Are you wondering why Fast Eddie has an orange bandage on? Well....stay tune for the details about his latest injury and what it did to our checkbook balance!
I am in the process of writing part two of "The Lastest Adventures of Fast Eddie," but I wanted everyone who regularly checks my blog to know that it is in the works and will be posted soon!
Happy Holidays,
Sharon
Monday, December 8, 2008
Friday, November 28, 2008
I’m in love with a brown-eyed male…don’t tell my partner!
I’ve always been a sucker for males with brown eyes. From the moment I laid eyes on him, this one really got my heart pounding! His name is Fast Eddie and this is his story.
In December of 2006, Eddie came to us from Ohio, already named, at the age of nine weeks. He was so adorable as all baby Puggles are. A Puggle is considered a “Designer Dog.” This is when you take two purebred dogs of different breeds, in this case a male Pug and a female Beagle, and the final result is a “Puggle.” Back when I was a kid, the result of this type of doggie bonding was called a “mutt.” My, how times have changed!
Two days after we picked up Eddie at Bradley Airport in Connecticut, a friend came over for dinner. After just a few minutes of watching him, she announced that he shall be called “Fast Eddie” and the name stuck.
Whenever we take Fast Eddie out, especially when he was a puppy, but even now, grown men go crazy over him. They coo at him, they giggle, they rub his head, and they wave at him as we go driving around town, his head hanging out the window. My partner suggested that we hire him out to women looking for men. He is a guy magnet. The bottom line is wherever Fast Eddie goes, people smile…especially at our local veterinary clinic!
Our vets should name a wing after him what with nine emergency visits in a 23-month period. Yes folks, you heard it here first: nine emergency visits! Whenever we call, the first thing they say is “how soon can you get him here?” The rare times it hasn’t been an emergency, they end up being so relieved because they too have fallen under his spell.
Near where we live is an area called “The Old Hospital Grounds” which was a former state mental hospital. On the trails that wind through the property, depending on the season, one can find joggers, riders on horses, cross-country skiers and folks walking their dogs, mostly off leash. That’s where Chloe, our diva dog, and Eddie run loose to their heart’s content.
The first major emergency visit happened in April of 2007 when he was a little over seven months old. I am in the habit of walking them at the park before I goto work. So it was about 6:30 in the morning and I had Fast Eddie off leash (mistake #1 of the morning), when he ran under a bush and immediately started chewing on something. It looked to me like a round circle of branches, but it was too pliable. Then I looked again. Oh my gosh, it was a snake! I couldn’t get near him without him running further into the brush. I was yelling at him to drop it and he just looked at me with those adorable brown eyes. At that point, he folded the circle of snake in half and swallowed it whole! There he sat, so proud of himself with a little tip of the snake’s tail hanging out of his mouth. He then swallowed the tail and promptly did a belch that would make any man proud!
I panicked. I called the emergency veterinarian hospital. They told me I had a 20-minute window in which to give him a tablespoon of hydrogen peroxide so that he would regurgitate the snake. They also mentioned that I should run him around in the backyard so that it would shake up the peroxide in his tummy. Personally, I wanted to grip him by his little shoulders and shake him silly. I drove home in record time and poured a tablespoon of peroxide down him. I then let him out back in our un-fenced yard (mistake #2 of the morning), where he ran wild while I chased him all over the place. During this chase, he ate dog poop and some day lily stems (which are extremely poisonous to dogs).
At this point, I was ready to strangle him, but I hauled him inside and put him in his dog crate. Within minutes his eyes got really huge and he threw up both the snake and day lilies all covered in poop! Thank goodness for gallon size zip-lock baggies and paper plates. I used two paper plates and scooped up the mess and sealed the paper plates inside the baggie. By then, it was close enough to 8 a.m. that I decided to take him to our local vets. When I called en route to tell Devon of our unexpected visit, she just couldn’t believe that Fast Eddie had eaten a snake. Remember, this was only the first emergency visit and after awhile, nothing surprised them when it came to Fast Eddie and his exploits.
