ONE HOLIDAY IS OVER

Ok  one holiday is over and i did survive the Thanksgiving dinner without my man with me,  he was there with me in my heart and he was able to call just as dinner was starting  so that did help but it also hurt to know he was over 600 miles away having dinner alone while i was sitting there with my entire family. the one thing that helped get me though the day was just knowing that on January 11th I will be there with him for one hour and during that hour we will be married.  so getting thru Christmas is not going to be that hard because our wedding will be even closer and the excitement of that day will get me thru being without him on Christmas day.  but to be without him on any day is hard and the holidays are even harder like i said earlier just to know i am with family and he is there alone.  he is not allowed to receive packages so he will not get to have any type of Christmas gifts from home or anything like that  no holiday cookies or pies or anything no decorations that we all get to enjoy.  and for Thanksgiving he did have the option of having turkey that was undercooked just like the chicken they serve several times a week  all undercooked  so his dinner was not enjoyable at all and i felt so guilty that our family dinner turned out to be a perfect meal with every member of my family at the table ( except him) to me the most important one was missing and he will be missing every holiday until Thanksgiving 2015  that is when he will be home with us  three days before Thanksgiving in the year 2015 and like i said in the beginning all because he looked at 3 pictures of a naked woman that turned out to be a 16 year old girl  nowadays who can tell a 16 year old from an 18 year old   not that 18 to me is ok either   but by law 18 is legal   i totally believe it was a set up from the beginning and he fell for it  but that is in the past now and we are left to deal with the punishment.  but yet someone like Micheal Jackson's doctor can be found guilty of murdering him and get 4 years in state prison  and then they say state prison is full so he is going to the local jail for 2 years oh wait that is full too so now he is getting a leg monitor on his leg and home confinement for 6 months and then he is free   so the moral of my story is  dont look at porn just kill a rock star  you get less time in prison for it. 

DAY TO DAY LIFE WITHOUT HIM

I am not even sure how to start this since everyday of my life since he has been gone has been hell on earth from the time i wake up in the morning  i begin wishing he was waking up beside me to fixing breakfast and wishing i was making it for both of us.  he is on my mind at all times wishing and wanting him here with me enjoying the new things happening in my life with moving into a new home and preparing for our wedding.  and by the time lunch is here again i am wishing he was here to enjoy it with me  and lets face it  eating alone every day is not much fun to begin with  and when you fall in love with the man of your dreams and are preparing to marry him  you kind of expect him to be beside you when you are going though all the new things and even the normal routine day to day things.   but in my case  i can only wish he was here with me  or me there with him, either way would be ok with me  if we could only be together.  by dinner time i have already spent at least an hour crying (at some point throughout the day) just because i am missing him so much and then bed time rolls around and he is not here with me to lay beside me and do the normal talking about the day we just had and what is in store for tomorrow. and again the crying starts   just to have him to give me a hug and a kiss good night and to hear i love you  would mean so much  but that cant happen with him being in prison  so for everyone out there that is reading this  dont ever take for granted the person in your life that is right there beside you day to day. someday they just may be taken from you for something very stupid. 

WEDDING DATE CHANGES AGAIN

As of the last post i left off with our wedding day would be January 4, 2012 well once again the prison has decided to change the date.  they decided that the 4th of January is too close to the holidays so they said the new date is  January 11, 2012   but that i bet wont be the final date either  since this is now the 4th time they have changed it since July when we first decided to be married in the prison.

Our lives have been in a constant turmoil since he got to the prison with all the changes we have been thru together and all the changes they(the prison) makes on a daily basis. and then you also have to factor into all the changes that are constantly going on here at home also.  trying to blend his household of things into my household of things and then move it all to the new house in a few weeks. And that is another thing that sucks is the fact i am left here to move everything from the old house to the new house, and try to figure out if i am putting things where he will want them when he gets home and if i am decorating the house to his satisfaction also. and then of course you have the holidays that are quickly approching, and me and my son will be in our new house hopefully by then and we will be trying to celebrate them without the one we both love being with us. this is the first christmas without him and it will probably be the hardest ever.  there is one good thing about it though and that is we are nearing a year apart already and that means just 4 more to go which still seems like a lifetime from now but it is better then 5 years to go that is 4 years left with good time taken off already. now we just have to hope and pray that nothing happens there to make him lose that good time. I will be starting soon to explain the day to day pain I go thru without him here but that is for another blog day.

REALITY HAS FINALLY SET IN

After the first month of me being without him reality finally set in that this was really happening to us. and that no matter what is happening in others lifes ours would be changed forever, all over the fact that someone sent him naked pictures of a (girl) woman and he looked at them and forwarded them on to someone else.  yes the internet can be a wonderful thing, but it can also change your life forever.
But there is a big ray of hope in our future also  we decided before he went to prison that we wanted to spend the rest of our lifes together once he is free so we got engaged two days before Christmas of 2010 and we went thru all the channels of the prison system to file the appropriate paperwork. when we got all the paperwork finished we were told the weddings are held in January, April, July and October so we had the paperwork all finished in time for the July ceremony's but was told the paperwork did not get to them in time to make the July wedding, the rule book says the paperwork has to be done one month prior to the end of the quarter before the wedding, our paperwork was done and turned in in May of 2011 for the July wedding so i made a  trip down there to see him thinking we would be married while i was there but that did not happen so we checked on all the paperwork to make sure it was all still together and in place for the October wedding ceremony  and was told it was, so again i made the trip from Michigan to North Carolina to see him and again planning on getting married while i was there and after i was there for two days was again told we did not make the list our paperwork did not get to the proper people in time to make the list for the wedding. and as of right now we have now been told that we are on the top of the list to be married January 4th of 2012  and that just happens to also be my 50th birthday. So along with all the bad there is a ray of hope for happiness for us also.  Since he was incarcerated  we( I ) went house shopping and found us a really nice house to make into a home for us, once he is back here where he belongs, and now we will be happily married in January if all goes as planned, but with all plans something still has the potential to go wrong. January is still a few months away and plenty of time for things to change.
He is the man of my dreams and i plan to get married and have a very happy marriage with him thru good and bad and right now we are going thru all the bad and the good times are yet to come.

