My Grandfather and the UFO

During the summer of 1996, I was watching coverage on the Centennial Olympic Park bombing. Once all the networks continued to show the same footage over and over I started flipping channels. Suddenly, my sweet grandfather's face appeared and filled the entire screen of my television set. He was speaking with an interviewer about the UFO crash in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. I promptly picked up the phone and called my mom demanding to know why I had not been informed that Granddad was going to be on TV. I envisioned her "shooing" me away as she said that the interview had been filmed "forever-and-an-age-ago", and they had no idea when it was going to be aired. "Is it on there, dear?" DUH!

My grandfather was Jud Roberts. He ran the main radio station in town in Roswell, NM in 1947. He later appeared on Unsolved Mysteries with Robert Stack, was interviewed by Larry King, had a character portray him on an HBO special, and he was quoted in numerous books and Discover Channel specials regarding his involvement in the infamous 1947 UFO Crash and the cover-up that ensued.

My family has had this claim to fame as long as I can remember. I've had friends tease me that they knew something was "strange" about me referring to my "alien" ancestors once they find out about my CONNECTIONS. I have more t-shirts with aliens on them than the average trekkie, but most of mine say "Roberts Family Reunion" somewhere on them. I've mailed out Christmas cards with paper mache aliens standing in for missing family members in the photographs.

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE reigns in the UFO community. It is more than a mantra or a creed. It implies that someone, somewhere isn't telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But here is what I know to be the truth from my granddad in a nutshell.

One of Granddad's reporters interviewed the rancher Mac Brasel (not sure of the spelling) late into the night after he had reported the miles of debris he discovered on his property several miles out of town in July 1947. Mac had taken his discovery to the local Air Force Base and they initially published a story in the local paper that a "Flying Saucer" had crashed. Within hours, that story was recanted and some General (?) was pictured next to a little pile of crap that they now claimed was from a weather balloon. (uh huh.)

Granddad was at work preparing to air the most important interview of his career. He received a phone call from someone claiming to be from the Pentagon "urging" him to NOT air the recording. When he refused, quoting Freedom of the Press, Free Speech and all that, he was "ordered" to pull the interview or have his FCC license pulled. Granddad told so-and-so that he couldn't do that, and so-and-so replied that he was with the "g*$ d%@! Pentagon" and "we can do whatever we want". INTERESTING....huh?

So, my grandfather pulled the plug. Years later, the original recording from the interview along with all the written transcripts were lost in a mysterious fire at the building that housed the records. No, Granddad never listened to the interview in its entirety. No, he does not know anything more about it. No, he never received another phone call from the Pentagon or anyone else in any type of government position (military or otherwise). No, he never SAW anything.

He DID however, attempt to view the debris field shortly after it was reported to the Base, but was denied admittance to the property. He recalled a long section of ranch road being blocked off and lots of armed military personnel manning the barricade. He passed multiple trucks loaded with men and equipment coming in and out of the area. MORE INTERESTING, huh?

Did he believe it? Did he believe that a UFO had crashed in Roswell, New Mexico? Did he believe that there had been a cover-up? I asked him once in an interview of my own. I video-taped him telling stories of his life and talking about his accomplishments as an heirloom to pass down to my children and eventually their children. And I could not resist the temptation to just ask...

You know what he said? That he didn't know. The people who did know were mostly already gone. Many of the unclassified records were also gone. But he made two points. One, if there had been no cover up, or rather, nothing TO cover up, then why all the secrecy, the threats, the complete media blockout? And two, who are we as mere humans to presume that we are the only ones?

This man loved God his whole life, was married to the same woman for nearly 65 years, had 14 great-grandchildren at the time of his death, and left his footprints on the hearts of everyone he knew. To this day he remains the most profoundly intelligent person I've ever had the privilege to know, love and call my family.

I believe.

Delivering #2

When my oldest daughter was 9 months old, I went back to school at Georgia Tech. Not that I really wanted to...my father had chosen my school AND my major, then told me I had to pay for it myself. At this point I had too many hours to change schools, so I decided to knock out the last 9 classes and be finished with the whole mess.

