Part 2 - I may be blonde but I'm not all together ... er, all together

Okay, so where were we when we were so rudely interrupted by an onslaught of gardening and at last count – 14 yards of mulch being moved around our gardens, front, side and back.

Did you know knees sweat? I didn’t either, but they apparently do.



So yeah, I shoplifted. No one caught me, no one inquired where these things were coming from at home and eventually the guilt got to be too much and it just wasn’t fun any more. So I stopped.

The only reason I started in the first place was because a friend dared me to. I didn’t have the now famous, “Winona Ryder”, syndrome of taking things and mass denial when caught. Wouldn’t you have more respect for her if she had just stood up and admitted she had some psychological flaw that she just couldn’t help herself, but she’s sorry and is seeking help? I would have.

Here’s the thing though. Without help or incarceration she will be out there still unable to stop herself from doing it. However, no young girls will be missing and turn up dead and buried in Winona’s back garden.

Which brings us to Marc Dutroux, a 47-year-old Belgian pedophile. I’m using him only so we don’t forget that this is not a problem that is ours alone here in the States.

In 1989 Dutoux was convicted of raping and abusing five young girls and was sentenced to 13 years but was released in 1992 on good behavior.



Um, well yeah, because there are NO young girls to abuse in prison for him to pray on.

Oy. Who makes these decisions?

Shortly after his release, young girls began to disappear from nearby neighborhoods where Dutroux owned houses.


In August of 1996 two girls, ages 12 and 14 were found alive in the basement dungeun of on of Dutroux’s houses. They had both been raped repeatedly. One of the girls had been held for 80 days while the other had been there for 6 days and they were the lucky ones.

They found the bodies of two eight year olds buried in the back garden of one house and the bodies of two more girls ages, 17 and 19, buried in the back garden of another house.
The older girls were repeatedly raped and beaten before they were drugged and buried alive.

Vanity Fair published an interview with actress Teri Hatcher in their April 2006 issue. She had recently published her first book, Burnt Toast, and in it revealed that she had been repeatedly molested by a trusted uncle from the age of five, until she was around eight or nine. She never told anyone until she heard about a 14 year old who put a gun to her head in 2002 and left behind a note identifying the same man as her molester.

If not for Teri’s testimony the man would still be free and would have happily moved on to his next young victim.

Recently, Mark Hayward published an article in the Manchester, NH, Union Leader about the studies that have been done to assess the risk of sex offenders repeating their crimes. He found that the studies that have been done often contradict each other in their findings.

In the article, New Hampshire State Representative, David Welch, is quoted as saying,
“… about one in 30 sex offenders are predators that society has to be very concerned about.”

Well, if we do the math with the previously cited 563,000 registered sex offenders, that works out to be 18,767 highly dangerous known sex offenders out on our streets. Divided by 50 states, that’s 375 per state in the union. In our towns. Your neighborhoods.

Are you scared for your children yet?

Well then, did you know that a judge in Lincoln, Nebraska, just last month, chose to sentence a convicted sex offender to probation instead of jail time because the man was 5-foot-one?

10 years probation instead of 10 years behind bars because the man is short and the judge thought he’d be at risk from the larger inmates.

Hold up. Didn’t this man use his size to dominate, terrify and violate his young victims?

Yeah. I thought so.

So that judge decided that this man’s welfare and risk of bodily harm in prison was more important that the risk of the young girls he preys on and their bodily harm and – tad da -- he is on the streets, free.

Are you more than pissed off yet?

I am. So forgive me if I think we have better things to be fighting for in this country other than banning gay marriage and petitioning for the removal of harmless Macy’s window displays that are supporting the tolerance of gays in our society.

Gay couples who are working for a living and paying taxes just like you and me. Gay couples who are willing to adopt the cast off children of our society and raise them in loving, safe, albeit differing environments than you may know as, “normal”.


©2006 Dawn Marie Kelly, all rights reserved.

Once upon some Moo-Doo

I know, this was supposed to be the follow up to last weeks post.

Just when I thought I had my thoughts in a row, enter The Hubster with breaking news from the BBC website about a Marc Dutroux from Belgium. And that just complicated everything. I now have several back articles that I am researching and re-approaching this second installment.

So when you’ve reached your personal level of repulsion about what people on this earth are capable of, enter Marc Dutroux.



Meanwhile, The Hubster is home for only four short weeks and we are going at full speed trying to get all of the, “House for Sale”, preparations done and dusted.








We started outside. The front garden had become overgrown and crowded over the past couple years and needed to be beat back into shape. Except that at the end of the day, I was the one who felt like I had been beaten.

Hubster dug and pulled out sections of the front hedges with his beastly truck so we can add fence section to open the front of the house to the street and up the curb appeal. I weeded and thinned until I could no longer put my fingers together and pull any more.









We dug up and moved a couple monster sized hostas and a six-foot high cherry shrub thingy and relocated them into the back garden along with the hedges we pulled from the front.











There is still more work to be done, but wow are we impressed with ourselves so far.



And no, that is not a circus tent in the front garden. That’s the world’s largest sun hat that the Hubster bought his little Angel who is prone to having bits surgically removed due to the sun’s toll.