IN THE FIRST WEEKS THAT FOLLOWED

After the first few blurry days were over and the realization that this was not a dream and my life still had to go on without him.  The first week was really hard because i could not talk to him on the phone or hear from him in a letter since it takes four days to get a letter from him and he had to wait until i got back home and then sent money to his account to be able to buy stamps or a phone card to call with. After that week was over I was able to at least hear from him in a letter and then he had to wait the same four days for my letter to get back to him, once we figured out to answer one question it takes eight days, it was a little easier but still the normal person can ask a question and get a response within minutes these days and for us life is not like that.

Not only has his life changed but so did mine. I am no longer in the fast life, my days are now filled with anticipation of the snail mail bringing me a letter so that I can answer it and get my letter back in the mailbox so he gets it before he forgets the questions he asked. The prisoners do not receive mail on saturdays at all so some days it takes even longer to receive the answers to your questions. Then of course there is the fact that whatever is written in a letter is read by the prison guards before he gets it so nothing we talk about is private in any way; even phone calls are monitored so no privacy there either.

Just to get him settled into the prison I had to send to his account $1,000 so he could get simple needed things like underwear and socks, pants and shirts and shoes. Of course he needed the other things like deodorant, soap, shampoo. toothpaste and brush, hair brush (he has long hair) and a comb and before the first month was over the thousand dollars was gone let me tell you prison clothes and stuff are not cheap.  He could not watch tv without buying a pair of headphones ($35) and then he could not hear the tv till he bought a special radio ($50)  and even with all that you have to have seniority to be able to watch tv only so many chairs per tv and the older prisoners get them before anyone else does. Not allowed to just stand around and watch  must be in a chair. 

So if he was lucky to get a chair you have to watch whatever is on that tv you dont get a choice and of course hearing all that about his life in there, makes me feel so quilty that I am here watching whatever I want to watch on tv. Then there is the matter of the food he gets to eat  lets start off with the fact he hates chicken  and unfortunately chicken is the cheapest meal to fix so they get that a lot so on those days he has to eat snacks that he is allowed to buy from the commisary. He even was willing to try the chicken and when he tore it open blood ran out of it  so he decided to not try it again. When I went for a visit I was chatting with other visitors also there to see their loved ones and was told by several of them that there prisoner does not eat the chicken there either, since it is never cooked all the way. and again I am sitting here allowed to eat whatever I decide that I want for that meal. No matter what it is that is going on in my life at the time the thought of him is always there, so I am living my life and basically his life for him too since every decision I make is for us, whether it be for us now or in the future when he is home with me.

THE BEGINNING

let me start with when it was time for him to report to prison in North Carolina  i was working full time when i ask my boss for the time off to take him down there i was denied the time off even though i had two weeks vacation time coming to me.  so he quickly informed me that i was going to quit my job and go with him to report to the prison and that was the end of my job. he had the money to allow me to live ok without a job.

we left here three days early so we had a few days to enjoy our last times alone together for 5.5 years the day came way to quickly for him to report and for me to see him walk away with the guard and me to head back to Michigan    leaving him there and coming back home was absolutely the hardest thing i have ever had to do in my life.  i finally met the man of my dreams (after two failed marriages with years of abuse) he is the kindest most gentle man i have ever met in my life.  so anyway i was coming home to a home that just no longer felt like a home  just a empty house to go along with my even emptier heart.  i left my heart in that prison with him in North Carolina.    yes i had my son to come home too and he has been my lifesaver in most ways.  he makes it so i am not alone, but my heart will never be full again until my man comes out of that prison and home to me.  just so it is clear what happened in the first place i will let you all know what he did to be put there in the first place.  he was on yahoo on the computer and was talking with a guy and the guy sent him three pictures of a naked (girl) woman he looked at the pictures as most men or even ladies would do and he sent them to a friend to see also  well when he sent the pictures the F.B.I came a year later and took his computer and said he was distributing child porn,  the girl/woman in the pictures was only 16 well these days who can tell a 16 year old from a 18 year old.  I for one would not be able too.    but he had been in the same job for almost 30 years and married to the same woman for 41 years.  and the judge took all that away from him as an example to others. by sending him to a federal prison for 5.5 years  he was held here for 6 months with a ankle bracelet on  and now we have learned that all that time does not come off his sentence  the federal prison does not recognize local punishment  so that time under house arrest does not count for any part of the 5.5 year sentence. ( in my opinion that is not fair either) but we have to go on and put that in the past also.  well back to the story now   the first few days i was walking around numb like i was in a really bad dream and i would wake up and this would all go away and he would still be with me.  i soon learned that it was not and reality sunk in,  i was here and he was there and over 600 miles and a lot of fence and barbed wire was between us.