getting a refund and not having that money spent?

Why would I not do that? Don't you realize if you take it back, you have to admit that you made a mistake? You know, this wasn't what I thought it was. And it didn't do for me very long what I wanted it to do, you know. And God help me if I had somebody with me. Because then I have to impress you about how much money I can spend. The ego is such a strange, sick little thing. I was at my office. Now I had seen a style of a couch that I liked really well.

And it was just something else. Now this is right about the year before J.D. got sober. And so for my birthday that year, I determined if I could, I was going to be looking and I was going to get myself that couch. And I looked for several months and one day I went into the most elite furniture store in Little Rock on my lunch hour with one of the girls from work. And they had that style of couch. Why naturally they would have that, you know.

But it wasn't in a fabric I liked. But the lady says, we can order you one from the factory. And here's all of these fabric samples. And I went through it and I found this. It was a printed crushed velvet from Belgium. That's what I want. And I ordered that, you know. So it would be there in time for my birthday in August. And I walked out of the store and the girl was with me. She says, what did that cost?

And I said, I have no idea. But if you have to ask, you can't afford it. And I couldn't. Now a lot of things happened. There was a longshoreman strike in New York. My fabric was on the boat. My couch didn't get there until right before Christmas. Now I have, right before my birthday, sold my other couch because my new one's coming. So now I have an empty spot for a huge couch in my living room and nothing there.

And it's getting time to entertain and to do things. And hello, would you like to sit on the floor?

[00:55:03]

And people would look at me and they'd say, you sold the couch before? Well, yeah, it just seemed like the thing to do. When the couch came in, I liked to have had a stroke. It was $1,800. This was 1976. So JD got sober in 1977 in January and lost his job immediately. And I'm having to make these big couch payments every month. And what am I having to do that with? My lunch money, that's why. I was working and that was my lunch money.

And I went without lunches for a long time and hated that damn couch. I never wanted it enough to sacrifice my lunches for it. But I had a choice. I could have let it go back. And I couldn't do that because I knew the lady that owned the company. She had been a friend of my mother's. And I didn't want that deal to happen. And I was just beside myself. And I said, well, that'll be my spike couch. I'll keep that in spite of all else to remind me what happens when ego takes over when I go shopping.

But I made sure that it didn't come out of the household money or what have you because that had been my deal. And JD thought the couch was beautiful. But I never told him what it cost until years later in Al-Anon. And then he wasn't happy about it. But I knew that it was way beyond. But you see, there was a part of me that was just anxiously awaiting the couch. And there was another that was dreading the couch because I had no idea what it was going to cost because I never called and asked.

That's that fear inside of me. They knew how I was at the jewelry store there in the mall. I had a tendency to have this obsession for diamonds. I don't know why I've got all these diamonds. And where are they? They're all in the safe deposit box. But anyway, I would go past. And one year, I was tripping past there. And Mickey, the guy who was the manager of the store, came out. And he says, have I got something for you?

I said, what? And so he brought me in. And I told him the last time I had bought anything, I said, it's really going to have to be. It's going to have to be something that's so big and so wonderful that the guy down in Orange Julius, half a mall away when I walk out, will go, God, did you see her ring? I said, that's what I want. And he said, it's here. And I said, you've got to be kidding. And he said, no.

And it was a beautiful ring. It was two rings, the set that had all the big diamonds all around. It was big diamonds. And it was $36,000. And I did ask the price, yes. And I thought about it. I thought about it. And he said, we've had it put in your size. So I tell you what, why don't you just wear it home for the weekend? And if you don't like it, bring it back. And he said, you can even trade in some of your others on it if you want to.

I thought about it. And then ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. If you put that on your hand and wear it over the weekend, you'll never be able to take it off, because people will see it on your hand. And then they're going to say, what happened to your beautiful ring, uh-huh? And it's like, it was all about what you thought. It wasn't about what I want. It was about what you thought. And I told him, I said, I think I'll pass this time.

And I went home, and I cried about that, because those were gorgeous rings. And you know, today, it wouldn't make any difference. I wouldn't have it. There would be so many other things that I would want if I was going to spend that kind of money. Your mind works real fast. If you don't realize it, your mind is a marvelous thing. I was talking on the phone to a girl I sponsored. Someone came to her door.

She was gone maybe 30, 60 seconds at the most, and came back to the phone. Now, what happened in that 30, 60 second time frame for me? I'm hungry. I'd like a bacon and tomato sandwich. You can't make a bacon and tomato sandwich. Why can't I make a bacon and tomato sandwich? Because you cleaned your stove from one end to the other, and you know how bad it is to clean your stove. Bacon would spatter.