I went back and filled out all kinds of financial aid forms. Turns out, you're eligible for more cashola if you have a dependent. Who knew? I got a couple of small grants and began to accumulate a big fat student loan that I would be paying off until long after I was dead. I ended up graduating from Georgia Tech with a degree in Management. My husband graduated from Georgia State the same quarter and in celebration we renewed our wedding vows in front of our family and friends (we had eloped the first time).

We put a contract on a small house WAYYYY out in the boonies and moved in with my mom while it was being built. Then guess what? We found out we were pregnant! I'm SURE the ink was not yet dry on my diploma. I know for sure that I had not had it framed. No corporate job for me anytime soon.

Miraculously, the pregnancy was perfect. I had decided to be proactive this time, so I had a written birth plan, told my new doctor that I did NOT want an episiotomy, and banned my husband from alcoholic beverages 3 weeks before my due date. I was completely optimistic about how this birth experience was going to go.

On my due date, I went to the hospital. They broke my water, contractions started and we were on our way. Shortly after my sister-in-law Sydney arrived from North Carolina, I went to the bathroom and was LITERALLY brought me to my knees by a contraction. I burst into tears and SLOWLY crawled (eewwww) on the floor back to my bed. Scott and Sydney kept telling me it was ok...you can get back into bed now...you're doing great. What? Were they even in the same room as me? Couldn't they see I needed drugs? I could NOT get back into bed...not without drugs!

I reluctantly agreed to try to get back into bed if they would tell the nurse I wanted my epidural right NOW please. (She had asked me earlier if I wanted something for pain, but we had collectively agreed I should wait as long as I could to avoid my contractions petering out like last time.) I dragged myself back into bed, and they told me the epidural was on its way. Just knowing that sweet pain killer was minutes away from my veins brought me some relief. I was able to breathe through contractions effectively and rest in between. At some point I asked where the anesthesiologist was, and Sydney explained that he was on his way, but there was one patient before me. So I waited some more. Thirty minutes later, no drugs, no nurse. Sydney went out to inquire about my drugs. The drug doc had been caught in traffic but was with the other patient now, so I was next. More breathing, more intense pain, more breathing, etc. The nurse came in and I blasted her, "WHERE ARE MY DRUGS???" She looked at my sister-in-law and said "on the way". I'd heard that one before. FINALLY the doctor showed up with a needle and afterward they checked me... I was at 6 centimeters. WOW! I had only been at 1 centimeter last time they checked.

It was now more than 3 hours after my meltdown on the floor. My new L/D nurse suggested that Scott and Sydney go eat something since we still had a ways to go. The new nurse from Jamaica had a beautiful accent and she sat with me. I could have listened to her talk for hours on end. But suddenly, my BUTT started to kill. I felt like I slid down an ice mountain on my tailbone. Pat told me I must be imagining things because, well, "you COULDN'T be feeling anything...you have an epidural". She insisted that there was NO way I was ready to push. I talked her into checking me anyway, and she flipped out. "UH OH! You're 10! It's time to push!" (Yeah, no kidding, I told you...)

Stuff suddenly started happening... a flurry of activity... equipment came in... nurses came in... my feet were put in stirrups... lights came on... more staff people showed up... and somewhere in there my little sister showed up. She's a little squeamish by the way. She did not come anywhere near the labor OR delivery room the first time, and she has been known to get woozy during her own pap smears.

"Hey! Where's the husband?" somebody asked. Umm, you guys sent him to dinner...HEL-LO!
I had now had the aching-butt-issue for a LONG time. At least a half hour. Finally all interested parties showed up. Everybody got clean, Sydney grabbed the camera, and I REMINDED the doctor-NO EPISIOTOMY. We were now prepared to push. My little sister was by my head NOT looking down and "being very brave" for the camera. I pushed through 2 contractions and my sister said, "Ooooh, I'm not feeling so well." Milli-seconds before she hit the floor, Pat grabbed a chair and put her in it. "Can someone go get her a towel?" MY HUSBAND left my side to rush to the bathroom for a wet rag for my SISTER'S neck. I looked over and there was my beautiful single sister slumped over with her long glorious yellow hair tumbling onto the floor with my husband soothing her with a wet rag. Meanwhile I sort of half-sat/half-laid at an absurd angle with my legs up at MY neck, not-so-patiently waiting to GET THIS BABY OUT!