On examining the mess in the zip-lock baggie, (I could so hug the person who invented plastic bags), the vet determined that the snake was frozen. Even though it was April 25th, we had just had a cold snap. This is New England after all! The vet tech washed off the snake so they could identify whether it was poisonous or not. It wasn’t, thank goodness! Also, they wanted to see how long it was, and that required defrosting! I’d like to point out that at the time of this incident, Eddie measured 17 inches from his neck to his tail. And, the snake measured 18 ½ inches with a missing head! By the way, the snake’s head never did show up.
That’s emergency visit number one from our brown-eyed clown. Watch this space for more of the adventures of Fast Eddie.
In December of 2006, Eddie came to us from Ohio, already named, at the age of nine weeks. He was so adorable as all baby Puggles are. A Puggle is considered a “Designer Dog.” This is when you take two purebred dogs of different breeds, in this case a male Pug and a female Beagle, and the final result is a “Puggle.” Back when I was a kid, the result of this type of doggie bonding was called a “mutt.” My, how times have changed!
Two days after we picked up Eddie at Bradley Airport in Connecticut, a friend came over for dinner. After just a few minutes of watching him, she announced that he shall be called “Fast Eddie” and the name stuck.
Whenever we take Fast Eddie out, especially when he was a puppy, but even now, grown men go crazy over him. They coo at him, they giggle, they rub his head, and they wave at him as we go driving around town, his head hanging out the window. My partner suggested that we hire him out to women looking for men. He is a guy magnet. The bottom line is wherever Fast Eddie goes, people smile…especially at our local veterinary clinic!
Our vets should name a wing after him what with nine emergency visits in a 23-month period. Yes folks, you heard it here first: nine emergency visits! Whenever we call, the first thing they say is “how soon can you get him here?” The rare times it hasn’t been an emergency, they end up being so relieved because they too have fallen under his spell.
Near where we live is an area called “The Old Hospital Grounds” which was a former state mental hospital. On the trails that wind through the property, depending on the season, one can find joggers, riders on horses, cross-country skiers and folks walking their dogs, mostly off leash. That’s where Chloe, our diva dog, and Eddie run loose to their heart’s content.
The first major emergency visit happened in April of 2007 when he was a little over seven months old. I am in the habit of walking them at the park before I goto work. So it was about 6:30 in the morning and I had Fast Eddie off leash (mistake #1 of the morning), when he ran under a bush and immediately started chewing on something. It looked to me like a round circle of branches, but it was too pliable. Then I looked again. Oh my gosh, it was a snake! I couldn’t get near him without him running further into the brush. I was yelling at him to drop it and he just looked at me with those adorable brown eyes. At that point, he folded the circle of snake in half and swallowed it whole! There he sat, so proud of himself with a little tip of the snake’s tail hanging out of his mouth. He then swallowed the tail and promptly did a belch that would make any man proud!
I panicked. I called the emergency veterinarian hospital. They told me I had a 20-minute window in which to give him a tablespoon of hydrogen peroxide so that he would regurgitate the snake. They also mentioned that I should run him around in the backyard so that it would shake up the peroxide in his tummy. Personally, I wanted to grip him by his little shoulders and shake him silly. I drove home in record time and poured a tablespoon of peroxide down him. I then let him out back in our un-fenced yard (mistake #2 of the morning), where he ran wild while I chased him all over the place. During this chase, he ate dog poop and some day lily stems (which are extremely poisonous to dogs).
At this point, I was ready to strangle him, but I hauled him inside and put him in his dog crate. Within minutes his eyes got really huge and he threw up both the snake and day lilies all covered in poop! Thank goodness for gallon size zip-lock baggies and paper plates. I used two paper plates and scooped up the mess and sealed the paper plates inside the baggie. By then, it was close enough to 8 a.m. that I decided to take him to our local vets. When I called en route to tell Devon of our unexpected visit, she just couldn’t believe that Fast Eddie had eaten a snake. Remember, this was only the first emergency visit and after awhile, nothing surprised them when it came to Fast Eddie and his exploits.
On examining the mess in the zip-lock baggie, (I could so hug the person who invented plastic bags), the vet determined that the snake was frozen. Even though it was April 25th, we had just had a cold snap. This is New England after all! The vet tech washed off the snake so they could identify whether it was poisonous or not. It wasn’t, thank goodness! Also, they wanted to see how long it was, and that required defrosting! I’d like to point out that at the time of this incident, Eddie measured 17 inches from his neck to his tail. And, the snake measured 18 ½ inches with a missing head! By the way, the snake’s head never did show up.