And you know, once you clean it like that, you never want to cook again. What you need is a microwave. Because if you had a microwave, you could put the bacon between those little pieces of paper and cook it, and you wouldn't have anything to clean up. Exactly. And she comes back to the phone. I said, thank God you're here. I just bought a microwave. You know, how one thought leads to the next thought, to the next thought, to the next thought, and like I say, that didn't take very long at all.

[01:00:00]

And she said, what? I said, forget it. And I was just telling J.D. about it that night, and he said, well, you know, that would probably be a good idea for us to have a microwave. I said, no, I know it's a crazy idea, I've been agreed with by the alcoholic. Okay, that's some of those autonomous actions that we take. And you know, we would talk last night about self-centeredness and selfishness, well, there's self-seeking, and that's what affects me in the alcoholic.

What's in it for me? What's in it for me? You know? There were things that I did that helped heal our relationship. Not everything I did was bad. That's me. Pretty much, but the things that I had to do were like learning to have a sense of humor. You know, it is, it's real difficult sometimes to have a sense of humor in a tricky situation. And the holidays always seemed like a bad time for me, because I had a lot of bad memories attached to the holidays, because it's like, they screw up on a normal basis, but during the holidays, they really seem to do it more.

You know, I was ending up spending my bonuses on fines and paying off people and this kind of thing, and it was like, I just didn't, I didn't like the holidays at all. And it took a long time in sobriety before. And I think this all started, though, back in November the 30th, 1954, when I watched Daddy die, right after Thanksgiving, right before Christmas, and Mama said there'll be no Christmas this year, and we wore black for a year and did all that kind of thing.

It took a lot of the fun of Christmas time away, and this was just more stuff reinforcing that. But I asked God to help me to have a sense of humor. You know, God, don't let anything destroy the joy that is within me. And help me to look at stuff on the light side, and I began to pray that on a daily basis. Well, J.D. wanted to go out to his mom's for some reason, and he said, I'm tired, would you drive?

And I said, okay. And so I drove out to his mother's, and it was a, we had had a lot of rain, and when we have a lot of rain, it's probably the same way here, the ground gets pretty ooshy. And his mom had this real long driveway, a little gravel driveway. And when we got over there, he hadn't bothered to ask his mom if she was going to be home or anything like that. He would just go into Mom's, like Mom's got to always be there, you know, Mom was just nailed to the house.

And when we got there and Mom wasn't there, well, then I was going to have to back up that long driveway. Well, I'm a good driver forward, man, I can just, I can go forward 200 miles an hour, no big deal. But backing up, I've always envied people who can go, and back up at 40 miles an hour. I mean, that is just amazing to me, because I'm one of those that goes, you know, like that backing up, you know, that's just a limitation.

And anyway, so I'm trying to back up, and of course, I got off the driveway, and the wheel on the left back just sunk right up to the axle. You're there. And so he got out of the car, he ran around, looked at that, and I mean, he called me everything but a human being. I mean, he told me all about my driving, he took my inventory pretty good. And normally, that would have hurt my feelings, thus make me mad, and I would have had to get out and tell him about it, and then we might have gone from there.

But for whatever, because I had prayed that prayer that morning, there was a divine intervention, and I got out of the car, and I went around and looked, and it was not one of these I thought to say this things, but I just heard myself say, well, that didn't help very much. Would you like to do something to get it out of the mud? And he looked at me, and he's, what? And I said, all that screaming and yelling and cussing at me did not change the situation.

Would you like to do something that works? And he had this little sheepish look on his face, I said, like, call a record. You know, because, you know, so many times we spend so much of our energy bitching about the problem instead of thinking of what a solution is, you know, that kind of thing. But I didn't let it get on my nerves. And then finally he laughed, and he said, that was so stupid, wasn't it?

And I had an opportunity here. And I said, we're just, you're aggravated. It's a long day. You're tired. You're aggravated. But you see, that began to make something that wasn't nice begin to take some of the edge off of it. I was in a meeting one Wednesday night. It was the 4th of July, actually, one year. And while we were in the meeting, a tornado went through. And when we came out of the building, it was so funny because the curtains in the building were going straight out.

The windows are closed. It shows you how the wind was.

[01:05:01]

And of course, there's all this debris all over the streets and stuff. And so you're driving home, and as I pulled, there was no power, all the lights were out. And as I was driving home, and as I turned in my driveway, my lights indicated that our big redbud tree was in the living room. And I, whoop, you know, and J.D. was just, I mean, he was just jumping up and down on the front porch. You know, and I looked at him, and he says, where are you when I need you?

Where are you? Where are you? Are you over there at that damn meeting? That meeting's so important. You've got to be at the meeting. You know, you just, everything's got to go. The meeting's got to go. I've got to get over there. Just leave me and the dogs. We could just be blown away over here, but no, no, you're at the meeting. And I said, you know, J.D., I turned to Jennifer in the meeting, and I said, you know, I bet that tornado's putting a tree in my house, and J.D., ha, ha, ha, he's just going to be out of his mind.

