2013-hello

1-3-13

Happy birthday to my mom! She is 60 today. Wow. I still think of her as only being like 30. Very strange.

It is a good morning since I was pleasantly surprised to hear that Kevin and Bean were back today. I know, silly, but it is the simple things in life that we need to embrace.

My Christmas holiday was eventful. The boys were quite pleased with their presents and didn’t ever utter the phrase, “that’s all?”

We went up to the Compound a couple days after Christmas. It was going to be awkward on many levels. First, there was the horrible tragedy lingering over everyone what with the recent mauling of Belle by the two Boxer pups. Scotty still can’t come up and even Andy was uncharacteristically cold towards those dogs. I didn’t blame him one bit. I also didn’t feel much love towards them. I also noted that it truly was the one pup, Bella, that was more aggressive than her sister, Sierra. She kept “playing” with Luna to the point where I could see my dog was less than thrilled with the constant badgering. On multiple occasions I stepped in and growled in dominance towards Bella. She is clearly not aggressive towards people, but her animal issues I think run deep and I don’t trust her one bit. Papa Brenan is still interested in keeping both, and Mama Brenan thinks that they need to be placed together. I can tell you, the dogs need to go, and need to be separated lest another animal is killed. Of course, no one listens to us.

This somber mood was upgraded to anger and confusion. Ken and I kept being badgered to go down and hang out with Chris and Sandy. Neither one of us were anxious to see them. Ever since the angry phone call from Chris concerning rape accusations and the multiple emails back and forth looking for more information, we have mostly kept our distance. The insistence of us hanging out with cousins finally resulted in Ken and I deciding to tell the folks about what went down.

I can tell you from my perspective it isn’t fun telling parents that your cousin accused you of rape. I was uncomfortable, and these were not my parents or my cousins. Ken did well, though. I was very proud of him. As he pointed out, he has nothing to hide or be ashamed about. He didn’t do anything wrong. We explained to them about the phone call and emails. We even read to them from the letter from the girl. They were horrified and thankfully 100% on Ken’s side. There is always that concern that people won’t believe you. Plus, Ken doesn’t have a great track record with family siding with him.

While we were in the midst of discussing this with them, George (Sandy and Chris’s dad) showed up with his grandchildren. With the youngest on his lap, his sister, Ken’s mom, proceeded to attack him with questions. I don’t blame George for his eventual storming out. He had a 4 year old on his lap and was being yelled at about his knowledge of a 25 year old incident that he only had knowledge of for a few months.

That being said, he also seemed to know more than he let on. He also at one point indicated he felt that Ken was evil. Yeah, that happened.

After his departure, there were more questions than answers. Clearly, there was a lot to discuss. An email sent to me from Sandy was passed around, and yet still, it felt like a lot of her past mental stability was being placed on Ken’s teenage advances on a girl that didn’t take it well. We were at a loss, and it was not a great place to be at.

We opted to go on with the day, hoping that at some point soon there would be more conversation. Our hopes were answered when George and Sandy came up later that evening after the kids were in bed.

I will say this, even after a couple hours of heartfelt stories and tears a plenty, I feel in my heart that their family believes that Ken did something wrong and that it somehow ruined lives. I also feel they are all wrong.

Ken made advances towards a friend of Sandy’s in Mammoth one summer. Mind you, the girl wasn’t 100% against it, and much of the “incident” seems to culminate around Ken goofing around and trying to get into the bathroom where the girl was changing. All of it sounds incredibly normal to me. Boys are stupid, especially during that awkward time between 10 and, um, well I guess 50? The old adage of pulling pigtails is true. You do stupid ass shit to impress a girl. Fuck, Greg and Ken climbed out of cars while driving to impress us. It wasn’t smart, but it was that kind of stupid ass pranks that if you take them too seriously, you might think they were dangerous. But honestly, this is one of those occasions where the girls involved were just too sheltered in life.

The girl in question apparently left Mammoth with a full on panic attack. Oh, and by the by, Ken’s folks were not told this, despite the fact that they were there at the time. Sandy’s parents were the ones who made said arrangements and never told the Brenans anything. Holy fuck, people. I can assure you, Carolie was not happy about this. Who does that? If my kids do something to cause a panic attack, you had better fucking tell me. Don’t let it simmer and fester and come out in a fucking angry phone call 25 fucking years later.

Breathe, Gena.

As if this wasn’t enough, though, there was apparently another girl. We were not made privy to this chick’s name, nor has she actually come forward. Yet the accuser seems to think that Ken gave her some kind of infection the following summer. Sigh.

Sandy proceeded to tell us that both of these girls were very popular in school. They apparently decided to blacklist Sandy after all of this, having the entire school shun her for years. Sandy blames Ken for all of this.

Ok, stop it. Just fucking stop it. Two popular girls in Jr High decided to stop talking to a girl that was already a self-proclaimed loner due to other things that happened in her young life? Yeah, because that doesn’t ever fucking happen. Teenage girls are horrid creatures. They are cruel for no reason. Oh, and a popular girl gets an infection? Hmm, what a shock. Of course she is going to fucking blame a random guy instead of implementing herself in having done something wrong. Fuck, this all stinks of Mean Girls. Plus, if this kind of thing was truly the case, why didn’t ANYONE step in and question this? Why didn’t any fucking parents or administrators or even these girls step up and say something??? If this was so incredibly hard on these girls, don’t you think you say something???? Look, I know victims sometimes don’t like to talk, but fuck, it sounds like the word was out that Sandy was bad news, and don’t you think someone hears the rumors and it gets back to a grownup????????

