My mom and I were just laughing yesterday about the time the whole family went to the beach. We took the beach umbrella out of the garage, closed. When we got to the beach, my dad stuck the umbrella into the sand and opened it. Hundreds of flying palmetto bugs came swarming out of the umbrella in all directions. People started screaming and running away. I felt like the Addam's family! We just closed up the umbrella and quickly scooted off the beach, heads held low.

I was the baby with sisters much older. My mom was verbally abusive, a screamer, fought with everyone, but she is also very loving and giving. My father died when he was 44 and I was 12. It's a sad, long story about him. It's easiest to just say he had a nervous breakdown and was not right in his head my whole life, he died because he wanted to.

Everything that happened, I thought was normal, because that was all I knew.

Learning that things happened that were not healthy and there was history of abuse and MI did more damage to me than if things had just been left alone.

It was and is a blessed life, even wth a lot of senseless tragedies. We laughed, we cried. My parents taught me their crazy ways of thinking just as I teach my children some off the wall thinking, too.

No, nothing was ever 'peachy', but it all looked beautiful in the photos.