The German Dam

Today Brooke and I went walking down by the river, I brought my camera and was taking some scenic fall shots. Maybe not all of you know that I’m a photo enthusiast, but I just mess around pretending I have an eye for beauty.

It was a gorgeous day here, the sun was so bright, the light that shined was actually white instead of the normal golden yellow put off this time of year. It was around 2:00 pm, which by photography standards is really good lighting for scenic shots. The leaves were turning; the ground was crisp with crackling leaves, acorns and sticks. We eagerly investigated the deer tracks and raccoon trails. We even gasped when we actually jumped up a big whitetail doe and watched as she fled for her life through the river, crashing and running with everything she had.

I sat for a while at the Dam and watched the water pour over that thick concrete wall. It’s really mesmerizing to sit there. The water is loud and drowns out all the other sounds; it’s one of the few sounds in life that if you let it, can actually drown out the sound of your own thoughts. And for those of you who know me, an escape from my self can be a much needed break. ;)

As I sat there today with the sun shining down on my face, my hair and warming my shoulders. It’s hard to imagine anywhere so beautiful can also be so dangerous. A place where it's impossible to stand without smiling at everything from the smell of the river to the golden yellow and red leaves.

I remember the day when my father got the call, the fateful day when the German Dam showed that along with it’s beauty, it had an ominous side. My dad was driving so fast down through the campgrounds and towards the dam. My sister Angie and I were back in the bed of the truck like we usually were. (Remember those days, before mandatory seat belts, airbags and car seats? The days when you would fight over who got to lay in the back window of your Mom’s Bonneville?) Anyway….My dad told Angie and I to stay in the truck and he’d be back. There were police officers, ambulances and fire and rescue parked further up the drive, and well we were girls, young girls who just couldn’t contain our curiosity.

Angie crawled out first, told me to stay, but I told her basically to go screw herself, she wasn’t going to leave me behind. I crawled out right behind her, because that’s what pain in the ass little sisters do!When we neared the clearing of trees that left that perfect view of the man-made dam, we felt worried about what we were about to see. I remember dragging my feet and feeling scared as we took those last fateful steps out of the trees and into the clearing. Angie and I stood side by side as we watched the body of a woman continuously float out of that raging water and then be drawn back into the circling and swirling waters. She wasn’t wearing a life jacket, but she was floating nonetheless. Seeing a human body, a woman, beyond the reach of safety, completely unresponsive left me forever changed. Rescue crews stood at the shoreline with a look of disillusionment. Everyone stood very still; it’s as if the world paused as the life of one of our own escaped from that murky water and fled toward the sun. It was a beautiful day but it was more of a surreal beauty. That day the Auglaize River claimed another victim; the Dam had sucked in three and only allowed two to be spared from its grip. Eventually they did recover the body of the canoe passenger who unwisely decided to take her canoe out of the water much farther upstream than it was advised. With no lifejacket and the rumored possibility of being under the influence of alcohol her lovely day of canoeing with friends on a Saturday afternoon turned tragic and ended her life. A Saturday afternoon just like the one that lead me down to sit with my toes practically touching that sparkling chilly water. The place where I seek solace is a place where people have met their demise. The place I travel to capture beauty on film is a place where a beautiful life was taken.

Nature makes no apologies for its nature. The most beautiful sunshine has the power to burn you, the rain water that feeds the crops and fills our wells, also rages and sweeps away anyone in it’s path, wind that produces valuable energy and even cools our sunbathing bodies can spin into raging tornadoes causing destruction beyond our imaginations. Nature is a funny thing, a stunning unpredictable phenomenon.


Current Mood: At a Loss
Current Music: Vince Gill - Breath of Heaven

Wetzel 1999 - THe Unauthorized Cut

Ah Wetzel the bad girl’s paradise. Ever since I was old enough to know what Wetzel was, I wanted to go. A biker’s party outside of Middle Point, Ohio in the middle of nowhere, but in the heart of it all.Wetzel was infamous for naked people, beer drinking, tattoo contests, a pond shaped like the Harley Davidson Emblem, Easy Rider Magazine, bad weather, and every other seedy thing you can imagine. Everything all in one place you never want to be anywhere near your daughter. Oh, you should have seem my mother’s jaw drop when I was like nine years old telling people that someday I would go to Wetzel. She was so embarrassed she would tell people, “she doesn’t even know what Wetzel is, don’t listen to her!” But I did know about Wetzel and nothing was going to keep me from going there someday.

Well twelve years later, it finally happened. I turned 21 and was legally allowed on the Wetzel grounds.Oh, I was so excited. I mean 12 years of anticipation can really get you amped up when the time finally comes. There was just one problem…..apparently out of all of my female friends, I was the only one that wanted to go. It seemed that my girly friends thought Wetzel was a sleazefest and weren’t interested in the slightest about spending $30.00 to go see some washed-up band (that year R.E.O. Speedwagon) and be around a bunch of dirty bikers. I thought they were just insane, unadventurous goodie-two-shoes. Some wild friends I had! ;)So lucky for me, I had guy friends. And well, guy friends have no problem attending sleazy social events where there are booze and naked people.

My friends and long distance cousins Matt and Nick and their dad who I for some reason always thought was my uncle instead of my cousin (don’t ask) Clem were all going and they invited me to go with them. Clem goes every year, has a Harley, so did Nick, Matt and me however were supposed to drive the supply truck out there! Once again, I didn’t care if I had to ride a tricycle out there, or a unicycle for that matter. What else was cool about Wetzel 1999 was that cousin Nick’s band was one of the opening acts for REO Speedwagon. So everybody was pretty excited about that!The day came, we loaded up our tents, sleeping bags, beer, coolers, cigarettes, clothes, boots, hats, cooking utensils and Clem’s newly pimped out Harley Davidson Custom Golf Cart which he customized himself in his garage all summer. It was awesome! Matt ended up driving the 1980-something full size Ford Bronco pulling the trailer full of supplies and I followed him with my truck. We were both smiling and bright eyed for what we were about to experience all weekend long. Of course once we got there and got in line to enter the grounds the radiator hose blew and shit started flying everywhere, so Clem being an Osting was super pissed and Matt and I drove all the way back to Delphos to fetch tools to fix it. With all of that nonsense it took a little longer to get our Wetzel weekend underway, but eventually I entered the gates and laid my eyes upon the mowed wheat field that was Wetzel. People were all wandering around, setting up tents, just sitting in their lawn chairs and drinking beer in the middle of pretty much nowhere….at 10:30 am on a Friday.I went to work getting my tent up, Matt put his next to mine. It was difficult to get my tent up since we had to fight the wheat problem, but Matt helped me and we started drinking a little, so that helped with the frustration level.

One by one more and more bikes rolled on the grounds, and the place filled up quickly. It looked like a gypsy camp mostly filled with tents; however there were some diehards who maintained that they only needed the bare essentials…a sleeping bag.Matt and I took it easy, drove Clem’s golf cart around the place for a while. I tell you, I never had so many people ask to see my boobs in all of my life. That kind of behavior is not only permitted, but preferred. Everywhere you turn there are girls flashing a group of guys. Now keep in mind, at Wetzel, naked people isn’t always a good thing. Only about one in twelve people are actually someone you’d want to see naked, and only about 2% of those people actually get naked. Of course me being the good girl that I am, I kept my boobies safe inside of my shirt. I’ve never been one who in situations looses all control of their inhibitions. Sure who wouldn’t like to feel so free that they could flash strange men their naked bodies without consequence. Me however, I live in the real world….Wetzel has a website http://www.wetzelmc.com/, men expecting to see boobies have cameras, I have parents and a family who I wouldn’t want to see pictures of me being an idiot, drunk and naked.

