Above -Dad and Pat Bullock the 2nd at Marty and Bill's home in Estes Park
I think Amy got it right. The bird is P2. It's becoming obvious that the bird has a bone to pick with me. And I have very mixed feelings about the woman.
She was my father's second wife. Patricia Louise Temple Ziesen (sp) Taylor Bullock. Or Pat2 or P2 as we "step" daughters called her.
Dad actually met Pat before he met our mother. She would visit her Atlantic grandparents from her home in Omaha (she was a Benson Bunny). So Dad was a teen when he first met her. Then, when he attended Kemper Military School (he didn't buckle down in high school and back then, finishing high school in military school was the thing to do) in Boonville, MO, Pat attended some nearby school and they went to a dance together.
But they had long ago lost track of each other. Until 1998, in the months following our mother's July 1997 lung cancer death. It was a grueling year after mom's diagnosis, and dad got to suffer through it all. I've complained about their relationship - the fighting through the years. But under it all, I pretend to myself that they still truly loved each other. So watching mom suffer took its toll on Dad.
After she passed away, and all of us went home post funeral, we all tried to talk to him frequently. He was still in Atlantic until fall. Mom had always been the communicator - but in the end stages of her illness he took over. When I would say goodbye after a phone conversation, he would always cry. It was torture! He was such a social guy, and was so very lonely.
That fall, Susi flew in, and she and I drove Mr. Davey to his Marco Island winter home. He actually drove most of it, be we were along for company. (While he had many little medical conditions, a bad prostate was never one and potty stops were infrequent - though he didn't torture us with the "bump the peg" game of our youth). He cried when it was time for Susi and I to leave, and both of us were nervous to see that he was scoping out the "singles" pages in the local paper. Yikes - look out for skanky women just after his $$!
His loneliness continued that winter, though his Marco friends did their best to keep him busy. He wanted a companion to do things with! Imagine our surprise the next time our fam visited Marco - I think it was Christmas, he was happily chatting on the phone frequently to someone! (I was worried as he'd become a HSN addict purchasing things like mops - 2 very special ones. Like he'd ever mopped in his life!).
It came out that he'd reconnected with his friend of old Pat Temple now Taylor, after seeing her mother's obituary in the Atlantic paper and sweet talked the funeral home folks into her contact information. She was widowed (divorced from the abusive Ziesan guy who was the father of her 3 children Cindy, Linn and Steve - all around our ages) from Emmet Taylor in Denver, where she lived - in Lakewood. Dad fell hook line and sinker before even seeing her again!
All of us daughters noticed that twinkle was back in his eye, in his voice! We began to email back and forth fast and furious - and quickly came up with the Pat2 nickname. P2 seemed to have a variety of illnesses - gallbladder I think that spring, but eventually she and dad got together and that was all she wrote. He couldn't get her to the altar fast enough. She was enamored by him as well.
Us...not so much. She never really took to us or our kids - though she seemed to go through the motions just for him. Hell she had 2 of her own grand kids in Albuquerque that she hardly knew (Linn's kids). Her daughter Cindy, who we never met had MS and that whole deal was strange as they seemed to be estranged. Linn, a nurse, was married with the kids, and Steve was a slovenly jovial guy who worked sometimes. (The Bullock girls definitely had more going for us them the "other" kids...)
But P2 made Dad extremely happy. In fact it was a little disturbing to see him so gaga over someone who was not my mother. Before long, the two lovebirds were planning to be married! And plans were set for a ceremony at my Aunt Marty's in Estes Park with a party for Dad's 70th bday in Denver to follow. They kept her condo in Lakewood, and his two - in Atlantic (she totally redid it - it did need updating, but did she have to give us all back ALL of our family photos from the wall?) and Marco. Okay his did need updating, but her taste was pretty blah...
Dad and Pat2 married in 1998, and lived together through his by-pass surgery and her various illnesses until lung cancer finally took her life in 2002. The end of her life was very ugly between the Bullock's and Pat's children, none-the-less she's buried beside Dad in the Atlantic Cemetery.
So no wonder yesterday a.m. as I stood in the kitchen trying to get the wheels spinning in my brain for the day's activities (Juddy's bday), and take my daily meds, the cardinal (Pdos incarnate) smacked into the window startling me. Biatch!