That’s emergency visit number one from our brown-eyed clown. Watch this space for more of the adventures of Fast Eddie.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Other’s Obsession with My Hair…Including my Own
Ex-husband #2, while he was married to me, felt that it was his mission in life to continue Mother’s legacy regarding my hair and its imperfections. In the dozen years we were together, I had more than that amount of different hairstyles and not all were my choice. It was never curly or wavy enough nor was it ever long enough to suit his tastes.
One of his favorite choices made me look like a damn poodle! It was extremely curly on top and straight on the sides. Yuck! One time I tried one of those zigzag hair bands. I showed up to pick him up and in front of a group he said, “What did you do to your hair?” Absolutely nothing, thank you. You could tell by his inflection that I hadn’t towed the line as was expected of me.
In my experience with the dynamics of a relationship, I’ve noticed that when a relationship is doing badly, one side can withhold what the other so desperately wants. In our case, one of the many things he wanted me to have (the list was endless) was long hair and I just kept cutting it. Ear length, chin length, whatever, as soon as it started growing I had it chopped off. When we separated, I started growing my hair and by the time our divorce was final it had grown out nicely. Yes, he did comment on it. By the way, his favorite hairstyles were the ones that required hours of effort on my part, electric curlers every morning, hair products and a body wave every three months.
Now for reasons that are unclear to me, I’ve longed to be a redhead for years. I had several hair stylists tell me that I had the skin coloring and eyes to carry it off. Well… for my 43rd birthday, I had my hair color professionally changed. I loved it! I spent 11 years as a redhead and most of the time, folks thought it was my natural color. Even my GYN thought so and she should’ve known better!
All good things come to an end. Last fall, I started reading articles about how “gray” is the new color for woman in their fifties. I decided I’d go to my natural hair color, whatever that was, with a lot of natural gray as highlights. So I went to my favorite hair stylist of the moment. By the way, in the four years I’ve lived in Northampton, I’ve gone through six hair guru’s before I found my present one! I was never happy with the coloring job, or the hair cut or whatever. Because I never do anything half-way, I decided that I didn’t want to go through the process of growing out the color. So she used a number 4 electric razor blade on my hair. Yep, not quite a cue ball, but close.
The majority of folks in Northampton and at Smith College liked it. They marveled at what a nice shaped head I have. That was a big gamble I took, because really who knows what kind of shaped head one has until you have no hair to hide under any longer. The ones who didn’t like my new look either said so, or just ignored the fact that there were babies out there that had more hair than I did.
Ironic isn’t it? Fifty-two years after my mother shaved my head, I go do it. The difference this time was that it was my choice. It wasn’t forced onto me by someone elses desire for perfection.
One of his favorite choices made me look like a damn poodle! It was extremely curly on top and straight on the sides. Yuck! One time I tried one of those zigzag hair bands. I showed up to pick him up and in front of a group he said, “What did you do to your hair?” Absolutely nothing, thank you. You could tell by his inflection that I hadn’t towed the line as was expected of me.
In my experience with the dynamics of a relationship, I’ve noticed that when a relationship is doing badly, one side can withhold what the other so desperately wants. In our case, one of the many things he wanted me to have (the list was endless) was long hair and I just kept cutting it. Ear length, chin length, whatever, as soon as it started growing I had it chopped off. When we separated, I started growing my hair and by the time our divorce was final it had grown out nicely. Yes, he did comment on it. By the way, his favorite hairstyles were the ones that required hours of effort on my part, electric curlers every morning, hair products and a body wave every three months.
Now for reasons that are unclear to me, I’ve longed to be a redhead for years. I had several hair stylists tell me that I had the skin coloring and eyes to carry it off. Well… for my 43rd birthday, I had my hair color professionally changed. I loved it! I spent 11 years as a redhead and most of the time, folks thought it was my natural color. Even my GYN thought so and she should’ve known better!