One last note – The Boy Wonder will be starting a strength training/resistance class for janitors next week, it fills up quickly, so sign up now!





©2006 Dawn Marie Kelly, all rights reserved.

I may be blonde but I'm not all together ... er, all together

While I am the first person to yell, “Blonde!” in self-defense, (yes, even I have my dirty little secrets) I have to claim mass, (MA) confusion on what follows.

The good news – the Senate actually rejected Bush’s proposal of a constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriages.

The bad news – they voted it down by a final tally of 49-48.


Not all that comforting is it? If you want to see how they voted, click here.

More good news – the Boston Macy’s store located at Downtown crossing dedicated a window display in support of the Boston’s Pride chapter and Boston Pride 2006. It was designed in collaboration with the Boston Pride Committee.

More bad news – After much harassment from the anti-gay organization, Article 8, Macy’s decided to pull the mannequins from the display.

Not good enough and on Article 8’s website the group says, “Your voices are starting to be heard loud and clear," the group’s website states, "and Macy’s is starting to back down. But they still don’t get it on their public support of a week of rather raunchy homosexual activity.”

Where are the gay groups rising up against the raunchy heterosexual activity that happens daily at organized sports events, construction sites and in every bar, restaurant, pub where heterosexual, (not to mention homophobic) males have consumed more than 2.5 alcoholic beverages?

I can only speak from my own experience, but I have been fair game for wolf cries and obscenities veiled as come on lines since I was 14.
Where were/are the activists rushing to save me from depravity?

Mind you, I have NEVER had a, or a group of, lesbians cat call at me or try recruiting me on a public or private level.

If I find myself in the unthinkable position of testifying against a man who raped me, I will actually find myself defending myself. Yes, the rape victim must first prove her own innocence before the predator is put in a position to be held accountable.

Back to that window display, depraved isn’t it? Just look at those two male mannequins just standing there, not touching, not in any sexually orientated activity of ANY kind.


Back to the activists, where are they in our malls? Why are they not protecting us from the likes of Fredrick’s of Hollywood and Victoria’s not so Secret?

Seriously though, why are they not protecting us from the likes of, Jerry Buck Inman, the confessed, Bikini Killer, of Tiffany Marie Sours?

Inman is one of 563,000 registered sex offenders living in the United States. Do not even try to tell me that every single one of them is not a repeat offender, (Not to mention we don’t have numbers for the un-registered offenders.) for example; I’m no angel and dabbled in shoplifting in my early teens.

Did I stop at my first dibble? Uhh, no. Did I stop at my second, third, forth? Uhh, no. Because. I. Was. Not. Caught.

Huh. Let us stop and pause, and pick up next week, because, I think, therefore we are.

©2006 Dawn Marie Kelly, all rights reserved.

Part Deux - If I'm Letting Go ~ Why Are my Knuckles White?

When we hug, my head rests on his chest. We stand and chat and I have to look up at him. It wasn’t that long ago that it was the other way round.

Gone are the days when he would creep after me through the house as I buzzed about doing my chores. When he would rush up to me and hug my leg as hard as he could and while looking up at me towering above, announce passionately, “ I love mum mum,” while grinning so broad his face looked in danger of splitting in two.

He has a profound fear of spiders. When he was somewhere between two and three he began waking nearly nightly screaming about spiders. Going to bed became difficult until I started spraying the room with spider killer. It was actually an all-natural citrus oil air freshening mist but it sure enough did the trick and everyone got back to his or her regular sleep patterns.


We haven’t had an impromptu dance party in the living room for a couple years now. There’s nothing like slam dancing with a kid.

He asked for money towards a paintball gun this past March for his birthday. Prior to that, the only gun thingy he has ever had is a super soaker. Mind you, that didn’t stop him from turning sticks, Legos and anything else linier into a weapon. I have to confess, the boy is a remarkable shot and plans are being made for a trip to the shooting range to try his hand at skeet shooting.


Prom has past and this Saturday it’s his SAT’s. He has not done any special preparation for the event at all. Nor have I pushed him; he aced the PSAT’s when he took them this autumn. He’s smart without trying and has the even more rare gifts of common sense and a conscience to go with it.

Next week he’s taking my beloved new Beetle into his auto tech class and will be replacing the timing belt, serpentine belt, water pump and coolant. A job that would cost me $1200 at the dealership is costing me $160 for parts.


I am more than proud of the man he’s becoming. He has a plan and it includes becoming an auto tech and learning custom fabrication. Someday he wants to own his own shop and be his own boss. I have no doubt he’ll do just that.

I never gave ultimatums, always choices with clear consequences. The choices were always his to make. It’s remarkable how a kid will make the right choices when the power is given to them. No was never an answer that wasn’t followed with an explanation. It still isn’t.

I have been letting him go since the day he was born. Feeding him the tools and the knowledge he needs to be able to walk into the world on his own and listen to the voice inside his head when he needs to. That voice isn’t mine, it’s his own and it tells him his truths.



Dedicated to the one and only, Boy Wonder, my greatest work, my biggest joy and my free-est bird.

* Lyrics – Lynyrd Skynyrd, Simple Man.

©2006 Dawn Marie Kelly, all rights reserved.