We resumed pushing minus one sister and moments later my precious little chubby red adorable baby was born. She was a complete doll...with the fattest cheeks I'd ever seen. She was my biggest, weighing in at 8 pounds 8 ounces. Perfect in every way. I got to hold her from the first moment. She was lying on my stomach and I thought she looked just like her sister. However, they only looked similar because they had just been born and were puffy and pink in all the same places, both with heads full of dark hair on warped smushed up heads. To this day, they are polar opposites of each other...one is a brunette with big waves of curl thoughout her huge head of hair; the other one has dirty-blond stick-straight hair like her mom. Bless her heart.

Looking at the video from that day MUCH later there was a little drama that I had missed in all the excitement. First, the video from my previous delivery was shot from the side at a 90 degree angle. You "saw" nothing except the side of my thigh and the baby as she came out. This time, because of the location of the plug (of course our battery had died), there was no modest side-view. This was a full-on frontal shot of the whole thing, literally. Interesting from a mother's perspective, but not as "edited" as say... "A Baby Story" on The Learning Channel.

Also my sister-in-law captured a moment where the doc's hand lingered on the large tray of scalpels to his right as the baby was coming down. He looked at me (ya know, all of me) and looked at the tray, back at me, back at the tray. In the end, he respected my opinion and DID NOT perform the episiotomy. Good for him.

Another thing of note...my sister-in-law shouted from the moment the baby's head was out, "Ooooh...she is chubby! She's a moose! SHE! IS! A! MOOSE!" Not necessarily a bad thing, but I had intended to edit it out before Caroline ever heard it and was scarred for life, plagued with low self esteem and concerned about her weight. Of course, I never did. A few years ago, she asked to see it on her birthday and didn't react at all to Sydney's declaration. However, she IS a little stout (she's got her mother's girlish figure), but her self esteem has not suffered one bit. Of all my children, this one LOVES HERSELF the most. At 12, she thinks she's "pretty, funny, smart, and athletic", and she pretty much thinks any guy who doesn't like her must be brain-dead. Good for her.

Lastly, the most fascinating part of this story came out months later. Turns out Scott and Sydney LIED to me about the anesthiologist! There was no traffic...no "other" patient. The nurse had told Sydney that she couldn't go in the room and lie to me about the anesthesiologist so Sydney said, "Well then don't go in. I'll lie to her." In the end, it was the right thing because it allowed me to progress a significant amount, but geesh! what a bunch of losers! I was SHOCKED! Is that an example of doing something bad for the greater good??? Good for me, I guess?

Why is MY life "unbelievable"?

I'm relatively new to the blog world, and having read a few (ok...I'm addicted!), I'm beginning to think that my life may not be so "unbelievable", but it is still note-worthy, entertaining and sometimes quite strange. Here's a brief list of odd facts:

