I usually try to keep my real life completely separate from my online life.  My daughter did not ask me to share this (though she has approved it), but I love this recording so much that I wanted to see if I could help her to reach a bigger audience (as I’ve stated before, this blog sometimes reaches an audience of  dozens!)  So if you happen to be a record producer or if you just happen to KNOW any record producers– feel free to share this clip!    HA!  Seriously, please indulge this mother bragging on her talented offspring.  Please also note that mean comments will be deleted–as they SHOULD be.  If you want to be nasty, go be nasty to someone famous and thick-skinned, not to my baby on her momma’s blog.  Do not MAKE me cut a bitch.  ‘Kay?

On that note, introducing  Ms. Rainy Blue!

If you want to hear more, please feel free to visit her public facebook page Rainy Day Blues.

Thank you for your indulgence.  Now back to your regularly scheduled program…

Ann Romney was being interviewed.  She was talking about how Mitt was, last year, considering not running for president this year.  They were having a serious talk about it as a couple, you know, weighing the pros and the cons.  And then she said that she said to him, AND I QUOTE, “But Mitt, can you save America?” and he said “Yes.  Yes I can.”  And so it was decided.  And so it shall be.

Can you IMAGINE the ego, the …hubris, the unmitigated GALL  it takes for someone to think that they, and they alone can save America? That they are soooo smart and soooo wise and sooooo important that if they don’t step in, why, we’ll all just be lost.  Thank goodness for Mitt.  And I mean that sincerely.   Thank goodness he answered that call.

I would not be surprised if during the next debate he suddenly rips open his suit and he’s wearing a superhero outfit underneath.  He’ll fly away singing, “Here I come to save the day!”  These people are so out of touch they might as well be from a different planet.

Be afraid, America.  Be very afraid.  For Mitt is coming.  He’s out there.  …Lurking…   …And he wants to be our latex salesman.

This year has been a good one for our family.  My husband went into remission and has stayed there.  My son Sawyer has gotten 100% better now that he’s got the right meds and he’s coming into the downward side of puberty.  My daughter Clem left for college.  I miss her very much but she is having a ball and getting good grades and generally being a great kid so I cannot complain.  The other kids are doing well in their areas as well.  I have nothing to complain about.

…Well, except for the Republicans, but hey, what can you do?  They’re always gonna be there.

I have wanted to post so many times this year, but something always held me back.  When you blog it feels like you are keeping a journal, but it’s not.  It’s a diary read by others, and not always the others you’d choose to share your thoughts and opinions with.  I love to write, but I have no desire to be a mommy blogger.  I have nothing against mommy bloggers–I read a slew of mommy blogs and like them.  But it’s just not me.  I don’t want to share my kids names or pictures.  So that’s out.  I could blog about cartooning, except I’ve kind of given that up for Lent.  So that’s out as well.  I could blog about politics because I LOVE me some politics, and maybe I will someday.  But that day is not today.  Today, I can think of nothing that I am willing to share that would possibly keep anyone interested, so I am shutting this blog down.

Maybe not forever–who knows.  But my plan is to start the new year fresh.  I really felt like I needed to get this batch of cartoons done today–before the new year.  I felt like God was clearly telling me to give Clear Blue Water up.  It’s time had passed.  Stop dragging it out and be done with it.  He has something fresh and new for me in the new year.  And I am all about fresh and new right now!

I only regret that I won’t be cartooning during the election.  I adored doing it during the last two.  It was my favorite time as a cartoonist.

I have thought of some stuff to share!

1.  I fear the Republicans might win the next election.  Well, that’s not true.  I think President Obama will probably win, as he SHOULD, but what if the unthinkable happens and Newt or one of the other chickenheads the Republicans are running suddenly becomes president?  Dear God, help us.  Romney is the best of that bunch and that is sad.  SAD.  But they don’t seem to like him that much–they seem attracted to the crazy.  I can understand that, there is a certain allure to the crazy, as I can attest, but I don’t think we want “the crazy” in a President.  Huh?  At least I don’t.

2.  If you pray (and I hope you do) please pray for Joshua.  He is five years old and he is dying.  Long ago I was friendly with his mama and his family–If you’ve read my blog at all then you know who I am talking about.  The whole family is going through some tough times right now, and they could use your prayers.

And 3.  Last but not least, I read an article that said that if you make 2.5 million dollars and invest it correctly, then you can live on the interest forever (at just over $100,000 a year) and not touch the principal.  I have no idea if this is true, but I have latched onto it.  So my new years resolution is to make 5 million dollars by June.  Heck, the tax man will want his share, and I always WAS an overachiever…

Now.  How to do it, how to do it… Hmmmm….

