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Incredulous

The past two weeks have been filled with jaw dropping moments. In terms of work, for those of you that don’t know, I work for a major telecommunications corporation, doing advanced tech support. The customers that call in for assistance are for the most part lovely, then you have the ones that are, well, not so much.

Let me ask you this, when you set up security information and can’t remember what you set up do you become angry with the person asking you to verify your information? If the answer is yes, the question is why?

Last week a woman called, I answered, I asked for the 4 digit code to unlock her account. She angrily stated she didn’t know it, I said no worries you created a security question for just this purpose. She began to scream she didn’t know the answer, at this point I hadn’t even asked the question. I tried to be the voice of reason, ma’am if you want to guess most people get the answer with a guess. She began to yell, I do look to see if she had given any other options to obtain access to the account. She had not, no email I could sent a one time code to, no cell phone number I could text a one time code to.

I explain (a little too gleefully at this point) she would have to take her ID and go to a corporate store and have them reset her security information. She then screamed she was going to sue the company I work for and hung up.

I was incredulous, sue the company because YOU cannot remember the information YOU set up. I want to be in that courtroom. No, I want to be on that jury.

I’ll never understand when someone gets angry with the person doing their job to keep their account information secure.

When I retire I am not going to miss being yelled at.

On the flip side I had a lovely couple call in that could not remember their security information, the difference, they had given us options to authenticate with. I was able to utilize the information and reset their information in under 5 minutes. They were adorable joking about their bad memories and how at least one was supposed to have remembered.

They did not get angry, did not yell, just had a sense of humor about the situation and I was happy to assist.

My best advice when calling for help, don’t be a donkey.

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The woman who shouldn’t exist

The other day I was having a conversation with my cousin/nephew. Cousin by blood, nephew by adoption, mine. Anyway, I made the comment that I was never supposed to have been with someone. As in I was never meant to have a great love in my life. I belt stunned him.

Allow me to explain, I was never supposed to exist. My biological mother had four children, she should have had none. I was number four and the result of something bad happening to her.

I was not wanted and shouldn’t have existed in a perfect world. I think God looked down when o was born and said dang she wasn’t supposed to happen but here we are.

I have been alone since then, oh my grandparents loved me but if I’m being honest, I was a burden to two elderly people. Then for roughly 7 years I lived in literal hell. My biological mother took me away to live with her and her husband. Let’s just say it was proven then that God did not hold me in high regard.

But then when I was 12 I was rescued, I had parents, siblings, a family. God took pity on me.

Then I married, I believe that angered God, because I was meant to be alone. After my son died I think He took pity on me. I got to have my beautiful three children.

Then I was a single mother, a statistic, but I was finally what I was supposed to be, alone.

I do meet someone and actually got engaged, once again, not what God wanted. It was disaster. He was horrible.

Thank goodness that ended.

This walk down memory lane really made me think about not being one of God’s favorites. It reminded me of a Star Trek episode, the one where they are sent back in time and they have to beam a pilot aboard because they damaged his plane. Spock tells Kirk that they can’t send him back. He’s done a historical search and this man is not remarkable. He’s ordinary and contributes nothing to society.

The man is stunned and you can tell the life goes out of his eyes. Ordinary, unremarkable, contributes nothing. As a kid I didn’t understand that, as an adult I feel that keenly.

But here’s the flip side, later in the episode Spock tells Kirk they have to send him back. His son does something remarkable and contributes to society in a meaningful way.

It’s that part, I’m unremarkable but my children are not. They are extraordinary, amazing and my son’s children are extraordinary and amazing!

That’s why God allowed me to have them, so they could make a difference.

I’ve always known that I’m God’s joke, when He needs a laugh He looks in on my broken life and laughs. The perfidy of a human, thinking they matter when they don’t.

I do look at other people’s lives who are clearly in God’s favorites and wonder what that feels like.

My parents were some of God’s favorites. That doesn’t mean they had an easy life, quite the opposite. They grew up in a tough era in Oklahoma and our country. But they had each other, I often wonder what that would have been like. To have someone to share burdens with, share responsibilities with. Sometimes I wonder how I was singled out to not have that type favor. Then I remember, I wasn’t supposed to exist.