1) I have 5 children...not so odd you say? Three from my first marriage (to Scott), a Phi Sigma Kappa I met at Georgia Tech in Spring 1987, and two from my second marriage (to Matt), a Phi Sigma Kappa I met at Georgia Tech in Spring 1987. (Still not enough?)
2) The last two children were conceived with a man with no living sperm (allegedly, and no, there was not any funny business with the milk man or UPS guy...but thanks, I've heard all the ones about "what can BROWN do for you?" wink, wink.)
3) I was adopted as an infant. When I was a 30-year-old-single-mother-of-three, my birth mother tracked me down and promptly moved here from another state to get to know me. (There's enough in this story for an entire blog.)
4) My grandfather played a role in the UFO cover-up in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947.
5) I've often said that I could be on 9 out of 10 Oprah Winfrey shows. Occassionally, raising teenagers makes me think that I could end up on Jerry Springer one day... they'll tell me I'm there for a makeover.
6) While my husband would LOVE to run the Amazing Race, and he'd make it to the jury on Survivor, I'VE actually considered filling out paperwork for Extreme Makeover. My only problem is well.... childcare for that 6 weeks... hmmmm.
7) At 35, I shaved my head completely bald (or rather, my children cut off my ponytails and my husband took a razor to my scalp) the same week my aunt began chemotherapy for stage IV breast cancer.
8) My father (the adoptive one who raised me for 25 years) is still thinking about whether or not I have his permission to marry my first husband. I am still waiting for his phone call to have the lunch he promised right after he divorced my mom in 1992. He's so anxious to have this lunch that he changed his name to the last name of his girlfriend, got an unlisted AND unpublished phone number, and simply vanished.
9) I have 5 half siblings who refuse to acknowledge my existence. I have one half sibling who is a delight and makes my heart warm every time I talk to him.
10) One of my most cherished possessions is a goat-skin tambourine that some villagers in Jamaica made for me when I was there on a mission trip in 1987.
11) My favorite thing about having five children is that I can look into their eyes and see who I am, where I came from, where I'm going. I can also see the depth of love I've had for two very different men. As I hold their gazes across the dinner table or a crowded room, I have no regrets about my life up to this point, only tremendous hope for their futures.

Delivering #1

My senior year of college at Georgia Tech, I had my first child. I went to classes up to my 8th month, and appreciated the attention my pregnancy afforded me including flexibility from my professors, a handicapped sticker for parking closer to buildings, and the endless stares from other undergraduate students. I was proud of my bulging belly, and I felt wonderful about the baby I was carrying. It had been a perfect pregnancy. The rest...not so perfect.

Following exams Spring quarter, my blood pressure went up, and I spent the next 6 weeks on bedrest. It was a hot summer and my husband of almost 2 years went to school during the day and worked at night. We were poor and living on love (we were still newlyweds, what do you expect?)

My brother and his family came into town to meet the new baby...who was now 2 days past her due date. Miraculously, my blood pressure had returned to normal and I was allowed to leave my bed. I returned to the family home to see my siblings and wait for the baby to come.

Did I mention patience is not one of MY virtues? I had heard that drinking castor oil was one method of inducing labor. I had tried all the other old wives tales including eating spicy food, walking continuously, nipple twiddling and even repeated intercourse with my husband which is not fun at 9 mos. pregnant. After downing the entire 2 ounce bottle of castor oil mixed with pineapple juice to disguise the taste and texture, we all went out for a family dinner. Part way through dinner, I had to excuse myself as I was having some stomach cramping (duh!) We made it back to the house, and I was quite frustrated that "nothing" was happening besides a wicked case of diahrea.

However, my sister-in-law and I decided that this baby was coming tonight one way or another, so we started walking up and down my mom's street. Each time we passed by the house, my brother graciously refilled my husband's vodka/tonic glass. About 11:00pm, we left to go to our own apartment a few minutes away with my loving spouse yelling "I can't get no satisfaction" along with Mick Jagger while hanging his head outside the window the whole way. He promptly passed out in our bed.

At 4:00 in the morning, I woke up with a lightning bolt contraction. Knowing my husband (we'll call him Scott) had had a rough night, I got up and walked the hall eating popsicles and watching the clock. After the contractions had been coming every 5 minutes for another hour, I called the doctor who said to come to the hospital. I woke Scott and sent him to the bathroom for a shower and some sobering up. From my bed, I could hear him going to the bathroom while I breathed through a contraction. Suddenly, I heard a loud crash. When I gently leaned out of bed and glanced into the small bathroom, I could only see his feet dangling over the side of the bathtub and the shower curtain pulled down around him. This man passed out while pissing! Is that even possible?

