This story has been banging around in my head for a couple of years. No sure what everyone will make of it but I have it all outlined and hope to post on it two or three times a week ... something like MWF. I'm still writing Nann, even posted a chapter today, just needed something to help with the stress and this is what came to mind. There's a five part Prologue to the story before it sets off. If I can figure out how to patch pictures into the story I will.
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Aunt Gus & Little Bear’s Big adventure
Roadtripping or Homeless? Guess which one we picked?
Prologue 1 (part 1)
I set up the blog today. It isn’t one of the last tasks I have to do, but I’ve been putting it off as long as I could. Why? Absolutely no clue except maybe I was subconsciously hoping that my nonexistent Fairy Godmother would suddenly show up and all our problems would be over with. Yeah, like that was ever going to happen. I’m too old to believe in fairy tales and all of the rest of it. There may be a few people you can depend on in this life – I know there have been people like that for me – but at some point, you must do for yourself and sometimes in the process take on the responsibilities that someone had originally done when they took you on. Does that convoluted, run-on sentence even makes sense? There’s been a lot of convoluted in my life and looks like I can add bad grammar to that mix.
I’ve been wimbling back and forth about what platform and format to use for the travel blog. I want to monetize it – hopefully – and I want to make it easy and accessible. I want to advertise things like my affiliate links that I’ve set up. On the other hand, I need some control because, privacy you know, especially since I’m traveling with a kid and I’m not exactly far into the world of adulting either. In the end I hit Craig’s List and hired a web designer to help me set up my own site. Wow, that sounds a lot more glamorous than it has been. I’ll be learning web design as I go so that I can maintain things just in case the site breaks or whatever.
But before I can start that, I need to get the rest of my story – our story – down. Our story? Aunt Gus and Little Bear’s Big Adventure. Well, that’s what our story has morphed into but I’m going to have to go back further than tomorrow or this autobiography won’t make any sense at all.
Hi, I’m Gus … legally known as August Summer Barrymore Jr. Our Van Life adventure starts on my 20th Birthday assuming nothing else blows up in my life. Why does everyone call me Gus? Because my grandmother was distraught like everyone else was at my birth and gave the nurse the wrong information … her name instead of the one that had originally been picked for me. She was actually my step grandmother – another sob story – because my paternal grandfather didn’t re-marry until Dad was in high school. It had to be her because my dad was barely compos mentis and couldn’t have answered the nurse regardless of the reason or motivation. My mom was an “older, high-risk” mother and she developed pre-eclampsia that turned into eclampsia and she had a stroke when I was born. A bad one. Really bad. As in so bad it killed her. So, the day I was born I also lost my mother.
That sounds very clinical I suppose but it is how I have learned to cope with never having a mother. I had “mother figures” in my life, Dad saw to that, but Dad never remarried so I never called anyone “Mom.” Dad’s name is … was … Lawrence Benjamin Barrymore Jr. He didn’t know his mother either but more because she and his father couldn’t live together and eventually she flipped out and lot’s of sad stuff so my dad and his older brother were raised by his dad from the time he was a baby. Because Dad knew it was possible, he didn’t think it strange that he would raise me on his own. Well, not really on his own, my brother is … was … Lawrence Benjamin Barrymore III. He was older than I was by fourteen years. And there was no one in between. I was one of those perimenopausal whoopsie babies that you hear about.
You know how when you are a kid you sometimes wonder why you were born, or even if you should have been born? I said that to Dad once. Oh my Lord. It is the one and only time he really sat me down and intentionally took the time to talk about my mother to me. I don’t know who found it more painful, me or Dad. Either way I never questioned it again. And I suppose that’s a good thing because when I was fourteen, same age my brother was when I was born, Dad had a heart attack at work and died. Again, very clinical but I learned to live with it because I had a great big brother that, despite having just gotten married himself and being in the military, he took me in rather than see me go into foster care when no one else in the extended family could take me. All four of my grandparents had died by the time my father did creating some of the stress that caused the heart attack is my guess as we had all be very close and they were the ones that had raised me when Dad was on the road driving. He hated leaving me after that but there hadn’t been any choice as the bills had to be paid and he couldn’t depend on his brother or his brother’s kids as they were all a bit of a mess that neither Dad or Lawrence ever wanted me emulating.