Cheers to you, my friends.  May we all be 5 million dollars richer at the end of 2012!!!!

This has been draining though, and now I really need to go rejoin my family.

Before the day ends, I will put up my last blog post.  I can’t say it will be the absolute last one for sure, but it feels like it.  I have come to really cherish my privacy, and a public blog does not help with privacy issues!  I wish my last blog post could be profound, but it probably won’t be.  I wish my last cartoons were the best I’ve ever done, but they aren’t.  I quite like some of them and others, not so much.  Luckily, I KNOW the one’s I hate will be the ones others like, and vice versa.  If things keep going like they usually do.

…More later tonight.  Happy 2012!!!

This next one is also terribly hilarious in a completely different way.  And again, no one I have shown this to thinks it is half as funny as I do.  I am sensing a theme here…  Now I don’t think it’s funny because of what it shows (babies should not be allowed to drink), but because of what it represents (figure that out, ha!)

And now for something good.  Not horrible or weird, just something by one of my favorite people on the net, Beth Moore.  It is hilarious and then it always makes me cry in the end.   Wonderful.

Have a good Sunday.  Enjoy!

When he was about four things got so bad he had to be medicated.  That medication was an anti-psychotic made for people with schizophrenia.  It was not made for four year old autistic kids, BUT, Sawyer was being violent with his baby sibling, and we couldn’t allow him to keep harming our other child, and we were worried that he might actually kill the baby on accident.  So we started the medication and Sawyer calmed down.  But, it gave him a flat effect.  What I mean is, Sawyer was no longer ever happy.  He was either blank, or he was drugged out or he was enraged.  Gone was our happy child.  Nothing seemed to give him joy anymore.  He still liked music but not in the same way that he had.  It was heartbreaking.  We spent the next several years going from doctor to doctor, seeing different neurologists, etc and trying to get another medication perscribed.

Here is what happened. No one would take him off this medication.  Instead they added other meds on top of this.  Some of these were horrible.  One made him have a psychotic break and he had to be hospitalized.  In desperation, we took him off of all meds for a short time.  Things got terrible quickly and so we reluctantly put him back on them.  It was not a good situation and the side effect of this med were doing terrible things to Sawyer.  Things that could become permanent.

About three years ago I felt that God was prompting us to start again with his meds.  I felt like we were supposed to take him off of all meds for a good amount of time (to let all of them leave his system).  Maybe we would find out that he would not need any meds anymore (I really hoped this would be the case), or maybe it would just give him a good clean start to see what different meds would do to help him.  So, with our doctor’s reluctant approval, we weaned him off of all drugs.

…And all hell broke loose.  Literally.  It was a TERRIBLE year.  Terrible.  Yes, I said a YEAR.  We were in it for the long haul and so we let him go a year with no meds to give him a complete break.  He was SO difficult.  SO violent.  He didn’t sleep or want to eat anymore.  But…. he was also happy.  His joy came back, and this, we decided, was not something we were willing to lose again.  After a year, when it became really clear to us that all meds were clear of his system and he was NOT going to come around to being easy and placid, we began looking for a good psychiatrist.  Sawyer had seen a BAD psychiatrist but we wanted someone who knew what he was doing with the whole drug thing.  We got some recommendations and found someone.

Our first appt. was quite short.  Only about 15 minutes.  The dr. met Sawyer, talked to us, took a quick history, asked us what we hoped to happen and perscribed some meds.  He listened when we said we did not want anything that would give Sawyer a flat effect.  We were not interested in them no matter how great the drugs  were supposed to be.  We wanted Sawyer to be able to feel and experience emotions other than anger and blankness.  The dr. ended up perscribing a completely different class of meds than we had ever tried before and the difference was remarkable.  But not quite right.  Sawyer was a little lethargic.  He wasn’t sleeping soundly.  He would get violent at certain times of the day.  We went back every week for a while and the dr. would tweak this med a bit or that one.  Tell us to try giving them at different times of the day, etc.  There is one class of drug that we have found that Sawyer absolutely cannot tolerate (even though they usually work great for kids with his problems) but we’ve found other’s that work for him.  Soon we tapered our appts. to every two weeks then once a month, and that is where we have stayed.  Our appts. now are only a few minutes long.  Sawyer’s meds have been pretty stable for over a year and he is doing so great.