And he looked at me, and he said, you think I thought like that? I said, we were under the table, for God's sake. And I said, I'm here now. And he says, there's a tree in the living room. Well, yeah, there was a limb down through the ceiling and down through the sheetrock, and I said, yes. And he says, you just can't imagine how terrifying that is. I said, I don't have to imagine it. And he said, what?

And I said, I've been here, done this. And he said, when? I said, oh, well, I hate to have to say this, but you remember that day that you were going to cut that willow tree in the backyard, and about halfway through sawing, the saw got stuck, and you went to the bar to think about that? And we had a big, heavy thunderstorm that came through with a lot of straight-on wind, and when you got back, well, the gas grill had been crushed, and the tree was in the kitchen that I was in.

Oh. You know, and that got to be funny, you know, I mean, because now what can you do? Right now, there's not too much you can do, you know? When it comes daylight, we can cut that tree off the house, and we'll get us some visqueen, and we'll call the insurance company, but, you know, right now, there's just not a lot you can do about it, other than to put something in the living room where the rain is coming through.

That's about all you can do at this point. And it doesn't help to go bananas in those kind of situations. It really doesn't. With my sister, my sister's situation, like I say, she had an oxy-brain injury, and with no memory. And so she said to me, she says, you know, if I die again in the car with you, will you just let me stay dead? And I said, Dorothy, if I'm driving down the road and you crap out on me again in the car, I'll drive you around six or eight hours till you're stiff as a poker, whatever it takes.

And she said, good, good. And then she says to me, why don't you let me go? Why don't you let me go? And I said, tell me what I'm doing that's holding you here. I'll stop. Dorothy, like I say, I had to have her re-evaluated this year, and they found that in addition to her brain injury, she was profoundly depressed. And did you know, I didn't know that when you're profoundly depressed, your memory gets a lot worse.

And so that's the reason that she was so miserable. And they had changed and put her on a different medication, and she's happy and what have you now. She hadn't asked me to kill her in quite some time, and I'm really grateful. We are not victims here, we're volunteers. We make choices. We're responsible for those choices we make. And ego-driven individuals rarely have happy, healthy relationships.

And I thought I was a natural-born leader. I either lead or I don't go. I'm not a follower. And I found out the reason, because the leader's in control. The follower is, you're at somebody else's mercy, and that was too scary for me. And if you'd asked me if I was a fearful person when I came in this program, I would have told you absolutely not. And when people talked about being afraid and this and that, I thought weenies, just weenies, weenies, you know.

How can that be? And when I did my first inventory, there it was, my whole life was driven on fear of one kind or another. And fear separates me from what God would have me to be, you know. I don't do things in order to get a reaction back from others.

[01:10:03]

You know, do you ever, when you want to hear somebody tell you they love you, what do you do? Do you go up and say, could you tell me you love me? No, God forbid. You go up and you go, I love you. Because then they want to say, I love you too. J.D. doesn't do that. He tells you he loves you when he wants to, and he tells me he loves me every day, you know. But we don't say it in order to get that reassurance back, you know.

J.D. took a, he's taken many autonomous actions that have just driven me completely berserk. But there's a difference between being completely berserk and having our relationship damaged, and I'll tell you about that. J.D. loves to grow things. He's just got a green thumb, and we have a sandy loam where we're at. Grows anything. Grows really well. Don't even need all that Miracle-Gro, to be quite honest.

And a friend at the meeting that they call the gourd man, he belongs to a gourd society, I didn't even know there was such a thing, gave him a handful of gourd seeds. And so J.D. came back, and along the 180 foot that goes back on our fence, J.D. had a gourd seed at every post along the way. Gourds make beautiful vines, and we had all sorts of gourds. We had dipper gourds. We had drinking gourds. We had designer birdhouse gourds.

We had loofah sponge gourds. We had every kind of gourd known to man growing out there. And it looked like kudzu had taken over. I mean, this really went wild. And I was away from home one weekend, left my car in the carport. I came back, and I was trying to back out of the car, out of the driveway, and you couldn't get your car, that vine had wrapped around my bumper and around the post. I would have pulled the post right out of the carport if I kept on going.

Those things are strong, you know? And then I got a call from, I looked at my gas bill in the middle of summer, and I had an outrageous gas bill, and I said, if we had been using gas to this amount, it would have to be a huge leak. We would be smelling it everywhere. What is the matter? I called the gas company, and they said, well, they couldn't find the meter, so they just estimated it. And I said, what the hell?