All good things come to an end. Last fall, I started reading articles about how “gray” is the new color for woman in their fifties. I decided I’d go to my natural hair color, whatever that was, with a lot of natural gray as highlights. So I went to my favorite hair stylist of the moment. By the way, in the four years I’ve lived in Northampton, I’ve gone through six hair guru’s before I found my present one! I was never happy with the coloring job, or the hair cut or whatever. Because I never do anything half-way, I decided that I didn’t want to go through the process of growing out the color. So she used a number 4 electric razor blade on my hair. Yep, not quite a cue ball, but close.
The majority of folks in Northampton and at Smith College liked it. They marveled at what a nice shaped head I have. That was a big gamble I took, because really who knows what kind of shaped head one has until you have no hair to hide under any longer. The ones who didn’t like my new look either said so, or just ignored the fact that there were babies out there that had more hair than I did.
Ironic isn’t it? Fifty-two years after my mother shaved my head, I go do it. The difference this time was that it was my choice. It wasn’t forced onto me by someone elses desire for perfection.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
My Mother’s Obsession with My Hair!
My mother had many obsessions and one of them was about my hair. It never looked like the Shirley Temple image she had in her mind. It all started out innocently enough when I was 18-months old. We were living on a military base on the island of Okinawa where my father was stationed. It was very windy and, at the time, I had baby-fine curly hair. It was always getting tangled, so one day my mother couldn’t take my wiggling and crying any longer from the comb getting stuck in the knots in my hair, so she just shaved my head. Oh, yes she did! So there I was at 18 months - bald. Hair grows back, so what’s the big deal you ask? Well, it grew back very thick and very straight! God forbid! And that was the beginning of her obsession with my hair.
So starting at around the age of two, (remember my hair had to grow back first), I got the first of many perms I would have over my lifetime. One of my first memories was sitting in the Beauty Salon chair on a stack of telephone books trying not to fall out of the chair. I truly believe this is where my fear of heights came from. It was so far down to the floor and I could have gotten really hurt. If I had fallen, it wouldn’t have concerned my mother, as long as my hair came out curly. Also, I distinctly remember the strong smell of the perm and how my eyes always watered during the process.
I was blessed with extremely thick hair and the perms I received didn’t always react well to that. Our hair dresser at the time just didn’t know how to handle it. So my mother started taking me to the men’s Barber Shop on the base. One of the first pictures taken of me when we came back to the States was of a little white girl with an Afro! That and my speaking a mix-mash of English and Japanese was not well received back in 1958! Oh the traumas I went through as a young child!
Now both my parents lived through the Great Depression and were scarred for life because of that. So when we came back to the States, they continued to both work and save money so we wouldn’t end up in Debtors’ Prison. My mother was a Civil-Service Nurse (she worked at the clinic on base) and my father was a Chief-Master Sergeant stationed at Lincoln Air Force in Lincoln, Nebraska.
So one of their money-saving ideas was for my mother to start perming my hair at home. Impending disaster! She left the solution on way too long which resulted in huge clumps of my hair falling out. On top of this, I was growing like a weed and they weren’t replacing any of my dresses. During the late 50’s, no decent little girl wore pants! So there I was looking like Little Orphan Annie, (this must be where my obsession with red hair began) with dresses hitting above my knees, which was not fashionable back then, and very, very frizzy hair with clumps of it missing. Oh what a sight I was!
Fast forward to the late 60’s, when the Beatles (the band, not the bug) and flower children were having their moment in history with their very straight, long hair. Yep, for a brief while, Mother left the perm obsession and went to the straight-hair obsession. Which was fine with me. I learned to blow dry my hair using one of those domed hair dryers designed for home use. It looked like a huge blue helmet! I flipped back the arm that connected the dome to the electrical unit and made my own blow dryer. It wasn’t very small, nor very portable, but it worked!
Now I always tried to be a good, little girl and live the way my mother wanted me to (which is how I developed all of my neuroses and obsessions that I have had to battle with over the years). Ah, think of all the future blog postings you will get to read!
One of the many rebellions I went through with my mother when I was a teenager was over my hair. Go figure. In the fall of 1971, I decided I wanted to wear my hair in a Gypsy Shag which was all the rage back then. My mother would not even consider that as an option for me. So one day I snuck off to downtown Lincoln, Nebraska. Thank goodness for the bus system! I went to Swanson’s, which at the time was a very swanky clothing store in town with a salon and had my hair cut. I remember coming home and yelling for my mother from the first-floor landing that I had a surprise for her. She flipped! Oh my gosh, she laid an egg, she was so upset! She never forgave me for going against her wishes. Years later she would always shudder at the mere mention of the Gypsy Shag hair episode.