I was fourteen. And my own hot mess for a few months until I got over having to give up everything I knew, and most of my stuff, to go live with my brother, who was usually deployed, while living with a new sister-in-law who was, and I’m trying to say this nicely for Benny’s sake, a free-spirited loony. How she and my brother hooked up is still one of those mysteries of the universe that won’t be answered until I get where I’m going after this life. They met at a riot of all things. Apparently my brother saved her life when the group she was hanging with lost their ever-loving minds and joined a violent protest group and wham bam thank you man she was in loooooove with the first man that had ever been a stable influence in her life. She hadn’t ever exactly had any stable female influences in her life either since her mother was an even bigger hot mess than she was and intentionally OD’d while Penny was a teenager leaving her in the care of a sister that thought she was a cross between Joan of Ark and that old chick Goldie Hawn. I met her once. She was in her 40s but looked to be in her 60s … she never really used sunscreen if you know what I mean. Her skin tone was burnt umber if that gives any indication what I mean.
I came on the scene and Penny was pretty easy going about it. Apparently she grew up with kids moving in and out of the house dependent on who was shacked up with who and she has … had … a lot more step-siblings than most people have regular family members. Then right as my brother was getting deployed again Penny catches preggers and her problems became a little more pronounced shall we say. My brother was struggling, and I just stepped up to show my appreciation for him taking me in and that first hell-year he dealt with keeping me from falling off the edge of the planet.
After Benny was born Penny leveled out and really loved all of the various mother groups she was a part of. No sure clue, but I think it was a bit like being in group therapy all the time which is probably what she really needed.
What I needed I found in the Naval Sea Cadets program[1] and Sea Scouts[2]. The Naval Sea Cadets is a type of JROTC although not really; we were a very distinct group that focused on leadership and teamwork as well as a scaled-down version of the Navy’s basic training program. Sea Scouts on the other hand is a BSA program. I got hooked into both by the home school co-op my brother insisted I participate in while he was stationed in Jacksonville, FL. Why? He had his reasons and they included that he wasn’t going to have his little sister in public school if he wasn’t around to beat the crap out of any creeps that came sniffing. Yep, actual quote there.
The other thing the co-op hooked me into was being dual enrolled. That meant I was a high school student and a college student at the same time; or at least a version of those two things. I used the co-op for electives and social outlets and dual enrolled at one of the local state colleges for everything else. For qualifying students, dual enrollment is free in Florida. Yeehaw. I had to pay for my books, but Lawrence said that was still cheaper than private school, so he set me up with a school fund from Dad’s estate and I had the responsibility of paying for things. Wowee, talk about trial by fire. It taught me about money and working and finding creative ways to have more income than out-go.
Penny was a little vague about it all but still encouraged and supported my activities. Plus, she liked to join the parent support groups. More “group therapy,” but it helped her and kept me out of hot water. Not to mention, I’m not the greatest match for public school settings. I tend to be organized and disciplined to keep my head on straight, and the chaos often found in public school wasn’t a healthy fit for me. Even Dad had recognized that, and I was a “virtual student” rather than a physical classroom student from Kindergarten until I went to live with Lawrence.
I took care of Benny when I wasn’t in my other activities. I took care of Benny more as time went on. Then it became obvious I needed to take care of Benny full-time. I was taking care of Penny full time as well. Or as full time as she would let me. Benny and I have something in common, we have both been diagnosed with APD (Auditory Processing Disorder). Mine isn’t bad and has improved with age and training, and no longer would keep me out of the military. In fact, I scored high on every “listening” skill because I concentrated more than your average individual. Benny’s is worse but he is learning because I know what he is going through and am helping him to learn work arounds. He may be able to “outgrow” it but I’m suspecting not. Both Benny and I are also dyslexic. Dad caught mine early and helped me to learn work arounds to the point it is barely noticeable to me or anyone else. I still occasionally reverse my words when I’m talking and I have to do a freakton of editing when I write, but it wouldn’t have kept me out of the military either. Benny’s, just like with the APD, is worse. Fortunately, his Aunt Gus is on top of it. He can already read a few site words that are important for safety reasons, read his name and we are working on “left” and “right”. I’m teaching him words as “pictures” rather than as individual letters, and phonetics is just going to have to wait.