He is a different child.  He still has bad OCD but he is much calmer.  He talks more.  He has more patience.  His tantrums are not even in the same ballpark as where they were before.  Our lives have gotten exponentially easier and I am so glad we did this.

I am not going to tell you what meds made him crazy or what meds work for him now.  They are different for each child and that is the point.  But I do want to offer hope.  If you are going through something similar, you might try seeking out an experienced psychiatrist.  If you find someone who knows what they are doing, who will listen to your concerns… it can make all the difference in the world.

I used to be afraid to admit that Sawyer was doing good.  I was afraid it would be all taken away.  I was afraid the fates would see me bragging and smack me down.  And Sawyer DID seem to go downhill just about every time we said things had stabalized.  But God convicted me that I needed to tell people when Sawyer was doing well.  I needed to enjoy it for the gift from HIM that it was, and so I am.  I do.

I know that if things start to go downhill again, we now have a good doctor who will listen to us in place.  He is willing to try different drugs, he knows how they interact with each other, he knows side effects and he listens to our concerns and tweaks things accordingly.  And I know that we will get things under control again quickly.

Life is good right now.  I am blessed.  Sawyer is still disabled but …manageable.  I write this post not to brag but to perhaps give someone who is still struggling some hope.  This is what has worked for us.

WHEW.  I really had no idea what a busy year senior year is.  I don’t remember my own being anything like this, but then, I didn’t live in Mayberry and Clem does.

In the end, she came away with enough scholarships and grants to fully fund her first year of college!  (It should fully fund all four years, but we are taking this one year at a time, and we will apply for more scholarships next year just in case…).  No debt, no student loans and no rich parents to pay for it.  Just good old fashioned hard work.  It IS possible.  It’s not easy, but it is possible.

Way to go Clem!  You dun yer momma proud!

ZUMBA?!!!!!  said in a near scream.  This is followed by an evil grin and I can see them imagining me doing it.  YOU do Zumba?  The Brazilian dance craze sweeping the nation?

This I find irritating.  For, you see, I am fairly dancy, but I do like to keep this part of my personality on the down low so as to not cause jealousy in the masses.  I will have you know that I own Hip Hop abs, and I have done them a few times so I am perfectly ready to throw down some moves on the dance floor.  If, you know, I had that sort of life.

Secondly, then they ask all about Zumba and forget to give me sympathy for my back pain.  How do you like it?  Is it a fun workout?  Is it easy?  Yeah, but what about ME and my BACK????

So I went to the Dr.  and she said I had a pinched nerve.  I told her I’d need at least a morphine pump or maybe some of those drugs that Elvis was on, or maybe even a wee bit of the crack, but she told me Tylenol and a heating pad would be fine and that I should feel loads better very soon.  And she was right.  Today I woke up back to normal.  Oh, and she also told me I could continue to do Zumba, but to be careful as I’m over forty now.

Weeps.

In other news, today was the last Oprah Winfrey show.  I meant to watch but I missed it.  I will try to catch it on youtube sometime.  It led the news.  “Today, Oprah Winfrey wrapped up her beloved show…” and my husband says, before I can say a word “Did they roll her out on a cross?  Because that’s the only fitting end.”

And I lost it.

What a great cartoon that would have made, if, of course, I hadn’t just shared it here on my blog.  My husband is the funniest person I know.  He has exactly my sense of humor (except mine’s not as vulgar) and this is rare.

‘S why I married him.  Why we’ve been together so long.  For the road to happiness is paved with Oprah jokes.

Now, see, I do believe that what the Bible says is gonna happen is eventually going to happen.  Jesus is coming back.  Their will be a judgment day, of that I am certain.  Only, because I DO believe what the Bible says, I also believe it when Jesus says that nobody knows when this will happen.  He goes on to say that even He, Jesus Himself doesn’t know the exact date and time.  Only God knows.  So if God hasn’t told Jesus, His beloved SON when this is all going down, what makes this preacher and all these folks think that THEY have figured it out?

On the one hand, I admire their faith and their commitment to the cause.    On the other, I am amazed at their sheer …hubris.  Pride goeth before a fall, and these folks are in for one heck of a huge fall.  This preacher has been wrong before.  He first predicted the end of the world in 1994, but now he admits he did the math wrong, but he’s certain he’s computed everything correctly this time around.  Whew.  SO glad.