As the years flew by I found other ways to upset my mother, dating older men, staying out until the wee hours and divorcing at the young age of 25 (marriage #1) and so forth. But it seemed one of our favorite past times over the years was always arguments about my hair. To remove myself from my mother’s interference, I moved from Denver and eventually ended up in Virginia. She hated to travel, so I felt safe living in Virginia.
But like the good girl that I tried to be for her sake, I went back to Denver every six months and stayed for a week of fun and hell. Now let me tell you, for me to get from Northern Virginia (I was working in D.C. at the time) to Denver took hours by plane plus travel time to and from the airports. So there I’d be, landing at Mother’s doorstep around 11:00 p.m. (which would be 1:00 a.m. back East) after getting up at 5:30 a.m. And the very first words that came out of her mouth after having not seen me for six months was, “Oh Sharon Elaine, your hair looks just terrible!” Thanks, Mom. I needed to hear that after traveling many hours to see you. But unfortunately, I just could never please that woman no matter how much I tried and especially when it came to my hair.
So starting at around the age of two, (remember my hair had to grow back first), I got the first of many perms I would have over my lifetime. One of my first memories was sitting in the Beauty Salon chair on a stack of telephone books trying not to fall out of the chair. I truly believe this is where my fear of heights came from. It was so far down to the floor and I could have gotten really hurt. If I had fallen, it wouldn’t have concerned my mother, as long as my hair came out curly. Also, I distinctly remember the strong smell of the perm and how my eyes always watered during the process.
I was blessed with extremely thick hair and the perms I received didn’t always react well to that. Our hair dresser at the time just didn’t know how to handle it. So my mother started taking me to the men’s Barber Shop on the base. One of the first pictures taken of me when we came back to the States was of a little white girl with an Afro! That and my speaking a mix-mash of English and Japanese was not well received back in 1958! Oh the traumas I went through as a young child!
Now both my parents lived through the Great Depression and were scarred for life because of that. So when we came back to the States, they continued to both work and save money so we wouldn’t end up in Debtors’ Prison. My mother was a Civil-Service Nurse (she worked at the clinic on base) and my father was a Chief-Master Sergeant stationed at Lincoln Air Force in Lincoln, Nebraska.
So one of their money-saving ideas was for my mother to start perming my hair at home. Impending disaster! She left the solution on way too long which resulted in huge clumps of my hair falling out. On top of this, I was growing like a weed and they weren’t replacing any of my dresses. During the late 50’s, no decent little girl wore pants! So there I was looking like Little Orphan Annie, (this must be where my obsession with red hair began) with dresses hitting above my knees, which was not fashionable back then, and very, very frizzy hair with clumps of it missing. Oh what a sight I was!
Fast forward to the late 60’s, when the Beatles (the band, not the bug) and flower children were having their moment in history with their very straight, long hair. Yep, for a brief while, Mother left the perm obsession and went to the straight-hair obsession. Which was fine with me. I learned to blow dry my hair using one of those domed hair dryers designed for home use. It looked like a huge blue helmet! I flipped back the arm that connected the dome to the electrical unit and made my own blow dryer. It wasn’t very small, nor very portable, but it worked!
Now I always tried to be a good, little girl and live the way my mother wanted me to (which is how I developed all of my neuroses and obsessions that I have had to battle with over the years). Ah, think of all the future blog postings you will get to read!
One of the many rebellions I went through with my mother when I was a teenager was over my hair. Go figure. In the fall of 1971, I decided I wanted to wear my hair in a Gypsy Shag which was all the rage back then. My mother would not even consider that as an option for me. So one day I snuck off to downtown Lincoln, Nebraska. Thank goodness for the bus system! I went to Swanson’s, which at the time was a very swanky clothing store in town with a salon and had my hair cut. I remember coming home and yelling for my mother from the first-floor landing that I had a surprise for her. She flipped! Oh my gosh, she laid an egg, she was so upset! She never forgave me for going against her wishes. Years later she would always shudder at the mere mention of the Gypsy Shag hair episode.