After a shower and some coffee we headed BACK to my mom's to drop off the dog (figuring we wouldn't be home for a couple of days). As we pull on to her street, my husband tosses the dog across the car at me with his half empty coffee cup, throws open the door and pukes his guts out for about 5 minutes. (Two years later the stain was still there...YIKES!...what is IN that stuff?) Did I mention that the contractions were about 2 minutes apart now?

We finally arrive at the hospital and get admitted. My mom has followed us over and is SINGING to my stomach some made-up song that about drove me over the edge. Scott has passed out (again) literally on the small couch in my labor room. I can't take it anymore, and I send mom home for some REAL help...my sister-in-law who has already been through this twice several years before me. Thank God. She arrives as I get my epidural and suddenly my whole labor STOPS. It's a nightmare.

On top of that, my nurse is evil. She is the size of a house and smells like bandaids. She doesn't even pretend to be nice to me. Here I am, a first-time-mom, scared out of my wits, and she's abrupt, telling me to stop BEING a baby since I'm about to HAVE a baby... my husband is totally out of it, my estranged father has shown up (even though I had previously told him not to) just to piss off my mom from whom he is separated. Drama, drama, drama, bicker, bicker, bicker, I pass gas right in his face accidentally (I think) since my epidural is working wonders on the lower half of my body.

They finally start a pitocin drip, and I progress to 10 centimeters (eventually) and start pushing nearly 16 hours after my first major contraction. After 3 hours of pushing, the doctors start talking c-section. I FREAK OUT! What's wrong? Why? No, please, no. Nurse Bandaid steps up and says, "Let's try something first." Like what? Turns out the baby is coming out sunny side up (instead of face down) and she's stuck in the birth canal. I wasn't sure, but that did NOT sound good to me. Nurse Bandaid says that I need to be flipped on my side to give gravity the opportunity to turn the baby into the correct position. I thought she was crazy...even crazier when I realized that I could not "help" with this in anyway. My legs and lower back were completely paralyzed. Some aide, who I suspect from his gigantic biceps was usually called in to move piano-sized dead bodies, had to literally roll me over THEN hold my ENORMOUS leg in the air for about 10 minutes WHILE I pushed through 2 contractions. I'm panic-stricken, breathing oxygen, and trust me, I take back what I said about Nurse Bandaid's size. At this moment I realized that I probably had at least 100 pounds on her and it was all in this one leg.

OK, I forgot to say earlier that I wanted all of this captured on video for all eternity. I had been adopted as an infant, and therefore had no photos of myself before adoption day at 8 weeks. My somewhat modest husband was not as excited about my video project and personally believed that our baby had nothing to gain by seeing her own birth years later. Being the more stubborn personality, I won. So, while all this is going on, my sister-in-law is rolling film.

Suddenly Baby miraculously turned (just like Bandaid predicted). She's born moments later with the cord wrapped around her neck and all blue and yucky. In the video, I'm sobbing and weeping and saying "Thank God, Thank God!" while my sister-in-law is shouting "Oh, oh, she's beautiful, she's beautiful..." When I watched this later, I thought she had been VERY generous. The baby looked scary to me... all blue and swollen and her head...my gosh! She'd been in the birth canal so long, she looked like a little blue cone-headed alien!

She quickly pinked up and 10 minutes later, nicely wrapped in a blanket with a little hat on her head, I got to hold my sweet angel for the first time. She WAS beautiful. And my precious husband was instantly forgiven for his drunken stupor (he made it to consciousness just in time to appear as a completely involved dad in the video). Nurse Bandaid had saved me from a c-section and all was right in my world. For a time.

And that is how I started my child-bearing experience; a fourth degree episiotomy, a hung-over husband, a wayward father, a singing mother, 20 hours of labor, a bandaid-smelling-delivery-saving-big-meany-nurse, all caught on home video by my sister-in-law.