I don’t want to think about the ridicule these folks will face when Sunday, May 22, 2011 comes around and we are all still here.  But now they are homeless and moneyless and jobless and humiliated and angry and they feel stupid and duped and…  I just really feel for them.  I don’t like to think about the constant mocking they will face and I hope people will have compassion for them.

I had a series of toons ready to go for tomorrow, but then I felt bad about it, so I scrapped them.  Tomorrow (or actually, if you are reading this after midnight, TODAY) is going to be hard enough on them without me adding to it.  (I’m such a hypocrite because I am totally not dropping this blog post.  I ain’t THAT nice…  So there!)

So.  My position on the end of the world?  I know it will happen eventually.  Jesus IS going to come back.  It might be soon (the signs are here), but I don’t know if that means it will happen in my lifetime or not.  I welcome it, if it does.  I know that I am saved.  And if it doesn’t, that’s cool too.  After all, this is God’s perfect plan, not Karen’s.

On a serious note, I hate hearing about all the people who think it will be one big party for the folks who are not saved once the pesky Christians leave.  Believe me when I tell you, it won’t be.  One day we will ALL bend our knee to God (willingly or not) and face His righteous judgment.   You don’t have to believe in Him or to love Him to one day be judged by Him.  One day you will absolutely know that He is who He said He is.  Please don’t let that recognition happen too late for it to matter.

Read Revelation.  That’s some scary stuff right there.  The Bible says that the ONLY way to the Father is through Jesus.  You cannot get there on good works.  It doesn’t matter if you are nice.  It only matters if  you know and believe that Jesus Christ is the son of the almighty God, that he died for your sins on the cross, and that he rose again three days later.  Repent, turn away from your sin and follow Christ.

If, against all odds, the world were to end tomorrow, I know that I am saved.  I know that I am going to spend eternity in heaven with Jesus.  If you aren’t sure where you’ll spend eternity, then repent of  your sin and ask Jesus into your life.  You will be glad you did.

I realize that this post will not make me popular.  I will probably face some ridicule myself.  I bet you didn’t know I was such a Fundamentalist, huh?  Eh, I might go to a Southern Baptist church, but I’m still a democrat.  Still for gay rights and women’s rights.  Still the same flawed person I’ve always been.  Only now, I’m a little bit more as well.

Karen Montague-Reyes.  Wife.  Mother. Writer.  Cartoonist.   …and proud Jesus freak.

I have always maintained that I am not like this.  That I am a planner.  A plotter.  But, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that I really am not.  I seem to have inherited at least a taste of my mother’s impulsivity.  I met my husband and knew I wanted to marry him within weeks.  We bought the first house we looked at.  Our first child was a “What the heck, why not?”  decision.  All of these have worked out quite well for us, but I could name dozens of impulsive decisions that have not worked out for us.  Impulsivity is not necessarily a good trait even if it is an interesting one.

I can just hear y’all thinking (yes I did just use y’all.  I was born and raised in the South, thank you very much!) where is she going with this?  Well, I DO have a point.  Last week when I announced my retirement, I had vaguely decided that I was probably going to have to retire because of family commitments, but when I wrote that post on bin Laden, I just decided there and then to retire.  I told no one beforehand (not even my husband or kids) I just did it and didn’t think about it.  And then I got a bunch of emails and calls from friends and family members who were just a TAD put out that I hadn’t told them first.

Frankly, I was amazed.  First of all, I had no idea these people were even keeping up with CBW anymore or paying any attention whatsoever to what I do or say online.  (Note to self, be more careful here!)  Second of all, it made me realize that this is probably a decision that most people would have taken just a bit more seriously.  Eh, live and learn.

Now that I’ve had a bit to get used to it, I am more convinced than ever that it was the right decision for us.  I had been planning on just posting the last few cartoons I had done and calling it good, but THEN I got to thinking… (cue scary music).  Wouldn’t it be better to actually post one last cartoon from all the major characters?  Wouldn’t it be better to write one cartoon specifically for Manny and Eve to end on?  One that said all I ever wanted to say?  (Don’t hold your breath here, I just ain’t that deep, folks!)

So be it.  So shall it be.

Clear Blue Water was supposed to end last week, and it IS ending, oh yes indeedy it is.  But it might take a few weeks for me to decide she’s good and done.  Every few days I will post a cartoon or two or three until one day it will say THE END, and then you will know (if you choose to follow along just a little while longer) that we are done.  The blog?  As I’ve said, I’ll keep it going for awhile or longer.  And when I finally announce what I am currently hard at work on, I hope a few of you will be interested.