As the years flew by I found other ways to upset my mother, dating older men, staying out until the wee hours and divorcing at the young age of 25 (marriage #1) and so forth. But it seemed one of our favorite past times over the years was always arguments about my hair. To remove myself from my mother’s interference, I moved from Denver and eventually ended up in Virginia. She hated to travel, so I felt safe living in Virginia.
But like the good girl that I tried to be for her sake, I went back to Denver every six months and stayed for a week of fun and hell. Now let me tell you, for me to get from Northern Virginia (I was working in D.C. at the time) to Denver took hours by plane plus travel time to and from the airports. So there I’d be, landing at Mother’s doorstep around 11:00 p.m. (which would be 1:00 a.m. back East) after getting up at 5:30 a.m. And the very first words that came out of her mouth after having not seen me for six months was, “Oh Sharon Elaine, your hair looks just terrible!” Thanks, Mom. I needed to hear that after traveling many hours to see you. But unfortunately, I just could never please that woman no matter how much I tried and especially when it came to my hair.
Monday, August 4, 2008
What is Family?
fam′ i-ly n. the members of one’s household; close relatives; a social unit, such as a tribe; a related group, as of certain plants or animals (from Webster’s Pocket Dictionary, 2002 Edition)
Since I was a small child of six or seven, I have been on the hunt for a family to belong to. Yes, I had two people in my life, which I called Mommy and Daddy, but we were not a “family.” We were three humans under the same roof and that remained that way until my father died when I was 17. Life improved somewhat, but in my eyes, the two of us did not constitute a “family.”
My vision of a family was a group consisting of: parents, grandparents, siblings and their girlfriends or boyfriends, aunts, uncles, multiple dogs, and a picket fence. Events such as: births, christenings, weddings, funerals, family reunions, and celebrating the holidays with huge dinners and lots of presents, were part of the picture.
This was not true in my case. It was always just the three of us celebrating Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. We never invited anyone over for the holidays, nor did we go to any relatives’ houses to celebrate. When I asked, “why?”, I was told that Daddy’s relatives lived in Philly, which was too far away to visit. And since we never visited them or they us, I thought that the East Coast had to be another planet, far, far away from Nebraska where we lived. Plus my parents were in their late thirties when they had me, so I only once met one grandmother, the one in Philly. The rest had died many years before.
When I was attending the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, I latched on to anyone who would invite me to their houses for the holidays. I was never happier, even though I wasn’t part of their family. It was always such a wonderful time plus great food to boot!
In my mid-twenties I got married (he was husband 1 & 2) and thought, finally I’m in a family. No such luck. I just didn’t fit in with their lifestyle. They were my first experience of what “a dysfunctional family” truly means. Husbands 3 & 4’s families were much better, but I had no history with them prior to meeting their sons, so it still didn’t feel right on either side.
So when ML came into my life, I thought bingo! I knew her family and they knew me because I was working with a family member, so instant family! How lucky could I get? Unfortunately, due to family unrest, over 90% of her family decided not to have any contact with us. We both were sad over their decision, but we moved on and created our own family.
Our family consists of three four-legged fur children (Chloe, Fast Eddie and Champ) and some really amazing friends and of course, we have each other. What more could one ask for? Finally, after all these years I got my wish. Last Thanksgiving, we had 13 people sitting around our table creating memories and having a great time to boot. Life is good!
Since I was a small child of six or seven, I have been on the hunt for a family to belong to. Yes, I had two people in my life, which I called Mommy and Daddy, but we were not a “family.” We were three humans under the same roof and that remained that way until my father died when I was 17. Life improved somewhat, but in my eyes, the two of us did not constitute a “family.”
My vision of a family was a group consisting of: parents, grandparents, siblings and their girlfriends or boyfriends, aunts, uncles, multiple dogs, and a picket fence. Events such as: births, christenings, weddings, funerals, family reunions, and celebrating the holidays with huge dinners and lots of presents, were part of the picture.
This was not true in my case. It was always just the three of us celebrating Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. We never invited anyone over for the holidays, nor did we go to any relatives’ houses to celebrate. When I asked, “why?”, I was told that Daddy’s relatives lived in Philly, which was too far away to visit. And since we never visited them or they us, I thought that the East Coast had to be another planet, far, far away from Nebraska where we lived. Plus my parents were in their late thirties when they had me, so I only once met one grandmother, the one in Philly. The rest had died many years before.