Ok, enough with the politics of high school. Bottom line is that there is a whole lot of blame on teenage idiocy.

I also want to put on the record that I think it is awful what happened to Sandy when she was 5. Apparently she was raped by her brother’s friend who was 9 at the time. Sandy spoke about this along with other things over her life that have caused her a lot of issues. As much as some of this is good for us to know as a family, I still felt that none of this was relevant to the situation at hand.

Awful things happened to Ken when he was a child, too. This is only sort of relevant in regards to what went down.

Too much emphasis was put on things that sure, made things harder to deal with the situation, but they didn’t cause it, nor did they excuse the reactions after the fact.

I could go into more detail, but frankly, I am exhausted when it comes to this. Although George and Sandy seemed to agree no rape occurred, they still seem to think other stuff went down, and they still sort of forced Ken into taking way more blame than he needed to.

I did get to go a little Mama Bear on the conversation. Even Sandy pointed out that my emails to Chris kind of threw him for a loop. Perhaps neither of them ever had someone 100% in their corner before and didn’t know how powerful that is in life. I like the idea that Ken has that now. Even though I may bitch about things he does (or more specifically, doesn’t do), none of that ultimately matters. I love him, which means he is mine to defend to the death.

I don’t say this to be romantic or silly. Do not fuck with my family. I will not stand for it.

Ok, on to happier things.

The boys got to go sledding. That was pretty freaking awesome to watch. I was surprised at how not nervous I was about them barreling down an icy hill into trees. I have to admit, I wasn’t even too freaked out when Bobby came sprinting up to the house telling us that Dax had crashed and was screaming. Turned out, he was fine. He had sadly smashed into a tree and hit his tenders. Yeah, that happened. Poor kid was down for the count for a couple hours with that injury. Thankfully, he went sledding once he was better. Way to get back on the horse, kid!

He and Ken rode the sled down the hill and didn’t come back for a while. Bobby asked me to come with him to go check on them. We followed the sled trail for some time, until it came to an end, with no foot prints showing they came back up. Odd. They were just gone!

I wasn’t worried. I was more amused than anything. Bobby took this as a perfect excuse for he and I to go on an adventure. We hiked through the woods, staying off of the roads and trails. We found untouched snow which was truly beautiful. We followed deer tracks for a bit. Bobby attempted to make a snow angel, but icy snow isn’t exactly designed for that. We wandered the property and had a lot of fun. At one point, our journey led us to a decision. We could go back the way we came on this one road and go up the real driveway to the house, or climb the side of the hill. Yeah, Bobby chose climbing.

It wasn’t easy.

It was icy snow, and lots of tree branches not strong enough to use as leverage. It took a good 15 minutes to climb it. That being said, it was freaking awesome. We made it and were quite proud of ourselves.

We got back to the house and found out Ken and Dax had been picked up via car at the bottom of the hill. LOL! I had at least sent Ken a text at one point during our hike to let him know where we were. Of course, this was after I posted a photo of Bobby and I to Facebook that he saw. Poor Dax was quite worried about me, and yelled at me, telling me next time to come straight home.

The next day, we took another adventure hike, this time with Andy, Dax, Ken and Luna with us. Lots of freaking fun wandering the various nooks and crannies of the property. Bobby had an elaborate tail, describing fallen trees as trees of wisdom and indicating other debris was evil and poison. We were on some kind of Hobbit storyline in which Bobby indicated we were fighting Satan’s friend. Dude, that kid is full of awesome imagination. YAY!!!

Later on, we went down to Sacramento to go and see Peter Pan with Cathy Rigby as the title character. She is 60, but still rockin it. Granted, the show was all kinds of creepy and wrong and dark, but it was fun. I loved that Wendy’s mom was played by the actress that played Cinderella in the production of Into the Woods I love so much. I love that Captain Hook reminded me so much of NPH. He was fun. And the costumes for the crocodile and Nana were so awesome! Thankfully, the boys enjoyed it quite a bit. I was worried, this being their first live production. The show was clearly all ages friendly, so they liked it.

Ken and I spent much of New Year’s Even watching a season of Cougar Town, which was super happy making. I also have decided that the only appropriate countdown coverage is Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin. Holy fuck, they rock.

I know I am missing things that happened and that I am distracted now, so I will end today’s post. I have to admit, I sit here and wonder if Sandy or Chris will end up reading this and that it will result in some kind of issue. I still maintain that Chris is pretty much dead to me. I know, technically he was defending his sister somehow and blah blah blah. Well you know what? I am defending my husband now, and he has a lot of work to prove to me he is worth anything other than a pile of shit. As for Sandy, like I said, I am sad she has had so many things happen in her life. I think sadly they have tainted her views in lots of ways and although I understand why Ken is an easy scapegoat for some of it, I think she needs to still work through many things. I think she would probably agree with me on that since some of her trauma can take a lifetime to come to terms with. I wish she could understand what all of this has done. It has not made me mistrust Ken. It has made me mistrust her family. They have withheld things and have held grudges which have become incredibly toxic. In her email to the accuser, I saw a line that indicated this would be all good information for me to do something to Ken. I don’t know it that meant I would somehow be mad or that I would make him “pay” or what, but what she may have not understood was that it made me closer to him. I watched him go through a lot of pain. Maybe some people would have cut and run. I don’t feel that way at all.