Lawrence was around most of my senior year of high school as he had been deployed for a lot of rotations. He was also getting some special training for his next rank or something along those lines. He didn’t talk about it and I wasn’t supposed to ask about it. Thems were the rules and rules I understood then and still do. Besides, I didn’t want to wreck his time at home anymore than the problems that he and Penny were having did.
I’ll record this here and one of these days I’ll explain it to Benny. Lawrence once told me that he was in love with being in love with Penny more than he was in love with her. I kinda got it at the time, and maturity and a near miss of my own has helped me to understand it better. The near miss was my first year out of high school and probably would have derailed all my plans (that life derailed anyway) if I hadn’t already been dealing with real life responsibilities and realized I didn’t need the damage the other guy was exhibiting.
Lawrence was committed to his kid and his marriage, and Penny was turning out to be pretty helpless and his conscience simply would not allow him to abandon either of them. But me he wanted to make sure could stand on my own two feet and escape whatever he thought might be coming down the pike.
I graduated high school with most of my Associate’s Degree at the same time, and rather than going straight into the military as had been my plan, Lawrence talked me into finishing college first. I don’t think it was selfish of him. I don’t. I think he wanted me to be an Officer which would have made it easier on me because I’m female. And given the way things have turned out, it has certainly been for the best. But a couple of days after I graduated high school Lawrence left for his next deployment overseas. I had just turned 18 and he pretty much left me in charge of everything, including the finances which he’d spent many of the preceding months teaching me how to do. At 18 I didn’t need a co-signer for a bank account but though I was on the lease of their apartment because I lived there, the lease wasn’t in my name. That turned out to be a bad thing and the one thing that Lawrence overlooked.
Here we all are, trucking along, all of my classes but one were online, so I was able to take care of Benny full-time so I wouldn’t have to worry about Penny leaving him at the apartment or store accidentally. Benny was nearly three and smart enough that putting him in a VPK program would have just held him back even with his learning challenges. Penny? She could function so long as someone else was in charge of the important stuff and made sure she took her meds on time. She even had a job, of sorts, at a local thrift store where she handled the show cases and windows.
Then the officers in dress uniforms showed up at the door and we found out that Lawrence Benjamin Barrymore III had died in the service of his country. I still don’t know what happened. It was a closed casket out of necessity and the Freedom of Information report I got was all blacked out. Maybe one of these days Benny will get to know. I do know that my brother was posthumously awarded a medal and even a rank. So whatever it was, it was a big-freaking-deal. A really big-freaking-deal. Like maybe save the country … or the world … big-freaking-deal. Or at least I tell myself that sometimes to rationalize that he’d been taken away from us and our personal world being reshaped into something that I barely recognized.
Benny turned four and that year is one I’m not particularly in favor of reliving if you want to know the truth. I love him but all the upheaval made Benny have a reversal of personality back to the terrible-two’s times a hundred, which he’d never had the first time around. His pediatrician wanted him tested for all sorts of things and medicated when she witnessed one of the fits he could throw. Ugh. Because of his age he got sent to a specialist who turned out to be pretty understanding and actually just gave me a few suggestions like to put him on a special diet to see if things were being exacerbated by gluten or food dyes or flavorings. Turned out to be a great idea and by the end of the year I was able to smooth most of the wrinkles out. No meds and Benny was a more chill kid than he had been since birth.
During that same time Penny was just gawd-awful. It was like I was the parent with two kids and one of them was an out-of-control, ADHD, ODD, Bi-Polar, unmedicated and hormonally-challenged teenager. And I’m not talking about Benny. Penny fooled me in the beginning and wasn’t taking her meds even though I was watching her. She’d spit them out when I wasn’t looking. And even when I started to check, she’d go stick her finger down her throat to throw them back up. Found that trick out when she was Baker Acted after she had a breakdown at her thrift store job.
[2] Scout Resources - Sea Scouts BSA
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Aunt Gus & Little Bear’s Big adventure
Roadtripping or Homeless? Guess which one we picked?
