Karma

I was browsing on Facebook today on my lunch break and I saw something that seriously pissed me off for a number of reasons.

There was a story that one of the local news stations posted about Lance Armstrong and how his wins had been taken away from him. At the end of the post, it asked for opinions on if he deserved it or not. Of course I have my own opinions about it (which I’ll get into in a minute…) so I decided to read through them. There was one lady that posted three times: “Yep!!”, “Ppl he could EASILY pass a pee test… there is a little thing called synthetic urine… you can buy it over the counter… passing a pee test is the easiest thing in the world!!!!!”, and my favorite “& he probably GOT cancer from shooting up steroids!!”

Now, to understand why that last comment got to me so much and how much it really upset me, I need to go into personal details. This isn’t going to be an easy thing for me to write about so if I seem like I’m rambling, I apologize now.

 

My freshman year of high school was insane. I went to three schools that year. I moved in with a dad that I didn’t really know very well and then in with a stepmother that I didn’t know any better than I knew my dad. I moved from West Virginia to Ohio and left all my friends and any close family behind. But once we got here and got settled, I figured things would die down. And they did for the most part. My sophomore year got going without anything major, so I figured life was good.

Before Thanksgiving that year, my Dad was experiencing pain in “that” area (which I didn’t know about until afterwards) and my Mom pretty much dragged him to the doctor. Right before the holiday, we were told that my Dad had testicular cancer. They found out on either a Tuesday or a Wednesday and he was in surgery to have the tumor removed on the Friday of the same week. It had apparently been there and growing for years and no one ever knew about it. He was given the chemotherapy and radiation treatment options, but he didn’t want to be sick over the holidays. So he started treatment after the new year started. He would go five days a week and be hooked up to an IV for several hours and then go to work afterwards. He had three weeks off and then it started all over again. I believe he did four or six rounds of this kind of treatment.

It didn’t faze him much in the beginning, but as time went on and he had more and more treatments, it started to make him sick. He lost weight and started losing his hair. Anyone that knew my Dad before this can tell you that his hair was his “prized possession”. It was long, curly, and jet black. He kept the top cut short and kept the back of it in a poly tail. One day when he had more energy than normal, he was wrestling with my brother in the foyer of our house. Mom and I sat on the couch and watched. After a couple of minutes though, we noticed black chunks on the carpet. His hair wasn’t just falling out… it was coming out in handfuls. Mom and I ran around the room trying to pick up the hair before he could notice. But when they were done wrestling, we told him. Everyone cried while we shaved his head that night.

Sometime during his battle, he remembered Lance Armstrong and all that he was able to accomplish. Armstrong had battled the same kind of cancer that my Dad had, beat it, and then went on to win the Tour de France seven times. Not once, not twice, but SEVEN times. He figured that if this guy could do it, then he could too. I remember getting him one of those yellow bracelets for Christmas the year he was diagnosed. I don’t think I ever saw him without it on after that point. It was his symbol of hope… his own way of getting himself through it.

(Eventually, his bracelet did break. He was devastated. His hope was completely gone. So I found the Lance Armstrong Foundation on Facebook and sent them a friend request. Once they accepted it, I sent them a letter asking if they could send something inspirational to my Dad and I explained the importance of the bracelet. About a month later, my Dad got an entire box full of bracelets. Not a small advertisement box, but a normal sized shipping box. He has plenty to spare now.)

Fast forward to Spring/ Summer 2007. I went in for my yearly exam like normal and didn’t think anything of it… until the office called me and told me that the test came back inconclusive and I needed to come back to have another test ran. I knew at that point that something was wrong. I went back in for more tests and had to play the waiting game… again. This time, the results came back saying that I had “dysplasia” on my cervix. The office called again and told me that they needed to schedule an appointment for me to sit down and talk with the doctor. I set the appointment and went in. I had Dr. Dunaway at the time. He tried to explain to me what was wrong with me, but he kept doing it in medical terms that I didn’t understand. He seemed to get irritated every time I would ask him to explain what he had just said. Eventually I got him to tell me that it meant that there were some abnormal cells on my cervix and that he would need to do a biopsy. Biopsy was scheduled and performed and then more waiting. Only this time, the results came back saying that it had already gone to being “carcinoma in situ”. The doctor told me that I had 6 months to do something about it before it would get irreversible. I figured I should tell my family at that point.

Of course my Mom flipped out. My Dad didn’t say too much. But my Mom took charge in finding me a new doctor for a second opinion. She found Dr. Batie for me and made the appointment. I went to Dunaway’s office and got my entire medical file – after some “discussion” on whether or not I was actually allowed to take it or not – and took it to Batie’s office. He was fabulous. He described everything to me in great detail as to what my options were, pain level for each, recovery time for each, and how each procedure worked. He even pulled out a picture book to show me what happened with each procedure. I was in surgery the next week getting my cervix lasered.

As you can see, cancer is a very sensitive and “hot” topic for me.

But back to the woman’s comment… “& he probably GOT cancer from shooting up steroids!!”. If Lance Armstrong had any steroids in his system at all, it would have been from his cancer treatments. He was most likely taking testosterone supplements. It would be the same as if a woman had breast cancer or ovarian cancer and needed to take estrogen supplements. And those in itself are steroids.

But if you look deeper into her comment, it’s almost as if she’s saying that he deserved to get cancer. Maybe I’m reading too far into it, but that’s the vibe that I got from it. No one deserves to get cancer. No one. No matter how horrible they are or horrible the things are that they’ve done. No one deserves to go through that. It just happens, most of the time for no reason at all.