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Happy Birthday Jeffrey Andrew!

40 years. It’s been 40 years since you made your debut on this earth. Time has flown by, it never slows down and here is the proof.

I still remember the day you were born so clearly. It was a sunny, hot day in Oklahoma. it was a morning filled with hope, joy and a modicum of fear.

You were perfect, with the exception of the fluid on your lungs. 5 days of uncertainty, with you in the NICU, a doctor telling me that you would never play sports and would always have lung problems.

There have been so many times over the years that I wanted to find that doctor and show him how wrong he was.

After those 5 days you were healthy and happy, and a butterball of a baby. Your smile was infectious and your laugh was a balm.

I love you so much son, I hope you know how proud of you I am. You’re an incredible son, brother, father, man.

Happy Birthday I hope it’s your best one yet!

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Happy Birthday Thomas Alexander Graham Bell!!

I know I don’t write that often anymore, however, I cannot let one of my children’s birthday go by without documenting it here!

I know I tell this story almost every year but the day you were born was amazing. It’s no secret I wanted to have you on the 13th (a good luck day in our family) but my doctor looked at me like I was crazy. That was a Saturday and you were a scheduled C-section. He said no matter how much he liked a patient, unless it was an emergency, he was not coming in on a Saturday.

So the 12th it was, it was sunny and beautiful, a perfect Texas day. Your dad and I were so happy and he was making dad jokes. The nurse asked if this was our first child. We said no and she said we acted like it was. Usually by the time most parents are on that 4th child, yes, we included Michael in that count, they are tired and resigned to another baby.

We were happy to welcome you into our world, it didn’t matter that you were a surprise baby. You were very much wanted and welcomed.

From the start you had an infectious smile and then laugh. You woke with such a big smile that your sister dubbed you mister Sunshine Face.

I do hope you know how much you are loved. I love watching you be a father to your own children. You have grown into an incredible man. I’m so proud of you.

You have a beautiful family, you have earned every ounce of happiness you have in your life.

I love you son, Happy Birthday!

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Happy Birthday Izzy Anne

Today is one of my favorite days, it’s the day God gave me a beautiful, smart, funny and amazing daughter. I know I’ve said this before but it bares repeating, I prayed for a daughter who would have big brown eyes, long dark hair, one who would be strong, funny and compassionate.

God gave me that and more in you, I loved you so much and am so proud of you.

I know you’re not a teenager and you have been on your own for quite a while but there’s so much more that I feel you need to know.

It’s just too soon for you to be a fully grown adult, it happened way too fast. You have grown into a smart, capable fully functional adult. One who carved her life out to fit your own expectations and you are nothing short of amazing.

I hope you have an amazing day, filled with laughter, love and the knowledge that you deserve to have a peace filled life, with abundant joy and adventure.

I love you so much,

Mom

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The Beginning: A Foy and Odela Story

As many of you know, today marks an important day in our family’s history. It is Foy and Odela’s wedding anniversary. January 13, 1934, it started everything.

The only thing stronger than their love of each other and their family was their mutual love of Christ.

The story I want to tell today takes place after they acquired me. Mom was a seamstress (important to the story) and she wanted to go to town and get buttons for a dress she was making for me.

So dad drives and off we go to TG&Y, we go to the fabric department and we start looking at buttons. Please keep in mind these buttons are for MY dress. Mom finds buttons she likes, dad finds buttons he likes. They compare and contrast, all the while I’m just standing there looking confused. I finally said do I get a say in the buttons I like.

They both turned and stared at me like they had forgotten I was there, then they both began to laugh and dad said well I guess since they’re for your dress it only makes sense.

For the record I didn’t choose either of their buttons because I didn’t want them to think I was playing favorites, I was the new kid on the block after all.

I will give you a bit of advice, find someone in life that you can laugh with, that treats you like you are the most important person in their world. Find someone who treats you the way Foy treated Odela. With respect, kind words, loving attitude. Find someone who treats you the way Odela treated Foy. With respect, love and appreciation.

Find someone who values your opinion and really listens to you.

I miss them every day, I’ll always be grateful that they let me into their world and allowed me to be myself.

I always wonder if they knew how much I loved them and how much they taught me.