When I was attending the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, I latched on to anyone who would invite me to their houses for the holidays. I was never happier, even though I wasn’t part of their family. It was always such a wonderful time plus great food to boot!
In my mid-twenties I got married (he was husband 1 & 2) and thought, finally I’m in a family. No such luck. I just didn’t fit in with their lifestyle. They were my first experience of what “a dysfunctional family” truly means. Husbands 3 & 4’s families were much better, but I had no history with them prior to meeting their sons, so it still didn’t feel right on either side.
So when ML came into my life, I thought bingo! I knew her family and they knew me because I was working with a family member, so instant family! How lucky could I get? Unfortunately, due to family unrest, over 90% of her family decided not to have any contact with us. We both were sad over their decision, but we moved on and created our own family.
Our family consists of three four-legged fur children (Chloe, Fast Eddie and Champ) and some really amazing friends and of course, we have each other. What more could one ask for? Finally, after all these years I got my wish. Last Thanksgiving, we had 13 people sitting around our table creating memories and having a great time to boot. Life is good!
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
I Feel Like a Lost a Very Dear Friend…. in Randy Pausch’s Passing
I knew the day would eventually come, but I was still hoping for many more web entries from Randy. For months, I checked his homepage daily at http://download.srv.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/news/ to see what he had written and how he was holding up. But on July 25, 2008, I went out to his site to find that after a 22-month heroic fight with incurable pancreatic cancer, he had died. (My father died of the same in 1971).
He surfaced onto the public radar back in September 2007 when, as a Carnegie Mellon University Professor, he gave his “last lecture.” His lecture was viewed by millions on YouTube. He became an overnight sensation due to his positive attitude about living life and his words of sage advice. My two favorite’s are, “You can't control the cards you're dealt, just how you play the hand" and “Brick walls are there for a reason. They give us a chance to show how badly we want something.”
These days, you hear a lot about “The Secret” and how it has changed the lives of many. Well for me it was “The Last Lecture” that changed my life for the better and gave me much-needed hope. I would not have created this blog if it hadn’t been for Randy. And, by doing so, I was able to reach one of my life-long goals of having my writing published and read by others.
Tonight (July 29, 2008) ABC News will air a special at 10 p.m./9 central covering Randy and his life. If you want to see a man that has left a remarkable legacy and became a hero for the 21st century, watch it. If you don’t have the opportunity to see it, then read his book “The Last Lecture” or view his last lecture on YouTube. You won’t be disappointed.
I will miss you Randy. You touched so many lives and made such a difference for so many, especially to me.
He surfaced onto the public radar back in September 2007 when, as a Carnegie Mellon University Professor, he gave his “last lecture.” His lecture was viewed by millions on YouTube. He became an overnight sensation due to his positive attitude about living life and his words of sage advice. My two favorite’s are, “You can't control the cards you're dealt, just how you play the hand" and “Brick walls are there for a reason. They give us a chance to show how badly we want something.”
These days, you hear a lot about “The Secret” and how it has changed the lives of many. Well for me it was “The Last Lecture” that changed my life for the better and gave me much-needed hope. I would not have created this blog if it hadn’t been for Randy. And, by doing so, I was able to reach one of my life-long goals of having my writing published and read by others.
Tonight (July 29, 2008) ABC News will air a special at 10 p.m./9 central covering Randy and his life. If you want to see a man that has left a remarkable legacy and became a hero for the 21st century, watch it. If you don’t have the opportunity to see it, then read his book “The Last Lecture” or view his last lecture on YouTube. You won’t be disappointed.
I will miss you Randy. You touched so many lives and made such a difference for so many, especially to me.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Coming out of the closet...at age 49!
If asked what my dream house would look like, one of the very basic requirements it would have would be a huge walk-in closet. I love to organize and I like every piece of clothing, purses, scarves and shoes to have their very own cubbies. My last house in Virginia had such a closet. It had space for hanging clothes, shelves to hold clothes, a storage area off of that, area plus more hanging space for clothes. It was that area that I turned into a small private office. That was some closet! I loved hanging out in there. What privacy and solitude.