She was my father's second wife. Patricia Louise Temple Ziesen (sp) Taylor Bullock. Or Pat2 or P2 as we "step" daughters called her.
Dad actually met Pat before he met our mother. She would visit her Atlantic grandparents from her home in Omaha (she was a Benson Bunny). So Dad was a teen when he first met her. Then, when he attended Kemper Military School (he didn't buckle down in high school and back then, finishing high school in military school was the thing to do) in Boonville, MO, Pat attended some nearby school and they went to a dance together.
But they had long ago lost track of each other. Until 1998, in the months following our mother's July 1997 lung cancer death. It was a grueling year after mom's diagnosis, and dad got to suffer through it all. I've complained about their relationship - the fighting through the years. But under it all, I pretend to myself that they still truly loved each other. So watching mom suffer took its toll on Dad.
After she passed away, and all of us went home post funeral, we all tried to talk to him frequently. He was still in Atlantic until fall. Mom had always been the communicator - but in the end stages of her illness he took over. When I would say goodbye after a phone conversation, he would always cry. It was torture! He was such a social guy, and was so very lonely.
That fall, Susi flew in, and she and I drove Mr. Davey to his Marco Island winter home. He actually drove most of it, be we were along for company. (While he had many little medical conditions, a bad prostate was never one and potty stops were infrequent - though he didn't torture us with the "bump the peg" game of our youth). He cried when it was time for Susi and I to leave, and both of us were nervous to see that he was scoping out the "singles" pages in the local paper. Yikes - look out for skanky women just after his $$!
His loneliness continued that winter, though his Marco friends did their best to keep him busy. He wanted a companion to do things with! Imagine our surprise the next time our fam visited Marco - I think it was Christmas, he was happily chatting on the phone frequently to someone! (I was worried as he'd become a HSN addict purchasing things like mops - 2 very special ones. Like he'd ever mopped in his life!).
It came out that he'd reconnected with his friend of old Pat Temple now Taylor, after seeing her mother's obituary in the Atlantic paper and sweet talked the funeral home folks into her contact information. She was widowed (divorced from the abusive Ziesan guy who was the father of her 3 children Cindy, Linn and Steve - all around our ages) from Emmet Taylor in Denver, where she lived - in Lakewood. Dad fell hook line and sinker before even seeing her again!
All of us daughters noticed that twinkle was back in his eye, in his voice! We began to email back and forth fast and furious - and quickly came up with the Pat2 nickname. P2 seemed to have a variety of illnesses - gallbladder I think that spring, but eventually she and dad got together and that was all she wrote. He couldn't get her to the altar fast enough. She was enamored by him as well.
Us...not so much. She never really took to us or our kids - though she seemed to go through the motions just for him. Hell she had 2 of her own grand kids in Albuquerque that she hardly knew (Linn's kids). Her daughter Cindy, who we never met had MS and that whole deal was strange as they seemed to be estranged. Linn, a nurse, was married with the kids, and Steve was a slovenly jovial guy who worked sometimes. (The Bullock girls definitely had more going for us them the "other" kids...)
But P2 made Dad extremely happy. In fact it was a little disturbing to see him so gaga over someone who was not my mother. Before long, the two lovebirds were planning to be married! And plans were set for a ceremony at my Aunt Marty's in Estes Park with a party for Dad's 70th bday in Denver to follow. They kept her condo in Lakewood, and his two - in Atlantic (she totally redid it - it did need updating, but did she have to give us all back ALL of our family photos from the wall?) and Marco. Okay his did need updating, but her taste was pretty blah...
Dad and Pat2 married in 1998, and lived together through his by-pass surgery and her various illnesses until lung cancer finally took her life in 2002. The end of her life was very ugly between the Bullock's and Pat's children, none-the-less she's buried beside Dad in the Atlantic Cemetery.
So no wonder yesterday a.m. as I stood in the kitchen trying to get the wheels spinning in my brain for the day's activities (Juddy's bday), and take my daily meds, the cardinal (Pdos incarnate) smacked into the window startling me. Biatch!
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