So anyway, Matt and I kept riding around until the lightening started crashing down around us. A major storm was rolling in. Friday night’s main event was supposed to be Steppen Wolf, but like it always does during Wetzel, it rained, and it rained good. The lightening was unimaginable. That freshly mowed wheat field turned into a mud pit so fast, you didn’t even see it coming. It felt pretty cold too since you spent the whole day in the sun getting fried. We all took cover under the big communal tent of Clem’s from Delphos Tent and Awning. We closed the flaps and lit the lantern and huddled close to whomever was sitting next to you to gain warmth. Since technically my only friend at Wetzel was Matt who like me was 21, I didn’t really know the people I got stuck sitting next to. However I was about to get to know the one to the right of me more than I could have ever imagined.

Now for the sake of privacy for the rest of the story, we’ll call him J.D. So anyway, J.D. was sitting next to me, cold and wet like myself. I thought at first he was an absolute dick. He seemed really distant and he had this look of frustration, disgust and arrogance on his face. I had a blanket to which after some talking I offered to share with him. He told me his ex-girlfriend was pregnant with his baby and how fucked up his life was basically. So we chatted some and then to my surprise I felt his finger caressed my knee under our blanket, which was completely unbeknownst to everyone else sitting there. I looked at him, he looked at me, the rain had stopped and the next thing I knew he was walking me to my tent. Just as I as about to crawl in, most likely to have him crawl in after me, I noticed that everything in my tent was floating. I had been flooded out the first night. Apparently my tent had a hole in it.I went and found Matt to tell him that I was going to drive home for the night and come back in the morning. I couldn’t sleep in three inches of water. When I walked back to my tent, J.D. was standing there. I told him that I was going home for the night and would see him tomorrow maybe. He said, “that’s too bad, I had no place to stay, and I was going to stay with you.” I was a bit shocked by his honestly, and before I knew it, he was following me out to my truck and back to my apartment.

I know what you are thinking….SLUT! Go ahead….think it all you want, he was hot, talented, seemingly intelligent, so I said. “why the hell not!” I mean if you can’t be slut and get away with it at Wetzel where can you?

So once at my apartment, I kicked off my muddy boots, and J.D. kicked off his shoes as well. I sat on the bed, he sat down too. The rest of the night was spent, well um, talking. YES, JUST TALKING! What kind of slut did you think I was? The whole thing was really strange, here I was with this mysterious, serious and oh so sexy guy in my bed, hours into of our one night stand, and there we laid…..talking. It wasn’t until early morning that he even kissed me.

Okay, so it’s the events that follow that are going to seem strange. I got out of bed, headed for the shower, J.D. showered along side of me. We had done nothing but kiss, and then there we were in the shower together handing each other soap and shampoo. It was very strange. Who gets naked together and showers without you know, doing it prior to or during for that matter? After our exploratory shower, we got dressed and left. Once back at Wetzel, he went his way, and I went mine. Back at the campsite, Matt took one look at me and he knew I had done something with somebody, but he didn’t know whom, and I wasn’t telling.

Shortly after I got back to camp, I met these two crazy biker dudes from Michigan…Carl & Pete. We all hit it off right away and I ended up spending the day with my new biker friends. We went up to the pond and I pointed in horror and amazement at naked people performing oral sex on each other. Now I know why people warned me not to swim in the pond, you go in for a dip and you come out knocked up without the slightest clue who the father is. Then we watched a guy ramp his bike into the pond, followed by some guys who parachuted into camp. Once bored of all of that we went out riding on their bikes all over the countryside together, just me, Pete and Carl.I had been gone for hours, so I hurried back to camp to check in, I mean, I was a twenty-one year old girl, last seen with two bikers from Michigan. A girl can get herself into a whole heap of trouble if she didn’t have her wits about her. Back at camp, J.D. was sitting there with Nick. He smiled at me, I smiled back at him. Nick said hi and then said, “Hey Heather, who were those two dudes you’ve been with all day?” J.D. seemed interested in my answer as well. So I did what I normally did, tell the vague truth. “They are just these guys from Michigan…Carl and Pete”, I said. J.D. got up to leave, but didn’t escape before Pete and Carl rolled back into camp.

The next time I saw J.D. was when he was on stage with the band. He sounded great, looked great, and we all danced like the drunken idiots we were. Then the “Skin to Win” beauty pageant was underway. Naked girls ensued. Forty-five minutes into the REO Speedwagon concert, I was bored. Carl noticed and offered to take me for a ride on his Harley. He grabbed my hand and led me through the crowd and onto the back of his bike. It was humid and once on the road, the wind was invigorating. My hair was whipping wildly behind me and Carl was like a statue in front of me, solid and surreal. We shared a cigarette and our ride came to a halt then I found him turning into the parking lot at the Day’s Inn in Van Wert. I was immediately on alert for something “bad” to happen. I mean isn’t this how all rape/murder scenarios occur, “she was with him all day, what did she think was going to happen?!”

He said he needed to go inside to “get something” from his room, I told him, I’d stay with the bike. He insisted that he didn’t feel safe leaving me in the parking lot alone. I wasn’t sure where I would be safer; either way presented a certain amount of danger. I reluctantly followed him inside. Once at the door to his room, I insisted I would remain in the hallway while he entered the room, he gave me this look, like for Christ sakes, I’m not going to kill you! I stood in the doorway with the door kept open. He rummaged through his bag, looking for something when the phone rang. He answered it, and had what I could hear was an important phone call about a hospital, a woman in labor, early labor….it was choppy, but I still hadn’t comprehended everything when Carl hung up the phone, looked at me and said, “So….Okay, well I guess now you know I’m married!” I hadn’t actually come to that conclusion yet, but I knew now. Not that it mattered because I wasn’t interested in pursuing a romantic avenue with Carl anyway. And for the record, just because I was slutty by showering with some guy I barely knew that morning didn’t mean that I was ready to hop in the sack with a married man that evening. My sluttiness has limitations. See there is a fine line between a Slut, and a girl who knows how to have a good time within reason. Cross one boundary and you are a Slut, walk the line and you remain safely un-judged.

Carl and I loaded up on his bike and he drove me back to Wetzel. He told me the story about Pete and himself, both decided to take off their wedding rings on their way down here and had intended to have as much fun as the Wetzel God would allow. Boy did he pick the wrong girl to waste his precious ring-less time with. Pete however was hooking up with Tina in a tent somewhere back on the grounds. Carl told me to find Pete, tell him his wife went into early labor and he was heading to the hospital. I bid Carl farewell, told him good luck, and I watched as he drove way. He didn’t rape me, he didn’t murder me, but I’ll never forget him, why, I’m not exactly sure.The rest of Wetzel went by without incident. I saw more naked people, crazy biker behavior and I sat on my cooler and took in the last hours of the event I had waited my entire life to be a part of. I haven’t been back to Wetzel since. I don’t know that I ever will. I do know however that if I had it to do all over again, I wouldn’t have changed a thing.
________________________________________________________________________________________________UPDATE:

A few weeks after Wetzel, Carl did call me and asked me to go to a bike rally with him down in Southern Ohio. He and Pete were going. I politely declined and it was the last I ever heard from him. J.D. and I continued getting to know each other for about five months, we eventually went our separate ways, not exactly without incident, injury, or lessons learned, but we parted nonetheless. Still, no regrets!