Happy Anniversary Foy and Odela!

Odela’s favorite picture of the two of them
The last professional picture they had taken together before Foy went home.
My favorite photo of them

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Kathy Lynn Oliver

Texas KitKat, where do I start. I still remember the day we first met. I had just transferred over to the ICSC, you had just gotten the job with Southwestern Bell after being laid off at Lucent.

You were excited to be there as you could bridge your service in 5 years. We instantly bonded as friends. There literally was nothing about you to not like. From your infectious smile to your optimistic personality.

From the beginning you were my diet buddy, willing to try any crazy diet or exercise fad I could come up with.

I’ll never forget the time you called me and told me you found this deal on Groupon to get rid of cellulite. You said go buy a package and let’s go together. Off we went, this place very literally wrapped us in Saran Wrap. Right out of the box! Then tied black plastic trash bags around us and had us get on tread mills. We were running for our lives on those things! All the while laughing our butts off at how ridiculous we looked.

At the end we were a sweaty mess, cellulite intact, with no shower to clean up in. We had to put our clothes back on over that sweaty mess and drive to our homes.

We laughed so hard over that fiasco, we both considered it money well spent.

From lunches to working out together after work to your unwavering support of my love of Dean Cain, you have been a tried and true friend. I’ll never forget you and always be grateful for your friendship. Also without you I wouldn’t have Stormie, who has been an amazing companion.

I’ll never forget the day you sent that text telling me you had cancer and you didn’t know how to tell your mom.

I know without one single doubt I will see you again. Until then find my mom in heaven and tell her you are my friend. She’ll give you a great big hug.

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Musings

I came across a picture recently of my Aunt Lela Evelyn Testerman Dye, Aunt Leona Estelle Testerman Hammer and my grandma, Lela Mae Hammond Testerman.  I give their full names as genealogy matters and I believe it is important to remember peoples names. 

Women give up their names and take their husbands names and blend into that family and there is nothing wrong with that. But they have a whole other name and a life before said husband and children and grandchildren and I think it is important to remember who they were before they took another name.

Having said that, I know I don’t talk a lot about my childhood, but these are my biological mothers sisters and her mother. 

My Aunt Evelyn worked for years for JC Penney, she was a seamstress there, the Oklahoma City location, I believe it was downtown, if I am remembering correctly. Anyway, June, my biological mother, really didn’t have anything to do with the majority of her family.

But she did with Aunt Evelyn, I remember one year she gave me two dresses, they were exactly the same but one was green and one was red. I was roughly 5, I loved those dresses, I wore them all of the time. There came a time I began to get taller, staying the same size. The dresses became way too short, even for that time period. So June took me and the dresses to Aunt Evelyn at her job. She took one look at me in the dresses and instantly came up with a solution. She added a ruffle to the bottom of both, she found material that was an exact color and texture match there in her workshop at JC Penney. I was so happy that day, those were the only dresses I had, hence they were my favorites. Having so little as a child leads to making sure my children had more than a few outfits and shoes in their closets. It is a behavior that also trickles down to my grandchildren. 

Both Aunt Evelyn and Aunt Estelle were strong women who lived through the depression and WWII, they knew about sacrifices and having very little.

They both had wicked senses of humor, a trait they got from their father Wilber Ambrose Testerman. My grandfather, that man had a true Testerman sense of humor. I say that because his brother, Foy John Testerman, the man that would become my father, had the same sense of humor. My grandmother took everything literally and even though she did have a sense of humor it was not like a Testerman. 

I miss all so very much, as the days become shorter and the holidays loom nearer, I become more sentimental. a trait I typically do not have, I am very pragmatic and practical in nature. Well by learned behavior, one becomes practical due to circumstances of life. 

I just wanted to share my aunts with you and keep their names alive. 

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Summer Memories

Tessa recently got her drivers license and it reminded me of the time my mom got so irritated she hollered at my dad. Not yelled, hollered, which was a rarity, in fact that was the one time I ever heard her raise her voice.

Yes, it had to do with me driving, or learning to drive.

My dad was working on his car in the front entry way of the property, right in front of the fence that went around the yard around the house.

He had the hood up and I was walking past on my way to Tammi’s house. Not an unusual occurrence, but this time my dad stopped me and said he needed my help.