Prologue 1 (part 1)
I set up the blog today. It isn’t one of the last tasks I have to do, but I’ve been putting it off as long as I could. Why? Absolutely no clue except maybe I was subconsciously hoping that my nonexistent Fairy Godmother would suddenly show up and all our problems would be over with. Yeah, like that was ever going to happen. I’m too old to believe in fairy tales and all of the rest of it. There may be a few people you can depend on in this life – I know there have been people like that for me – but at some point, you must do for yourself and sometimes in the process take on the responsibilities that someone had originally done when they took you on. Does that convoluted, run-on sentence even makes sense? There’s been a lot of convoluted in my life and looks like I can add bad grammar to that mix.
I’ve been wimbling back and forth about what platform and format to use for the travel blog. I want to monetize it – hopefully – and I want to make it easy and accessible. I want to advertise things like my affiliate links that I’ve set up. On the other hand, I need some control because, privacy you know, especially since I’m traveling with a kid and I’m not exactly far into the world of adulting either. In the end I hit Craig’s List and hired a web designer to help me set up my own site. Wow, that sounds a lot more glamorous than it has been. I’ll be learning web design as I go so that I can maintain things just in case the site breaks or whatever.
But before I can start that, I need to get the rest of my story – our story – down. Our story? Aunt Gus and Little Bear’s Big Adventure. Well, that’s what our story has morphed into but I’m going to have to go back further than tomorrow or this autobiography won’t make any sense at all.
Hi, I’m Gus … legally known as August Summer Barrymore Jr. Our Van Life adventure starts on my 20th Birthday assuming nothing else blows up in my life. Why does everyone call me Gus? Because my grandmother was distraught like everyone else was at my birth and gave the nurse the wrong information … her name instead of the one that had originally been picked for me. She was actually my step grandmother – another sob story – because my paternal grandfather didn’t re-marry until Dad was in high school. It had to be her because my dad was barely compos mentis and couldn’t have answered the nurse regardless of the reason or motivation. My mom was an “older, high-risk” mother and she developed pre-eclampsia that turned into eclampsia and she had a stroke when I was born. A bad one. Really bad. As in so bad it killed her. So, the day I was born I also lost my mother.
That sounds very clinical I suppose but it is how I have learned to cope with never having a mother. I had “mother figures” in my life, Dad saw to that, but Dad never remarried so I never called anyone “Mom.” Dad’s name is … was … Lawrence Benjamin Barrymore Jr. He didn’t know his mother either but more because she and his father couldn’t live together and eventually she flipped out and lot’s of sad stuff so my dad and his older brother were raised by his dad from the time he was a baby. Because Dad knew it was possible, he didn’t think it strange that he would raise me on his own. Well, not really on his own, my brother is … was … Lawrence Benjamin Barrymore III. He was older than I was by fourteen years. And there was no one in between. I was one of those perimenopausal whoopsie babies that you hear about.
You know how when you are a kid you sometimes wonder why you were born, or even if you should have been born? I said that to Dad once. Oh my Lord. It is the one and only time he really sat me down and intentionally took the time to talk about my mother to me. I don’t know who found it more painful, me or Dad. Either way I never questioned it again. And I suppose that’s a good thing because when I was fourteen, same age my brother was when I was born, Dad had a heart attack at work and died. Again, very clinical but I learned to live with it because I had a great big brother that, despite having just gotten married himself and being in the military, he took me in rather than see me go into foster care when no one else in the extended family could take me. All four of my grandparents had died by the time my father did creating some of the stress that caused the heart attack is my guess as we had all be very close and they were the ones that had raised me when Dad was on the road driving. He hated leaving me after that but there hadn’t been any choice as the bills had to be paid and he couldn’t depend on his brother or his brother’s kids as they were all a bit of a mess that neither Dad or Lawrence ever wanted me emulating.