Current Mood: Smiling Like Mona Lisa
Current Music: Dave Matthews

The Old Lady at IHOP

A couple Fridays ago, my Mother and her friend Brenda asked me to go out with them. We sometimes do that, just go to a movie, or go shopping, just get out of the house together you know. My mom is in her 50’s and so is Brenda. I’m only 27, but regardless of the age difference, we still have fun together.

Well on this particular outing we ended up going to eat at IHOP. It was the first cold spell we had here and we hurried into the restaurant and out of the cold night air. Mom and Brenda were talking about something that I really didn’t know anything about, so I just kind of zoned out for a little while. As I was zoning out, I looked around the restaurant at the other patrons. Everyone was old; I was the youngest person besides waitresses in the whole place. I continued looking for someone younger when my eyes fixated on one lady eating pancakes with strawberry topping and a piece of toast.

She was tiny. She wore a bright purple blazer with noticeable shoulder pads, which appeared to be at least a size too big for her. She had a necklace made of large white beads, glasses that extended from the hairline on the northernmost side of her forehead and then came down so far that they encompassed the majority of both of her cheeks. Her hair was white, her fingers frail, skin transparent and posture curved.Now I don’t know how long I had been looking her over before my mom nudged me and said, “Heather, what on earth are you so interested in over there?” I just looked at my mom and said, “That’s going to be me someday!” “It’s going to be you and it’s going to be Brenda too, and not too far off either!” My mom and Brenda looked as though they wanted to laugh at me, or kick me under the table for making them think that old lady could be them soon. I was for some strange reason just in awe of what the years can do to a person. In her prime that lady probably had beautiful skin that shined from the inside out, eyes that sparkled full of life, a smile big, bright and white. Strong legs that could carry her as fast and far as she wished to go. Wearing huge beads and glasses with lenses as big as saucers would have been something she couldn’t have even fathomed, let alone believed to be the height of sophistication.

I kept my eyes on this wonderfully old woman and asked my mom “Do you suppose she just woke up one day and looked in the mirror and said, “How on earth did I get so old?”” I imagined my own face, aged, wrinkled, hair white, eyes a little less alive……freaked me right out it did! I figure though, I’m not going to grow old the same way that people from earlier generations have before. I’m going to vow right now that I’m going to be one of those hip grandmas. I will not have old lady hair that is bluish-gray, rolled up in curlers and well, old looking. I will subscribe to modern woman magazine and wear the latest hip and trendy clothing, and accessorize with things that actually complement one’s outfit. Super-sized beads, glasses and handbags are easier to see yes, but not easy on the eyes of others. And shoulder pads, well I will develop amnesia and forget they ever existed in the first place.

My only hope for old age is that I will be blessed with the company of my friends. We’ll say things that only old people say such as:

You know…the old Clark Station…….well, I know it’s something else now, but when I was growing up it was the Clark Station……I’m going to run out to Val’s (Alco) or the Sundry Store as if they still existed ……Do you remember old _________, yeah, well her husband ___________ died last week. He was only eighty-three! He was still getting around pretty good, it came as a complete shock that he would go so quickly……

My friends and I will play bridge, bingo, and shop at garage sales. We’ll drink coffee at insane hours in the morning, attend church and have brunch. We’ll knit each other can coolies, bras and panties just for kicks and flip through photo albums and wish our asses, breasts and faces would go back to looking “like that!” I say we reserve adjoining rooms at Vancrest now, and maybe if we are lucky we will have some punk young people steeling our clothes to wear out as Mr. & Mrs. George H. Bush for Halloween………..I don’t think I need to say more……..If I HAVE TO get old….I’m taking all of you bitches with me! ~Love You Guys!


Current Mood: Frrrrreeeeeeezing/numb
Current Music: Time After Time - Cyndie Lauper

Under the Influence of Alcohol

I know I’ve told you before that my parents owned a campground while I was a growing up. We had a store where you could get everything from your fishing supplies to your M.C. Hammer “You Can’t Touch This” underwear [go ahead insert your laugh here]. Would it be too much to tell you I had "You can't Touch This" panties? Hey, they were cool, if you were a child of the 80's and you saw them, you'd have had a pair yourself!!

Anyway....being as a campground store does have a high yielding sale of alcohol, we were no exception. Woods and Waters was notorious for hosting big “band nights” were people consumed lots of alcohol, so the effects of alcohol were learned at an early age for me. We saw it all from people puking, dancing like idiots, falling down, passing out, making out, peeing where they shouldn’t and even massive fights between two angry drunks which were usually broke up by the Sheriff’s department that patrolled on “band nights”.

The first time I had a sip (or multiple gulps) of liqueur was when I was eight years old. I had been playing out on “the beach” and had really worked up a sweat and was dying of thirst. I told my mom I was thirsty and she pretty much blew me off, so one of my parent’s friends Danny offered me a drink of his “pop”. Well everyone over the age of eight knew that Danny’s pop was always 70% Black Velvet or Jack Daniels, and 30% Pepsi. I being too young to know better and too young to have built up a tolerance level, drank feverously from the cold glass of wetness. I thought it tasted funny, but I was so thirsty, I didn’t even care. Within about twenty minutes though, I did care when I found myself passed out in the stones between the lifeguard stand and the volleyball court. I was fall down-passed-out sloshed at age eight. My parents were so proud when the found out why I was in the condition I was in. Danny standing overtop of me swaying from side to side only fueled their fire. See what happens when you ignore your children, they take matters into their own hands and next thing you know, you are carrying your drunk eight year old to the truck so you can take them home and put them to bed.

I wouldn’t say that I’ve ever been a big drinker really. I mean I’m far from an alcoholic, and even these days the drinks are few and far between, but I do enjoy them when I have them. I would have to say most of my drinking was done with my best friend Amber. She could drink more than any girl I knew. I went somewhere and took a six pack; she wouldn’t start the weekend without a 30 pack in the fridge. Once we started living together, she converted me from the six pack girl that I was to the other half of her 30 pack girl. Quite a scary notion for me at first, but over time, I worked up to it. I never reached quite the same level of her drinking ability, but I wasn’t trying to compete, just keep up most of the time.

The worst intoxication I have ever experienced in my life occurred in my old 5th street apartment. It all started with Amber and I on a Tuesday night on my floor playing “drinking hangman”. Yeah, don’t be surprised if you never heard of “drinking hangman” we kind of just invented it that night. Anyway, we played hangman for a little while, just passing away another summer weeknight. Before the night was over, we were prank calling a guy I was friends with who worked for a country music radio station by requesting Marilyn Manson songs. When prank calls were becoming less hilarious, we decided to conduct a experiment to find out whether you could be arrested for DUI on rollerblades. (From prank calls to DUI attempts, as you can see the amount of Black Velvet being drank was in epic proportions by this point.) Rollerblading what the latest fitness craze at the time and Amber and I had been known to sometimes rollerblade at night, but that was sober. It wasn’t long before we found ourselves skating down the middle of 5th Street (which if you aren’t from Delphos I have to tell you that it’s the busiest Street in town). We went pretty much all the way from one side of town to the other when we realized that we were the only idiots awake at 3:00 a.m. on that particular Tuesday…or… well now… Wednesday.