Kids' Currency-Part 2

My second (recorded) attempt at finding and utilizing my kids' currency was a MASSIVE chore chart. I thought this would be easier than the quarter system. It just made everything VERY clear... who was responsible for what, when and even extra bonus tips like "Did you brush your teeth?" and "Did you clean up after breakfast?" In this system, when kids asked if they could go to a friends' house, I just asked if they had done everything on the chart for the day. That usually resulted in a lot of scurrying around to do whatever had been missed, and then they got to do what they wanted. Sometimes I'd get tricky and ask if they did all their chores the day before that. That would foil a kid doing chores on Friday afternoon only and thinking they could go to a sleepover that night.

Problem with this one was that I still ended up doing whatever didn't get done UNLESS THEY WANTED SOMETHING. As parents, we KNOW that kids ALWAYS want something. Unfortunately, this system was based on that and that was its failure. If they didn't want a privilege for a day or two during the week (privileges include TV, computer time, occassional sodas, going outside or to a friends house, etc.), then they didn't DO anything. So for a lot of days during the week, I was running around picking up shoes, unloading or reloading the dishwasher, feeding the dogs, whatever. Sometimes, I'd see a little improvement if I had something to hang over them...like a birthday party. I'd tell them that they could not go unless all chores were done every day leading up to the party.

Needless to say, this was short-lived. My kids aren't quite social enough, or our family schedule was just too busy, or I just didn't tweak this one enough to make it work. I moved on...spinning my wheels and making a total rookie mistake in managing the kids' behavior; they got what they wanted if I was so motivated. Period.

It was months before I hit upon a better system.

Kids' Currency Dr. Phil Style

Ever watch Dr. Phil? He is always saying to find your child's currency in order to motivate him or her. Well, I have 5...kids that is, but only 3 that have some type of currency I can hope to manipulate in order to get cooperation (the other two are babies). While I believe in this concept in principle, I've tried various forms of "currency" and it seems that everything NEW seems to work for a while. Does that mean that my newest system is going to fail in the end, and in 6 months I'll be frantically trying to find something else? Let's review.

Two years ago a homeschooling friend of mine (what, is she nuts?) suggested a quarter system. At the beginning of each month the children would receive their allowances up front (there's a catch). It was given in quarters and they couldn't have it yet. Beginning on the first day of the month, I filled each cup with their allowance in quarters (which, by the way is their age). I carefully explained that to move quarters from one cup to another is like robbing a bank, and the consequences for such deception would be swift and painful. Then we reviewed everyone's chore lists and agreed that it is only fair for me to "pay myself" for every one of their chores I had to do. In addition, they would lose quarters for negative behavior. So, if the dog didn't get fed, I'd feed him and take a quarter for the trouble. If the shoes didn't make it into the shoe basket after school, I'd pay myself and put them away. When my oldest daughter gave me attitude, I'd get her cup and stand next to it taking out one quarter at a time until she stopped talking (which is something no 12 year old girl does without pain).

The first month was great! I made $15 right out of the gate. At the end of the month, the kids received whatever was left of their allowance (not happily), and we started over. The next month the kids did much better. They got more of their allowance than the previous month, and I paid myself a lot less. Unfortunately there began to be a breakdown in the system. One of my children, a natural-born limit-tester decided that it was worth a quarter here or there to not have to follow the rules or do certain chores. Her least favorite chore at the time was cleaning the catbox, and she quickly determined that a quarter or even two was a good investment to not have to get within 10 feet of HER CAT'S poop. It started there and took a dramatic turn when she decided it was a worth a whole buck to take a slug at her brother or insult her sister.

On top of that, she began to extort the other kids..."I'll unload the dishwasher for you for 3 quarters". This enterprising tween ended up making MORE than her allowance one month despite $5 in fines paid to me. Clearly, I had to up the ante. I charged her double the other kids for every chore she blew off and triple for negative behavior. Ahhhhh, at last she ended up with a month of NO allowance. What did she do? Did she start doing her chores and treating her siblings with respect? Chewing with her mouth closed? Scooping the cat box? No, she offered to babysit for a neighbor with 2 younger children every week during tennis practice for a small fee and "accidentally" started letting the inside-cat outside.

Who says this generation is stupid and lazy? I, for one, believe they are not STUPID at ALL!