I was fourteen. And my own hot mess for a few months until I got over having to give up everything I knew, and most of my stuff, to go live with my brother, who was usually deployed, while living with a new sister-in-law who was, and I’m trying to say this nicely for Benny’s sake, a free-spirited loony. How she and my brother hooked up is still one of those mysteries of the universe that won’t be answered until I get where I’m going after this life. They met at a riot of all things. Apparently my brother saved her life when the group she was hanging with lost their ever-loving minds and joined a violent protest group and wham bam thank you man she was in loooooove with the first man that had ever been a stable influence in her life. She hadn’t ever exactly had any stable female influences in her life either since her mother was an even bigger hot mess than she was and intentionally OD’d while Penny was a teenager leaving her in the care of a sister that thought she was a cross between Joan of Ark and that old chick Goldie Hawn. I met her once. She was in her 40s but looked to be in her 60s … she never really used sunscreen if you know what I mean. Her skin tone was burnt umber if that gives any indication what I mean.
I came on the scene and Penny was pretty easy going about it. Apparently she grew up with kids moving in and out of the house dependent on who was shacked up with who and she has … had … a lot more step-siblings than most people have regular family members. Then right as my brother was getting deployed again Penny catches preggers and her problems became a little more pronounced shall we say. My brother was struggling, and I just stepped up to show my appreciation for him taking me in and that first hell-year he dealt with keeping me from falling off the edge of the planet.
After Benny was born Penny leveled out and really loved all of the various mother groups she was a part of. No sure clue, but I think it was a bit like being in group therapy all the time which is probably what she really needed.
What I needed I found in the Naval Sea Cadets program[1] and Sea Scouts[2]. The Naval Sea Cadets is a type of JROTC although not really; we were a very distinct group that focused on leadership and teamwork as well as a scaled-down version of the Navy’s basic training program. Sea Scouts on the other hand is a BSA program. I got hooked into both by the home school co-op my brother insisted I participate in while he was stationed in Jacksonville, FL. Why? He had his reasons and they included that he wasn’t going to have his little sister in public school if he wasn’t around to beat the crap out of any creeps that came sniffing. Yep, actual quote there.
The other thing the co-op hooked me into was being dual enrolled. That meant I was a high school student and a college student at the same time; or at least a version of those two things. I used the co-op for electives and social outlets and dual enrolled at one of the local state colleges for everything else. For qualifying students, dual enrollment is free in Florida. Yeehaw. I had to pay for my books, but Lawrence said that was still cheaper than private school, so he set me up with a school fund from Dad’s estate and I had the responsibility of paying for things. Wowee, talk about trial by fire. It taught me about money and working and finding creative ways to have more income than out-go.
Penny was a little vague about it all but still encouraged and supported my activities. Plus, she liked to join the parent support groups. More “group therapy,” but it helped her and kept me out of hot water. Not to mention, I’m not the greatest match for public school settings. I tend to be organized and disciplined to keep my head on straight, and the chaos often found in public school wasn’t a healthy fit for me. Even Dad had recognized that, and I was a “virtual student” rather than a physical classroom student from Kindergarten until I went to live with Lawrence.
I took care of Benny when I wasn’t in my other activities. I took care of Benny more as time went on. Then it became obvious I needed to take care of Benny full-time. I was taking care of Penny full time as well. Or as full time as she would let me. Benny and I have something in common, we have both been diagnosed with APD (Auditory Processing Disorder). Mine isn’t bad and has improved with age and training, and no longer would keep me out of the military. In fact, I scored high on every “listening” skill because I concentrated more than your average individual. Benny’s is worse but he is learning because I know what he is going through and am helping him to learn work arounds. He may be able to “outgrow” it but I’m suspecting not. Both Benny and I are also dyslexic. Dad caught mine early and helped me to learn work arounds to the point it is barely noticeable to me or anyone else. I still occasionally reverse my words when I’m talking and I have to do a freakton of editing when I write, but it wouldn’t have kept me out of the military either. Benny’s, just like with the APD, is worse. Fortunately, his Aunt Gus is on top of it. He can already read a few site words that are important for safety reasons, read his name and we are working on “left” and “right”. I’m teaching him words as “pictures” rather than as individual letters, and phonetics is just going to have to wait.
Lawrence was around most of my senior year of high school as he had been deployed for a lot of rotations. He was also getting some special training for his next rank or something along those lines. He didn’t talk about it and I wasn’t supposed to ask about it. Thems were the rules and rules I understood then and still do. Besides, I didn’t want to wreck his time at home anymore than the problems that he and Penny were having did.