He asked me to get in the car and rev the engine, he was working on something and needed someone to do that so he could check the timing chain.

I said ok and hopped in, instead of the car being in neutral, it was in reverse. I stepped on that gas and went through the fence. Mom flew out of the house and just hollered, DRIVERS ED! And went back in.

Dad and I looked at each other and he just said well I guess that settles that.

Apparently this had been a bone of contention, mom wanting me to take Drivers Ed at school and dad saying he could teach me.

So to Drivers Ed I went, when the time came I did pass my drivers test. Well, sort of, I didn’t parallel park, but the tester was a friend of dad’s and said I would never need that anyway. 

I will never forget, though, mother flying out of that door, I had never seen that side of her, but when she put her foot down, we all listened. 

I miss them every day, I really miss her wisdom, her gentleness and quiet humor. I miss my dads booming laugh, his intelligence, his love of learning and I miss his love of life. I miss their unwavering belief in God, their pure faith and the way they lived their lives. God, family, country, it was inspiring and left and indelible mark on their whole family.

There is a movie, Peggy Sue Got Married, it is about a woman going to her high school reunion and she has a medical event and seemingly time travels back to when she was actually in high school.

I think about that a lot, if I could time travel and go back to one time period in my life, what time would I go.

I would go back to the summer between my sophomore and junior year of high school.

It was a fun, innocent time, lazy days spent laying out getting a tan with Tammi, watching soap opera’s every day, starting with Ryan’s Hope and ending with The Edge of Night. 

Picking vegetables out of the garden, from green beans to corn and digging potatoes. Then sitting next to my mom and snapping green beans. Trips to Wagner, OK for peaches, for canning and freezing.

With my brothers and sister coming over to help with that as well, my nephews and niece being there. The laughter, the pure fun, Friday night skate adventures, a simple time. Just one day, just to hear my dad laugh and my mom whistle, that would be enough for me.

I know, without one doubt I will get to hear both of those things one day. However, that knowledge does not stop me from missing it now.

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Happy Birthday Jeffrey Andrew!

Today is Jeffrey Andrew’s Birthday, and honestly it is hard to believe it has been 39 years since the day he was born. He was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in a pink hospital, St Francis to be exact. There wasn’t a name back then to describe what Jeffrey was to me. But there is a name today, he was my rainbow baby. I just knew he was a gift that was hard won.

Even after he was born it was rocky, he was born with water on his lungs and taken right into the NICU. Where he stayed for six days, those were some of the longest days of my life. I had to go home without him, fun fact, we were between homes and living with my cousin Cindy, it was a nice place to be able to land. I honestly don’t know how I would have handled it without her and being able to talk to her.

We brought Jeffrey home to Cindy and Mark’s home, we were waiting for our house to be built. 

I will tell you this story and maybe a lot of parents can relate to a sleep deprived story. 

I was nursing Jeffrey and the hospital did not tell me they were supplementing with formula, so when we brought him home it was a nightmare situation. I would literally feed him for an hour, he would scream for an hour then wake up and do the whole thing over again.

One night Jeff told me to go to sleep and he would hold him for that hour he was screaming. 

The next thing I know I am waking up to Jeffrey screaming and Jeff frantically looking for him. He had fallen asleep and was yelling that he had killed the baby because he fell asleep and could not remember putting him in the bassinet.

So here we were tearing up the bed looking for Jeffrey, and he is just screaming his head off. All of a sudden I stopped and said wait, if he’s dead he couldn’t scream. Then I looked in the bassinet, there he was, I started to feed and Jeff said he had had enough. He got dressed and went to the store and bought a can of formula. 

We made a bottle and Jeffrey drank 6 ounces and slept for over 7 hours. He was starving, he was used to that bottle after me feeding him and he was not getting enough to eat.

Sleep deprivation is a real thing, he was fine and then finer after the formula. 

Jeffrey I love you so much, and as much as I miss the little you, I love the man you have become. 

I hope you have the birthday you deserve, you are an incredible man, father, brother, son and husband to your wife Amanda. 

I pray that your life is everything you ever wanted and more.

Happy Birthday Son! I love you so much!