We were slightly discouraged so we headed back towards my apartment when Amber got the bright idea to skate past her long-term-non-committal-booty-call- man Troy’s house. Hey, don’t laugh, it’s three in the morning, we are drunk and on rollerblades, at this point why would this seem crazy to you?....see, it didn't seem crazy to us either!) Anyway, It wasn’t far from my place, so I said "sure, I don’t have to be to work for another four hours." We didn’t make it far when Amber crashed into someone’s yard and couldn’t get back up. I tried to help her up and I too tumbled to the ground. I think we must have rolled around in that lady’s yard for about a half an hour trying like hell to stand before we realized, “Hey, if we just take off the rollerblades, we could do this no problem!” We finally pulled ourselves from the ground laughing and walked back to my apartment in our socks carrying our skates.

The next morning, Amber awoke on my loveseat (the only piece of furniture you could actually sit on besides my bed in my old apartment. Her legs we draped over the end since she was 5’9” tall and well, a love seat just wasn’t meant to accommodate the average sleeping 5’9” drunk girl. She got up early and went to work, and I was not so fortunate. Amber finally came to my house around 8:30 at night the next day to find me still in bed, curtains drawn and phone off the hook. I was so hung over it was the worst night of drunken side effects (room spinning, puking, cotton mouth, stomach cramping & head and body aches) that I had ever experienced. I remember Amber laughing at the sight of me, mascara shading well under my eyes, my hair looking as if I had endured a tornado on one side and a steamroller on the other. I was pale, dehydrated, and having that general look of death about me. Ah, how she laughed. Of course, she had felt fine….did I tell you that girl could drink!?! We both looked at the pair of rollerblades laying in the middle of the floor and my horrid looking face broke into a smile. We laughed, she opened the curtains and I got out of bed ready for whatever our next adventure would be. I knew as long as we stuck together, there was always going to be mistakes to make (pregnancy tests to take), laughter pouring out of our mouths…echoing through the night and life-changing misadventures to partake in. The world was ours for the wrecking!


Current Mood: Smiling
Current Music: Nora Jones

My 5th Street Apartment

That last post made me feel nostalgic about the ole homestead of 1999. I’ve moved around a little bit here and there throughout life, some for reasons I caused, some were acts of God…..like when the quaint little house down on 12th street that I shared with my old roommate Amber blew up from a natural gas explosion. Yeah, you heard me correctly, it BLEW up. A sizeable fire fueled blast that blew out the back wall to my bedroom and laid it out in our back yard, blew a deck of UNO cards that were on my nightstand to the four corners of the earth. Seriously, people after the blast were seen walking around picking them up all over the neighborhood. So yeah, it was January, Amber and I were homeless and neither of us ever, and I do mean ever wanted to move back home. But under the dire straight circumstances we were facing, we didn’t have much choice. Amber got thrown out of her parents first, only a few days into her stay, I managed to survive a couple months. But when that first huge blow up between my mother and I occurred, I took apartment shopping to new heights. Within an hour of our spat, I had signed a lease on an apartment in Delphos.

It was a tiny little hole in the wall place, located on the back side of the Clementz residence. The Clementz family was great to me. They welcomed me into the space a wall away from their own and I was glad to be there. Now, my new apartment was far from fabulous, but it was mine.

It consisted of basically a hallway that had been converted into a kitchen, there was a little enclosed patio right in the front door where my refrigerator was. Off the Hallway/Kitchen was a standing room only bathroom with a shower that consisted of a concrete slab and a shower head. On the other side of the wall of the Hallway/Kitchen was one room. It was my bedroom/living room/ dining room. There was no place for a kitchen table or anything, so this was my pretty much the all-purpose main living space. The ceilings were high and everything was white plaster. When I moved in, I had basically nothing. My bed from the old apartment wouldn’t fit in the new one-room apartment, so I initially slept in a pile of laundry and blankets on the floor. I had no furniture since I let my ex-fiancé keep every single thing we accumulated as a couple because the idea of having anything that reminded me of him was more than any woman should have to endure after what he put me through.

So when I moved in, I had a television, clothes, a dresser, a night stand, phone and a couple towels. It was pretty sad at first, but it never really bothered me. I would have lived in my truck to prove that anywhere was better than living with my parents. So sleeping on the floor in my very own apartment seemed not nearly as bad as what my sister and cousin thought when they came to see the place and found me curled up in a ball on the floor covered in clothes and blankets like a homeless person. I saw it in their eyes that they thought this was a new low for me. I told them I’d offer them a chair, but since I didn’t have one, they could pull up some carpet. They were my first guests at my new home.

My old apartment soon became more and more like home when one day I came home to find a bed sitting on my enclosed porch. It was the strangest thing I had ever seen, it was on wheels, it was wooden and it had a crank at the bottom. Somehow someone broke into my house (since I had locked it when I left for work) and gave me a bed. I had no idea where it had come from, but a mattress was shoved in there as well, so I went to work moving it the rest of the way in. Later that week I found out my mother and brother found it on the side of the road, and the mattress they got out of our bunk house. So not only was my new bed a freebee side of the road treasure, but it was also a old hospital bed. That explained the crank at the bottom, you could crank the bed into it’s upright position, or elevate your feet if you so desired. Neither of which worked very good considering I had a box spring under my mattress. The funny thing about the bed was it was the highest bed I had ever seen. Since it sat on these giant hospital-type wheels it was a bed you almost had to jump up into. It didn’t matter to me who most likely died in that bed, it didn’t matter that that it was free, or even found on the side of the road, it fit in the damn front door unlike my own bed, so I was thrilled to have it to add to my collection of the crap that I called my own.

One by one, my apartment came alive with friends and guests. You couldn’t have a very big crowd however since the maximum capacity for my apartment would have been about six to eight average sized adults.

My favorite part of my tiny apartment was that when you would lie in bed, you could look at a full length mirror that hung on the wall ½ way in the kitchen and half way in the doorway into the living room, you could see the front door. So when you wanted to know who was at the door, you just glanced at the mirror and took a peek without moving an inch from where you were. Great for those late night booty calls that you sometimes get, you could look to see who’s face appeared at your door, and decide to roll over and keep sleeping, or welcome your guest in. {Don’t even act as if you never had a booty call! We’ve all had them at some time or another, whether they are your boyfriend, or just that hot guy you had went out with a few times…..if it’s late, and they are knocking at the door…..it’s a booty call! You aren’t fooling anybody…….}

That apartment was the loving environment that made me feel more at home than I had ever felt anywhere in the world in all of my 21 years of life. It was the first place I lived by myself. It was the place where a knock on the wall meant that my friend Rick living on the other side of the wall wanted me to come over for dinner. The place where my tears soaked the carpet, my happiness lit the room, and the cable was a drilled up through the floor and free. The place where I could dance around naked with the curtains drawn, the place where booty calls were not likely to wake anyone, my secrets could be my secrets unless someone were to drive by and see a mysterious or familiar vehicle parked next to my own. It was the place where I discovered who I really was. I became my own person, a real-life-grownup and within those plastered walls I realized for the first time that I liked who I had become and I started to see that I wasn’t the only one. I had good friends, good times, two jobs, not too much money in my pocket but enough to get me by and I was the happiest I had ever been. All of that and a free hospital bed………life just doesn’t get any better than that does it?! ;)


Current Mood: loving
Current Music: Staind

Has Anyone Ever Heard of a Little Thing Called Sincerity?

I’m Tired.I’m tired of always having to defend my actions to the world. When did it become a normal thing to have ulterior motives? Why can't people believe for one second that not EVERYBODY has underlying agendas? Can’t there be room for the possibility that someone has the ability to love someone purely, care about someone honestly, enjoy someone’s intelligence, or his or her ability to move you without having to be asked…. “what’s in it for you?” "What are you REALLY after?"What’s in if for me? C’mon seriously? What’s in it for me? Here I go again explaining myself.