Up to that point in my life, I thought of closets as places to store things in and not a place to come out of. But come out I did….because at age 49, I realized I was gay and had been all of my life. It was a real shock to me since I had been dating men since I was 19. Plus, I had two ex-husbands and was married at the time to future ex-husband number three.
Let me tell you, coming out in Northern Virginia was quite an experience. I had people tell me it was a phase that I would soon tire of and that I was acting out to get attention. And the way they described my coming out was, “Sharon? She changed horses in mid-stream,” or “ Sharon ’s going through a mid-life crisis, probably due to menopause.” Oh please! What can’t be blamed on menopause?
The reason I came out was because I finally met a person who treated me as the wonderful, loving, funny, attractive, creative creature that I am. She didn’t try to mold me into someone I wasn’t and she understood what made me tick. The men in my life were always demanding me to be someone I wasn’t. To them I wasn’t thin enough, pretty enough, not well educated nor well-behaved enough and so forth. Also, I did not have breasts large enough for their liking! All I ever wanted from a man was to be appreciated for who I was and not for what they demanded me to be.
During my years married to men, I read a lot of romantic novels to keep me content and in my place. The plot line was always the same: the heroine would find a man who immensely annoyed her, but due to a maze of inspired-by-evil events, he rescues her. At the end of the story, he becomes her prince charming and they live happily ever after. Unfortunately, in real life, as we all know, it isn’t that simple. After four marriages (I married the first guy twice) you would have thought I would’ve figured out there was a problem. The problem was….I was gay and I couldn’t be someone I wasn’t and never would be. Once I had that epiphany, my life changed for the better.
Being a Lesbian at any age isn’t easy nor is it without its trauma-filled moments. Try getting a divorce in a white, male, Republican, Southern Baptist state because you are no longer interested in the male sex. A big oops! One finds out very quickly who really are the open-minded liberals among us and also, the ones who pretend to be….and never were. Another one of life’s lessons learned, that after years of filling up one’s closet with stuff so that you can hide from the world about who you really are, it gets so crowded in there that you have to come out, just to be able to breathe and be your true self!
Up to that point in my life, I thought of closets as places to store things in and not a place to come out of. But come out I did….because at age 49, I realized I was gay and had been all of my life. It was a real shock to me since I had been dating men since I was 19. Plus, I had two ex-husbands and was married at the time to future ex-husband number three.
Let me tell you, coming out in Northern Virginia was quite an experience. I had people tell me it was a phase that I would soon tire of and that I was acting out to get attention. And the way they described my coming out was, “Sharon? She changed horses in mid-stream,” or “ Sharon ’s going through a mid-life crisis, probably due to menopause.” Oh please! What can’t be blamed on menopause?
The reason I came out was because I finally met a person who treated me as the wonderful, loving, funny, attractive, creative creature that I am. She didn’t try to mold me into someone I wasn’t and she understood what made me tick. The men in my life were always demanding me to be someone I wasn’t. To them I wasn’t thin enough, pretty enough, not well educated nor well-behaved enough and so forth. Also, I did not have breasts large enough for their liking! All I ever wanted from a man was to be appreciated for who I was and not for what they demanded me to be.
During my years married to men, I read a lot of romantic novels to keep me content and in my place. The plot line was always the same: the heroine would find a man who immensely annoyed her, but due to a maze of inspired-by-evil events, he rescues her. At the end of the story, he becomes her prince charming and they live happily ever after. Unfortunately, in real life, as we all know, it isn’t that simple. After four marriages (I married the first guy twice) you would have thought I would’ve figured out there was a problem. The problem was….I was gay and I couldn’t be someone I wasn’t and never would be. Once I had that epiphany, my life changed for the better.
Being a Lesbian at any age isn’t easy nor is it without its trauma-filled moments. Try getting a divorce in a white, male, Republican, Southern Baptist state because you are no longer interested in the male sex. A big oops! One finds out very quickly who really are the open-minded liberals among us and also, the ones who pretend to be….and never were. Another one of life’s lessons learned, that after years of filling up one’s closet with stuff so that you can hide from the world about who you really are, it gets so crowded in there that you have to come out, just to be able to breathe and be your true self!
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