I’ll record this here and one of these days I’ll explain it to Benny. Lawrence once told me that he was in love with being in love with Penny more than he was in love with her. I kinda got it at the time, and maturity and a near miss of my own has helped me to understand it better. The near miss was my first year out of high school and probably would have derailed all my plans (that life derailed anyway) if I hadn’t already been dealing with real life responsibilities and realized I didn’t need the damage the other guy was exhibiting.
Lawrence was committed to his kid and his marriage, and Penny was turning out to be pretty helpless and his conscience simply would not allow him to abandon either of them. But me he wanted to make sure could stand on my own two feet and escape whatever he thought might be coming down the pike.
I graduated high school with most of my Associate’s Degree at the same time, and rather than going straight into the military as had been my plan, Lawrence talked me into finishing college first. I don’t think it was selfish of him. I don’t. I think he wanted me to be an Officer which would have made it easier on me because I’m female. And given the way things have turned out, it has certainly been for the best. But a couple of days after I graduated high school Lawrence left for his next deployment overseas. I had just turned 18 and he pretty much left me in charge of everything, including the finances which he’d spent many of the preceding months teaching me how to do. At 18 I didn’t need a co-signer for a bank account but though I was on the lease of their apartment because I lived there, the lease wasn’t in my name. That turned out to be a bad thing and the one thing that Lawrence overlooked.
Here we all are, trucking along, all of my classes but one were online, so I was able to take care of Benny full-time so I wouldn’t have to worry about Penny leaving him at the apartment or store accidentally. Benny was nearly three and smart enough that putting him in a VPK program would have just held him back even with his learning challenges. Penny? She could function so long as someone else was in charge of the important stuff and made sure she took her meds on time. She even had a job, of sorts, at a local thrift store where she handled the show cases and windows.
Then the officers in dress uniforms showed up at the door and we found out that Lawrence Benjamin Barrymore III had died in the service of his country. I still don’t know what happened. It was a closed casket out of necessity and the Freedom of Information report I got was all blacked out. Maybe one of these days Benny will get to know. I do know that my brother was posthumously awarded a medal and even a rank. So whatever it was, it was a big-freaking-deal. A really big-freaking-deal. Like maybe save the country … or the world … big-freaking-deal. Or at least I tell myself that sometimes to rationalize that he’d been taken away from us and our personal world being reshaped into something that I barely recognized.
Benny turned four and that year is one I’m not particularly in favor of reliving if you want to know the truth. I love him but all the upheaval made Benny have a reversal of personality back to the terrible-two’s times a hundred, which he’d never had the first time around. His pediatrician wanted him tested for all sorts of things and medicated when she witnessed one of the fits he could throw. Ugh. Because of his age he got sent to a specialist who turned out to be pretty understanding and actually just gave me a few suggestions like to put him on a special diet to see if things were being exacerbated by gluten or food dyes or flavorings. Turned out to be a great idea and by the end of the year I was able to smooth most of the wrinkles out. No meds and Benny was a more chill kid than he had been since birth.
During that same time Penny was just gawd-awful. It was like I was the parent with two kids and one of them was an out-of-control, ADHD, ODD, Bi-Polar, unmedicated and hormonally-challenged teenager. And I’m not talking about Benny. Penny fooled me in the beginning and wasn’t taking her meds even though I was watching her. She’d spit them out when I wasn’t looking. And even when I started to check, she’d go stick her finger down her throat to throw them back up. Found that trick out when she was Baker Acted after she had a breakdown at her thrift store job.
[1] Naval Sea Cadets is a program for students ages 13-17, with a junior group starting at age 11. Much like JROTC, students will find the Sea Cadet program to be a great course in leadership and teamwork. Unlike JROTC, however, is that Sea Cadets offer a scaled-down version of the Navy’s basic training to introduce students to military drill and discipline, physical fitness, seamanship, shipboard safety, first aid, naval history, and leadership. Additionally, twice-monthly drills (weekend training) are common among most Sea Cadet locations. Students interested in the Navy, Marine Corp., Coast Guard, and/or Merchant Marines will find many interesting activities in the Naval Sea Cadets.[2] Scout Resources - Sea Scouts BSA