People, good people, bad people, beautiful people, homely people, sad people, happy people, sarcastic people, the list goes on and on, they are all a story to be told, a eye to catch, someone who might possibly someone worth meeting. Someone who's presence may enrich your life with just the simplicity of being themselves around you. Why must every relationship that one has in life be defined? And why is it the men in my life whom are always being called into question?

So yes, I’ve had a few ex-lovers, a few of which I still know, I still talk to, even a few who I still care about. Does it mean I want to take their clothes off with my teeth, not necessarily, does it mean that I with every hello, and every glance am secretly trying to win them back? No, it does not. I’m not a supermodel by any means, I’m endlessly flawed, too self reliant for my own good, what is it about me that makes people jump to assume that I’m interested in stealing what does not belong to me?

I had this one boyfriend when I was like 15 years old. It was a short-lived romance, only lasting a month or longer and in the end, I realized that he was very special, but not for me. He wasn’t “the one”. Well as it turns out a few years later, he married my friend and to this very day, she’s always kept her eye on me. It seems that she’s always waiting for me to steal him away from her. I think he’s great, he’s even recently become a father with her and yet she still doesn’t trust that his love is for her, and why me? I know he’s loved others besides me, if he even loved me and wasn't just attracted to me. Why does she still worry? Is it because we laugh together? Is it because he and I still smile when we see each other? Perhaps it’s the way we talk to one another, each playing off the remarks of the other? I would be lying if I said we didn’t have a connection, if there wasn’t a bit of a spark to our long lasting friendship, but it’s moments shared are few and far between. I rarely even see him or her for that matter.

Instance #2 – An ex-lover (not boyfriend)……amazing person. I bit shady, and with more issues than I could dare begin to count, but a person who you’d look over every bit of dysfunction to see the beauty within. Hands soft and artistic, a voice commanding yet gentle at a whisper, unconventional and clever. He was a perfect mixture of someone who some might say had an ego the size of Texas, but if you look beyond it you would see self-doubt. Something that always reminded me that he too was human, not superman. Anyway, our time under the sun was in my early twenties. It didn’t last, like these things rarely do. Initial attraction, teenager enthusiastic romps around my apartment, discovery of each other and in the end, moving on for something for me that was more rational, safe, less dramatic. For him, doing whatever it is that he does and does so well. Now, he lives far away, we talk occasionally, he’s still clever and endearing, and that is why I still talk to him……not because I “want” him for my own. I want nothing more than to know him. Something that is an ever-continuous journey with someone like him. Yet, I’ve taken a beating over him, skepticism to my motives for still knowing him, from both sides of the fence….friends and foes alike.

#3 – The Internet guy. A year or so ago, I got an email address from a particular person from their website. They are in the entertainment industry and I had inquired about upcoming events in my area. To my surprise, an email response actually did follow. He was surprisingly sweet and courteous, and for his appreciated response I replied to his reply to me. Long story short, through some sporadic emailing over time, I’ve gotten to hear or should I say read a little more about a person who was once only a name on a computer screen. A name I would hear in passing, now they were someone whom I had determined was wickedly funny, witty, charming, intellectual, and something that is pretty rare in this world, trusting and honest. I don’t know why exactly our emailing survived the first contact and reply, but I couldn’t have been more honored to get to know the little bit of this person that I have somehow managed to uncover. Unfortunately even this slight venture into discovery has not gone without contention. I’ve never even met this person, and somehow, without the slightest appearance of wrongdoing, even this contact has been called into question. Lines drawn, walls built, borders guarded.

I have to ask myself, If Mr. Internet Guy, had turned out to be Miss Internet Girl, would her boyfriend be accusing her of being a lesbian and be freaking out at the thought that I was trying to convince her to bat for the “other team”? For crying out loud, Eve ate the damn apple people, don’t crucify me for it.

I know it’s asking too much for people to just have faith that they are enough…and what’s meant to be is meant to be. No amount of blame laid on other women is going to put your relationship into perspective for you. A relationship is between two people. Only those two make the decision to make it, or break it. So I suppose that I’m not your typical woman. There probably are women out there prowling around trying to swipe your man out from under you, but I have no intentions of being a home wrecker. I don’t want anything that should be forbidden by society’s views. I just want to be myself, meet others as themselves and enjoy what each other has to offer. If they don’t have it to offer, it’s never laid on the table for the taking.

I'm sadly starting to come to the conclusion that either women are just overly paranoid, insecure creatures, or women in general believe that a friendship between a man and a woman is an urban legend, the unicorn of present day when the man in question is your man. Jealously is an ugly reality unfortunately.

So here’s hoping that the guy who has changed my oil for the last 8 years’s wife doesn’t all of the sudden find that our laughing and chatting while I wait for my service to be completed has overstepped client / serviceman boundaries. How about my UPS delivery guy whom I just adore who makes me laugh each and every day when he walks in and lovingly says “Hey shithead!” We exchange pleasantries, we try to pull each other’s strings and he says “See you tomorrow.” It’s just how I choose to interact with the people I meet and see. I love that our UPS guy’s day just for a second might seem less dreary because we laugh together. I love that my oil change guy (Mark) looks less stressed when we are chatting away about the old cars he fixes in his spare time. I love the look in a person’s eyes, when they know, that you are sincerely interested in what they are saying or doing and not just full of shit. And that my friends, is what I am. I'm sincerely not full of shit, and if I speak to you, it’s because I actually want to know what you will say next. If I look at you, it’s because the sight of you is worth having. There aren’t many things in this life to which you can wholeheartedly believe are free, no strings attached kind of things……you just have to know them when you see them.


Current Mood: discouraged by human nature
Current Music: Say It Aint So - Weezer

A Not-so-Common Misconception About Me

A few years ago, I had an “incident” at college. On the second day of class in my Business Law class, I was packing up my things, getting ready to leave when I heard my instructor, who was an adjunct teacher and lawyer, tell the student he was talking to that he attends church three times a week. I said to myself, I know a few attorneys who could use to go to church three times a week. Not meaning anything by it other than I really did know a lawyer who would be a drastically better person if he attended church more frequently. That’s when I heard the following sentence said aloud. “You cock-sucking motherf*cking whore!”So when words like that are said, it gets your attention right quick. I looked up at him and he was staring at me with a general look of satanic possession. I tried to open my mouth to say something….anything, but then he followed that lovely comment with:“It’s ignorant people like you who think that all defense attorneys are scum sucking bastards!”

So now I’m a whore, ignorant and a cock-sucker apparently….With all of that said, I said to my Instructor “Sir, I don’t know what you thought I meant by that, but it was in no way meant to be offensive to you or the legal profession in general!” I followed that by telling him that my mother’s attorney who was handling her divorce was a real ass to her, and treated her terribly. He said that it was no matter, that I had offended him and he knew exactly what I meant by my “little comment!” I profusely apologized that he had taken what I said personally even though my intent was not to get my instructor to hate my guts on the second day of class, but he just didn’t care what I had to say. I told him I was studying to be a paralegal for Christ sakes, if I hated attorneys and thought they were “scum-sucking bastards” why would I be pursing a career where I would have to work with them everyday? He said to keep my opinions to myself because he didn’t “want to hear that shit!”