You mean you can't find the meter? And I went around to the side, and it had taken over the whole side over there. All of the gas meter went up the side of the house, and there was a gourd on the roof. I was out of my gourd. This was it, this was it. This is over the top, this is too much, too much. And so I went out there with a machete and began hacking, and so I told him, no more vines, please. J.D. planted a muscadine vine out by our pecan tree, so he loves muscadine jelly.

Well, the birds love the muscadines. Well, do you know that a muscadine vine can kill a 50-year-old pecan tree? It can strangle it to death. One side of that tree we lost because of that vine. And I told him, I said, no vines. Now we've got lots of ivy growing, and you really have to keep ivy trimmed. If not, it will completely take over, you know. But like I say, he loves these ground cover things.

Now so this irritated me, what have you, this did not affect our relationship to any degree. However, J.D. mentioned to me one year, a little over a year, almost two years, that he was thinking about putting a water feature in the backyard. And I said, that's fine. And he was showing me these books with these little bitty things, and he said, okay, this is about three foot long, it's about two foot wide, sort of like a big bird bath type thing.

And he said, that would be fun, you know. And I said, okay. I went away one weekend to speak in Kentucky, I came home. He never mentioned the fact that the water feature had been underway in the backyard, because I mean, he'll talk about stuff for years sometimes, never does do anything, you know. That's one of the things I've learned about him, is that you never know, you just never know. He starts a lot of things, doesn't finish a lot, but he's better than he was when he was drinking, so it's not that big a deal.

And I wake up the next morning, talk to my sponsor, and I put my glasses on. And the world comes into view. There's mud on my sheets. There's muddy footprints all over the floor. What's going on? Well, I have two poodles, and they were black. Now they're brown. What has happened? Well, see, it rained that night. Now, J.D., in his infinite wisdom, you know, he's good on the plans. He just doesn't sometimes anticipate.

He doesn't take it any further than, I'll do this. You know how, in your mind, you say, well, I need to do this. Well, no. because, and you go through all the reasons that won't work, he never goes there. He just, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. So he goes out there and he digs the water garden. He must have been one busy little man.

[01:15:02]

Because it's 12 foot long, and it's about 4 foot wide, and it's 5 foot deep. What do you do with all that dirt? It's not like Steve McQueen walking through the yard dropping it out of his pants leg, you know. He put it over the top of all of the grass because when it rains it'll just go away. Not necessarily. It made the backyard a river of mud. And the dogs who have their own pet door had gone out and frolicked in the river of mud.

And there wasn't any grass left. My whole backyard, other than the patio, was a river of mud. And they had come back in the house and they had romped and played and the whole house was decorated in mud. And I called my sponsor back. And I said, I'm going to kill him this time for sure. She says, well now we've been here, gone through this. She said, what do you mean? And I told her, and she's going, he didn't, he didn't.

I said, he did! And she says, when does he get home? And I said, around 4. And she said, well there might be enough time to save his life. She said, do the best you can. First things first, shut the pet doors. Second thing, bathe the dogs. Now see the mud on the stuff is going to have to dry before you can get it off. Because all you do is wet mud, is smear wet mud. So it's going to have to dry. And so now my dogs are used to going in and out of that door on their own for all their life are locked in the house.

So I'm going to take them out every hour on the hour to walk them, just to make sure we don't have any accidents in the house. And the dogs are going, what are we doing? What are we doing here? Why are we on a leash in our front yard? Why are we not in our backyard? You know, they're out there. And so when JD comes home, I'm out walking the dogs. And he said, what are you doing? I said, go in the house.

Take a look around and have a solution when I get back. And when I came back, he was sitting at the bar with his head in his hands going, Oh God. And I said, God's not here. I am. And she's mad. And he said, I didn't mean for this. I said, I understand you didn't mean to, if you admit that to happen, you'd already be dead man. I said, there would be buzzards circling the house. But I said, what are we going to do?

What is the solution here? And he said, I said, we've got to let the dogs out. I said, what in the hell did you do? Dig a hole that deep? Because the only water that was in the hole at this point was the rain that had come in. And he said, well, I was thinking later that we might put fish in it and what have you. I said, this was not what we talked about. And I said, and the very idea that you would sneak behind my back and do all this when you knew it wasn't going to be what you had told me and do it while I'm out of town, thinking that when I get home, it'll already be done and what can I do about it, that really pisses me off.

And he said, well, I wouldn't. I said, yes, you were. Because doesn't it look like that to you? To do something of that magnitude, knowing. And you know, we always run stuff past one another, except he won't when he wants to do something. And if he thinks that I won't like it, he won't run it past me. He'll just go ahead and do it. And see, that's what the autonomy thing is about. And I told him, I said, you know, it's my yard too.

And I don't feel like being left out of the loop on major decisions here, because I'm the one that's left with the crap to clean up. But I've got a new space. We're having house guests in two days. I said, but I'm not going to clean this mess up. You made this mess. Now you can deal with it.