So yeah, I left class bawling! I was so upset. I mean, I’m not a mean person. I don’t say things with total disregard to people’s feelings. On top of all of that, even if I was a mean person with a total disregard for the feeling of others and on top of all of that hated attorneys I don’t think that would have made me a cock-sucking whore. I could be wrong.

So anyway, I ended up reporting the “incident” to the school; they supposedly did an investigation via the Chair of the Paralegal Department who called me the day after I reported what happened. Her response to me was that she didn’t think that he said what I claimed he said, she said that “maybe he was having a bad day” and also included my favorite “most student’s lie”……I explained to her I had absolutely nothing to gain from lying about this. She said that perhaps he gave me a grade I didn’t think was fair, and I told her, “It was the second day of school, we hadn’t even had an assignment yet!” Needless to say, she thought I was a big liar, so now I was a cock-sucker, whore, ignorant and a liar. Things just kept getting better and better.

During the course of the make-shift investigation into the matter, my Department Chair arranged to come in and speak to the class about what happened which was just insane considering it took place after class and most everyone was already gone when he said it. To make matters worse, the one girl who heard him say it transferred out of the class because of it so she wasn’t there, and the other girl who heard it was a personal acquaintance of my instructor. Before my Department Chair came in to interview possible witnesses, my instructor took things one step further telling the class that I had accused him of RAPE! RAPE, can you believe he took it there?! So now there was a whole new problem to face. When I got the phone call about what he had said in class that night, I was livid. I called my Department Chair at home on a weeknight at 11:00 pm. I told her what he said, and she said again that she didn’t believe me for one second. I asked her, why? Why would I call you mad as hell at 11:00 at night just to make up silly stories that a whole entire class could verify if you were to only ask them what he said prior to your little class time visit?!? Long story short, she never did believe me, he supposedly retired, and then while enjoying his retirement from his college teaching days managed to get West Nile Virus. I hate to point out the obvious, but sometimes what goes around, really does come around! ;)

I wish that was the end of my troubles at school, but it wasn’t. My Department Chair also teaches a lot of my legal classes. I managed to get through about a year before I finally met her for the first time in person. She hated me. It was obvious to everyone in the room. When I raised my hand in class, she’d never pick me unless I was the only one with a raised hand, and then when she did pick me, no matter what answer I gave it was not the answer she was looking for, even if was the only answer there was to give. This went one for awhile. I was always polite, and respectful of her. I busted my ass on everything I turned in to her because I knew that I wasn’t being held to the same standards as everyone else. It wasn’t fair, but you have to play the hand you are dealt, and I just had to eat shit and smile, because what other option did I have?

Well now I’m in my final quarter of college. I’m taking Civil and Trial Procedures independent study and my Department Chair meets with me one-on-one once a week in her office. I was nervous about how helpful she was going to be to me, and the jury is still not technically back on the issue, but so far, she seems to be more and more surprised each day that she doesn’t hate me. I smile at her, I do my assignments and I am always showing my appreciation for her allowing me to take the class independent and graduate this quarter instead of spring quarter when the class is actually offered again. So each and every day, I have to show her I’m not a cock-sucking, motherf*cking lying whore who’s ignorant and has a deep down hatred of attorneys. It’s a daily battle, but it’s one I hope in the end, I’ll win.


Current Mood: content
Current Music: Seether

The Night I Stood My Ground

Since I use this journal as therapy sometimes, I thought I would include a poem I wrote about my father....I write a lot of poetry and submit it to a poetry site (www.poets.com) and I read a reply on here to my friend Mike's journal that read: "I have found that everyone on LJ is American, 15 and thinks they can write deep poetry." So first of all I'm not 15, I am American, but I've never claimed to write deep or for that matter good poetry. So with that said, disclaimers in place....here we go...commence poetry now.....

Slumber awakened with a shudder,
Realization of trouble accompanied with stomach flutters

Police at the door looking for me,
Innocence no matter, for I was already guilty.

A flashlight cuts the darkness and hurts my eyes.
This fate inescapable with mere lies.
Light shining on my face now, the cop begins to speak.
I feel the need to vomit as my knees go weak.

I follow him to the car across the crackling ice.
I wonder if he knew he was delivering me to be sacrificed.

To the outside world he was a concerned parent waiting for me.
If they only knew the punish I would receive.

At the station, I was turned over to my dad.
I knew I was about to witness something i never before had.

We drove slowly home in dead silence.
I could see in his eyes the impending violence.

He marched me up the stairs, I felt him close behind.
Just he and I now and nowhere left to hide.

He flew into a rage and overturned a table.
Just further indication of how he was unstable.

A table then a chair, then to the closet door,
He came out with a gun and a look of wanting more.

He hit me, pointed it at me, then he forced my hand.
Forced my finger on the trigger and screamed his demand.

“SHOOT ME!” “GO AHEAD, "PULL THE TRIGGER!”
My mind raced, the idea had much vigor.

I held my position and didn’t move an inch.
Fear flashed across his face when he saw I didn’t flinch.

Uncertainty of outcome rang though the air.
I threw the gun across the room but didn’t break my stare.

I told him he’d made a mistake never to be made again.
And should he give a teenage girl a gun again, best be certain her name's not Heather Lynn!


Current Mood: Sore from working out!
Current Music: You Don't Know Me - Jann Arden

Scientology.....Not for me!

Does anyone else think Tom Cruise is completely insane? If you are a Tom Cruise fan…discontinue reading immediately because you are about to be offended.

Okay first of all, if only half of the rumors about Tom are correct, then he is certifiable in my book. So I don’t have a problem with his right to religion, I am not bothered by his rush to the alter and now to fatherhood, but for crying out loud, what is with the constant promotion of his religious beliefs? Do you hear any other famous people going around trying to convince the world that their religious views are the only views to have?

Now I spent the vast majority of my Sundays spent sitting in a church pew and consider myself to be fairly knowledgeable about religion. I’m by no means an expert, and I don’t know the bible by heart but I have a general understanding of religion, the 10 commandments and whatnot. There are certain things that seem unnatural to me about religion. Ex: Catholic Church’s views on birth control and celibacy in the priesthood. There is a lot of controversy about what is written in the Bible. Many would argue about how much of the bible is interpreted incorrectly, translated wrong, or just skewed over the years by the many influences that man has had over the distribution of religious teachings. All in all, religion has a basic principal which is easy to follow. It doesn’t seem to me to be controlling of the specifics, but advising in general. The day that the bible tells me that I’m not allowed to receive any pain medication while giving birth to a child, or that exercise will cure my down deep mental battles will be the day that religion will be evaluated as whether to keep it or not.

Religion mostly teaches you morals. The way to heaven by being a good and loving person, believing in something more powerful, having faith in something not easy to understand, and a way to find peace within ourselves and in life in general.

I watched the interview that Matt Lauer of the Today Show had with Tom Cruise where the debated the use of mood enhancing drugs and Ritalin being used on children. Sure in a perfect world, the use of these drugs wouldn’t have their place, but whether we like it or not, as far back into time as you wish to go, there have been mentally ill people. In the olden days, we’d just lock them in an asylum and throw away the key. We’ve even been known to give people lobotomies to alleviate their mental suffering. We’ve come a long ways since those days in technology and medical treatment of people with mental issues. All throughout the interview, I just couldn’t help but to see a man who is not enlightened, but engulfed by someone else’s ideas. He seems so passionate in what he believes, but his passion comes across as arrogant, judgmental and without reasoning. His views do no allow room for any other theories, ideas, or beliefs. He spews his views with total disregard and anger towards anyone who does not agree with him. Poor Matt Lauer just trying to have a friendly debate and nearly had his head ripped off by the wrath of Cruise. How can Tom Cruise honestly say that Brooke Shield’s choice to take medication after suffering post partum depression was the wrong choice for Brooke? Has he himself ever gave birth and experienced the aftermath it ensues? Had he walked just one day in the shoes of Brooke Shields then maybe he could say for sure what she should have done, but he's not her.

The medical community is made up of scientists, not scientologists. Just because you read a book doesn’t make you an expert in the field. If that were the case, I could read a book about anthropology and call myself an anthropologist. Unfortunately, it just isn’t so.

My Grandmother has battled Depression her entire life. She’s living proof in my eyes the benefits one can receive from a little chemical help in promoting good mental health. She’s battled the mental demons with every available remedy that offered assistance with coping. She’s read the books, she’s tried the vitamins, she’s changed her diet, she’s seen a shrink, she’s prayed, she’s went to support groups, she’s done everything and frankly, I don’t believe for a second that Tom Cruise is so enlightened in his religion to tell me that his belief in a man-made religion can cure what the medical community calls a disease. A disease that so many suffer from. He might as well say that Scientology can also cure cancer, AIDS and Hepatitis. The day they prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that vitamins and exercise will cure those diseases, I will eat my words, but until then, I just wish Tom Cruise would just stick to doing what he does best, ACT. Save pedestrians in the street, give money to charity, do all those things that make him a good person, and shut up about all the rest. Is that too much to ask? Go be a scientologist, just don’t condemn the rest of us for not eating the shit that has been fed to you with a fork and knife.


Current Mood: bitchy
Current Music: Country

Workplace Bathroom Etiquette

I work at a very interesting little business, small, but always interesting. Whether is my boss hitting his elbow and yelling “F*CK, F*CK, F*CK!” out loud while my co-worker Denise is talking to her pediatrician on the phone right next to him, or whether it’s Todd asking me how much my breasts weigh and trying to convince me to put them on the postal scale. Yeah, it’s a regular riot around here most days. Today though, I’d like to talk about workplace bathroom etiquette.

Here at work, we only have one central bathroom. It’s location is right off of the “break room” which actually is no longer a break room, well because first of all no body ever takes a break there, and secondly it’s been converted into a makeshift office with another computer, printer, filing cabinet, table etc. all jam-packed in there with little room for any “breaking”. So the bathroom is off the break room and the break room is right next to the copy machine where I spend a lot of quality time. Me and my copier, they could write love songs about the two of us.

Okay, so now that you know the layout a little bit, you should know about the atmosphere a little more. There are three girls including me and six guys working here on a daily basis. I fondly think back to the days when we had a female majority, those days now long gone….. Men’s bathroom habits, well the men around here anyway have some interesting ones:
1. Peeing on the floor. [Typical]
2. Leaving the Seat up [Typical]
3. Leaving handprints on the wall [strange]
4. Leaving the water running [Lazy]
5. Using the last of the toilet paper without replacing them. [just plain mean]
And last but certainly not least
6. Smelling up the joint so terribly, that it becomes absolutely necessary to mask the odor with something and maybe even be forced to re-wallpaper the room since the smell caused the wallpaper paste to disintegrate.

I would like to focus mostly today on #6. Now at my house, I like to keep air freshener right on the back of the toilet for those times when your bathroom’s freshness is questionable, but here at work, a different technique has been implemented.

Once I made the mistake of telling the other office staff that you can light a match to get rid of a bad smell in a room. Something about the sulfur in the match covers or neutralizes odors or something crazy like that. Anyway, I had heard it somewhere, passed it on, and now it’s a habitual office-bathroom routine here.

On any given day, our clients can come into our warm and friendly office and enjoy the wonderful aroma of a campfire, or small scale forest fire without venturing into the great outdoors.So come one, come all, bring your Marshmallows and hotdogs and head on over, we’ve got ambiance enough for everyone.

Lastly, and by far the worst encounter with poor restroom etiquette occurred the day of our office Christmas party. I won’t name names, but a particular staff member here used the restroom and did some pretty serious damage to the smell factor once again. I had no idea the nightmare that lay in store for me as I naively walked through that door and into the restroom. The smell hit me like a ton of bricks and immediately made my eyes water and lungs shut down air intake. I really did have to pee though, so I unbuttoned my pants as fast as I could. I stepped one step closer to the toilet and my foot flew forward. The floor was so slippery I fell down, hit my elbow on the toilet, missed knocking myself out on the sink and found myself on the floor with my pants pulled half way down. I was hurt, mortified and disgusted. Again I really had to pee, so I got up, placed my butt on the plastic toilet seat only to find that my butt, just like my foot did not stay put. As soon as my skin touched the seat, I began to slide like a kid on a slip and slide. I went sliding off to the side and wound up with one butt cheek dangling in the bowl and the other up against the tank which was mighty cold I might add. I tried to re-adjust myself and after a battle and some maneuvering, I managed to empty my bladder. I flushed my urine and my pride down the toilet, dusted my self off and that’s when I saw it. There was a can of pledge sitting on the back of the toilet. My Co-worker had used pledge as air freshener and turned our bathroom floor and toilet seat into an ice arena completely unbeknownst to a staffer with an urge to take a piss.

So moral of the story, put the toilet seat down, don’t piss on anything outside of the toilet bowl, if you use all the toilet paper, don’t leave a sister high and not so dry, put on a new roll, turn the water off when you use it, and NEVER, and I do mean NEVER use PLEDGE as an air freshener. The life you inadvertently take, might just be mine.

Got to go……have to pee! I dedicate this post my dear sweet, mild and meek cousin Rachel, and only she and Mike know why!! ;)


Current Mood: Could be better
Current Music: Red Hot Chili Peppers

Marriage: Fantasy v. Reality

Recently I found out a couple whom I’ve know my entire life was getting a divorce. They have been married for some 20+ years, produced two beautiful children and seemed rock solid marriage-wise as they were going into their older years together.It came as a complete shock to me that not only were they getting a divorce, but on top of that I found out the reason for the divorce was because the wife had been sleeping with the husband’s best friend for a year. I was just taken back by the whole thing. It shouldn’t be surprising though, I mean my own parents recently divorced under similar circumstances and I definitely never saw that coming, but again when I hear the stories of marriage decay, I remain stunned and find myself saying things like “Are you kidding me?”, “I can’t even imagine that ever happening!”, etc. When what is it, like 50% of marriages end in divorce? Why do we ever believe that any marriage is written in the stars?

I got married on October 7th 2000 and will be having my 5 year anniversary on Friday. Now, I got married in what some would call a bit of a rush. Yes, I admit, it was insane to marry someone whom I had never “technically” been out on a date with, but sometimes people just do crazy things. I didn’t want to put a lot of thought into getting married, I just wanted to do it before I got scared and got out of the relationship altogether. Now again you are saying “WHAT!!??” Call it shock therapy for a marriage phobia. I got married and told everyone when I did it, that if it didn’t work out, we’d just get a divorce. Now, you can call me a non-romantic, but what’s more romantic than loving someone as much as you possibly can when you can and not worrying about staying together forever, or thinking about how it will end. I told Keith up front, lets just do this, and if we can’t stand each other down the road, we’ll just end it. We said our wedding vows and meant them the day we said them and to me, that’s good enough. Even if I were to get divorced tomorrow, I know that Keith loved me enough to marry me, but I also know that sometimes, love changes, people grow apart, want different things, etc. Something as magical as love is it can’t possibly be counted on in the same way that we count on the sun to come up every morning. Love requires constant attention, work and commitment. When people get lazy, and just assume the love will always be there, they wake up and find out that their significant other has been miserable for years, or even worse, they are leaving you for your best friend.

I’m not afraid of failing in my marriage because I’ve accepted from the very beginning that it was a possibility. I told everyone I know that I’m hopelessly flawed and might make the worst wife ever, and that getting married was “part” of my life, not my entire life. Yes, I would be devastated if Keith and I were to go our separate ways, but I would bounce back, move on, and still find joy in the simple things in life. So it’s been 5 sometimes very long years and I’ve yet to drive Keith away or drive him completely insane, both of which are amazing feats in my life.....and sometimes those are the things worth celebrating!


Current Mood: Realistic
Current Music: Metallica - Nothing Else Matters

"Birds of a Feather"

It wasn’t so long ago that I had the pleasure of hosting a small get together at my house. See my very good, very old friend Charissan, whom I’ve known practically my whole life informed me she was coming home from Florida for a visit. I hadn’t seen her for a couple years and the last time she came home, I threw a similar get together where I invited some other old High School friends to share in my visitation with her. The previous get together went so well, I decided to do it again, but this time, bigger and better.

I contacted a bunch of girls whom many I’m still friends with from high school, and some I haven’t spoken to in years. Tracking them down, was challenging, but well worth the effort. I was the only common remaining link between some of these girls, but they seemed pretty excited for the opportunity to reunite after so many years. As was I. In all, when all the phone calls were made, and all the planning done, there were eight girls invited:

Jenny: the wildest girl I’ve ever had the pleasure to call my friend, she taught me the value of acceptance, for without knowing her, I would never be able to see that the actions of people, don’t always match the heart of a person, there is so many layers to the human soul, sometimes you have to look beyond the obvious to see the precious;

Stephanie: The most loyal, listening, honest, loving friend, who no matter what, has always been there for me. Nobody but her has ever understood my life or my family more, in dysfunctional families we unite;

Charissan: The girl who I shared so much with including my school bus seat secrets, hopes, fears and much more. Named after something her hippy mom would be the only one to know the meaning of, but if I had to tell you it’s meaning, it should stand for survivor. Charissan was a grown up long before a girl should have to be, she’s been challenged her entire life, and has overcome the kind of events that you only ever hear about, but never have happened to you;

Denise: my cousin who sometimes was more of a competitor than pal, but always loved, we shared so many holidays, smiles and memories, and we’ll continue to as our lives will always be bound together by blood; Tonia: The girl who supposedly corrupted me according to my mother but always loved me, also the girl who I would blame the cigarettes in my pocket on.

Tonia: was always right next to me, through the good times and the troubled ones, she was right by my side, riding in the front seat of my sky blue 1989 Ford Escort to which she had to crawl into the window of each and every morning when I picked her up for school; she loved me so much, she even married my cousin so we could officially say we were family;

Natalie: The sweetest girl out of my friends. I swear her heart is pure, I looked like a juvenile delinquent next to her…and I really wasn’t so bad. Natalie was someone who I spend a lot of quality time with, riding horses, eating bugs, laughing, band-camping, talking for more hours than I could dare count, and in the end still being able to pick up right were we left off.

Michelle: Someone whom I always could laugh with, but didn’t really become close with until after graduation. Someone whom I’ve had a great pleasure to watch go from a mere girl, to a college student, to a wife and now a mother…..she’s come so far, and I’m still amazed at her ability to just get better with age.

Jessica: The shortest girl in middle school. Cute as a button, even with braces, but always so much fun to be around. Especially while wrecking into fields while delivering band subs on Saturday mornings. Jess has seen the ugliness within people close to her, she’s been through the same family crisis that I have, and yet she remains loving and trusting and open….which is no easy task.

The day of the party, they arrived one by one, each one looking familiar and yet changed by time. They all were told to bring their children, which they all did, except for me, because out of everyone I have none of course, but it was really amazing to see a new generation of classmates running feverously around my house. They were little miniature versions of my high school friends all playing together as we had done so many years ago.

After the get together ended, and I was left in an empty house with nothing left but empty cups, paper towels and a pizza box, I remembered something my Mother always used to say. See she hated most of my friends and would constantly tell me, “birds of a feather flock together!” I HATED that saying. I mean absolutely whole-heartedly HATED it! I used to tell her that you could be friends with people without being just like them. I told her that just because my friends might do something, it didn’t mean that I had to. I hated that fact that she thought that I could be so easily persuaded into something I didn’t want to do. I mean, I’m an Osting for crying out loud; we as a breed are stubborn as mules and known for doing things “my” way. I’m sure she just wanted to believe my friends were corrupting me instead of the other way around.

Seeing the girls who touched and ultimately shaped my life made me see them in their relevance to one another. All of these girls, or should I now say women came from every walk of life. Some were wealthy, some were farm girls, some the children of broken homes, some just your average everyday middle class kids, we were all different and yet the same. Birds of a feather really do flock together because my birds, my friends all had that one thing in common: they were my friends. They were my family when I felt as though I had none. Without them, I have no idea what would have happed to me. To this day, I couldn’t be more honored to have been considered a part of their flock.


Current Mood: thankful
Current Music: Imagine - The Beatles

Ex-Lovers: Friend or Foe?

Can you be ever truly just be friends with someone with whom you’ve slept with? This is the question on my mind today.

Can the fires of passion burn out enough that they would no longer exist? Does a chemical reaction that turned into a chemical combustion ever be so far in the past not to influence your future non-sexual relationship?

It has been my experience that with ex-lovers that you have two options, be friends, or be nothing at all. “Nothing at all” seems just wrong in the aspect that a person who once inhabited your bed, and inhabited your body would return to being a stranger once the co-existence ended. In some instances, the relationship is so unhealthy that the connection needs to die, and die fast before things get out of control, but others…..I feel the need to hang onto. I suppose in some ways, ex-lovers are like trinkets you pick up while on vacation, you bring them home with you; you put them in a trunk, or on a shelf. They gather dust mostly, but every once in a while, you pick them up, dust them off and smile at the memory they provide you. After your walk down memory lane, you shine them up a bit, put them back on the shelf and go about your life as usual. People pass by, look at your life’s collection, many of them never knowing what your trinket means to you, they are unaware of the stories and secrets they hold, but you surround yourself with them so as to never forget the history. The idea of putting them into your garage sale is appalling and well just plain discourteous to their memory.

Now, I know how this attitude might sound unhealthy to some people….sometimes I feel as though it is. However, most of the time when I think about it, the only rationale I come up with is that I am who I am. I put such a high value on relationships with others that I wouldn’t want to throw any one of them away. I consider each of them a blessing in some way or another and the thought of that person, that relationship just fading into the past without the slightest hope of resurrection seems like it should be a transgression against humanity.

Face it, if you’ve slept with someone, loved someone, truly laughed with someone or trusted someone, you’ve invited them into your life and accepted their presence. Even if your encounter with this person was brief it doesn’t mean it is any less extraordinary than the most profound influences on your life. The mutual give and take, love and loss, invitation and acceptance of our friends, neighbors, family and lovers is the only true gift one receives in this life.

So, for anyone who objects…..to each their own I always say, you do your thing, and I’ll do mine.


Current Mood: Curious....investigative....
Current Music: Still Addicted to Foo Fighters....Best of You...