I believe in Karma. I believe that if you live a great life, great things will happen to/ for you. But on the other hand… Karma can be and will be a bitch. I feel sorry for this woman when Karma catches up with her. And the worst part? She won’t have a clue as to why her life all of a sudden goes to hell.

Fifteen, part 3

... continued from part 2 ...

11. I moved to Urbana, OH into my boyfriend’s mother’s house. This was both a good thing and a bad thing at the same time I think. The house was crowded… really crowded. Before I moved in, there were six people living there – him, his mother, his two sisters, his grandmother, and his friend – in a three bedroom house. After I moved in, his friend started staying with his girlfriend but then his mother’s boyfriend moved in. There was the living room which had the end of it being used as the dining room, the dining room that was being used for his sisters’ bedroom, the kitchen, the one bathroom, and the master bedroom. Upstairs were the other two bedrooms.

There are a few memories here that stand out. The best is when I found my cat – yes I still have this cat. It was the middle of winter and my boyfriend and I were at work – yes we worked together, that’s how we met… at Lee’s – and one of the other ladies there came running inside almost screaming that there was a cat outside that came up to her (the only cats that were around there were feral cats that would eat out of the dumpster). So I went outside and there was a small black cat curled up under one of the small bushes against the building… and he was shivering. So I went inside and got a piece of chicken that had just been cooked and tore it up into small pieces and took it outside to him. He ate it of course. But then he kept trying to climb up inside the drive-thru window – even when there were cars coming through! I tried to chase him off multiple times, but it didn’t work. I felt horrible leaving him there when we went home that evening. But when we came back the next morning, he was still there. So I went outside, picked him up, and put him in the car. We stopped at Petsmart on the way home to get things for him. His name became Shadow.

Shadow had a curious nature. One day when we got home, Shadow wasn’t in our room where he was supposed to be. Sometimes, his sisters would get Shadow out of our room to play with him, so we asked them if they had him. Neither of them had seen the cat. We finally noticed that he had knocked the heating vent off of the side of the wall (it was down by the floor and not really secured at all). So I started calling for him and I could hear a very faint “meow”. We followed it to the furnace in the little closet off of the kitchen. He was inside, but thankfully it wasn’t on. Anyone that knows me knows that I’m an animal fanatic, so when my boyfriend told me that there was no way to get him out, I flipped. He finally found a screwdriver and a crowbar and started prying the furnace apart. We tried to put the furnace back together once we got him out and did a pretty good job I thought, but it probably never worked the same again.

I also had my first “cooking on my own” experience while living here. The first attempted dish? Homemade biscuits and gravy. My mom had always made it look incredibly easy, so I figured I could do it. The biscuits turned out great. The gravy on the other hand was a different story. I browned the sausage, added some butter, milk, and a little bit of flour. But I didn’t know you have to take it off of the heat to let the gravy thicken, so I kept adding more and more flour. By the time it was done, I had used half of a 5LB bag of flour. And then it was too thick, so I kept trying to add more butter and milk to it to thin it back down. But this was an EPIC FAIL. By the time I was done trying to get it right, it had turned out to have the consistency of wallpaper paste which made it inedible.  

On another hand, I started Clark State Community College and got another car while living here. This car was a grey ’99 Chrysler LHS that had almost every option available. It had a 6-disc CD changer, sunroof, and leather. I sold the LeBaron and from what I was told, the engine blew in it not too long afterwards.

12. But after about a year of being there, we decided that we needed to get our own place so I ended up back in Springfield, OH at Dover Place apartments. It wasn’t a very big apartment… only about 600sq ft or so. There was a living room with dining area, small galley kitchen in the back, and a bedroom and bathroom in the front. It also had a small patio in the front by the door.

Things with this boyfriend seriously deteriorated after we moved here so there really aren’t many good memories here. It started with me being in college. He would tell me that he supported me in going to school, but then would tell me that he didn’t like me to go to class because he “didn’t want guys to look” at me. He would have an absolute fit if I got stuck in traffic or if class ran late. Even if I called him, he would suspect that I was messing around on him. Seeing as he continuously accused me of cheating, I started to suspect him of it also. I scrutinized everything that he did. There was a certain group of people that he continuously was around – even though I wasn’t “allowed” to leave the house – and I began to suspect one of these women. Granted, I knew that she wasn’t his type… at all. But hey, he was a guy and most guys I knew just wanted to get it anywhere they could, so I wasn’t going to dismiss the possibility.

Things continued to spiral out of control. I had completely dropped out of school but was still getting loan money, but I used it for us to live on instead of sending it back like I should have. We spent around $1500 on Christmas gifts that year. We bought a leather coat for my Dad, a bread maker for my Mom, and a Game Stop gift card for Boo. The rest of it went to anyone and everyone in his family.

Then in April 2008, his ’97 Olds Bravada kept breaking down and he was working in New Carlisle and I would have to take him back and forth to work. I had changed jobs and started working in Springfield Ford and had to be at work at 6:45AM. So I would get up and go to work, take my lunch hour to go to the apartment, pick him up, drive to New Carlisle and drop him off, drive back, work some more, get off work around 6PM, then drive back to New Carlisle to pick him up, and then drive back. That took a lot of time and money in gas to do, so after a couple of weeks, I told him that we either needed to get the car fixed or he needed to get another vehicle. His response was that he would only get another vehicle if it was a Mustang. And not just any Mustang, but it had to be a 2005 or newer so that it would have the new body style. So seeing as things were so screwed up, I figured if he got what he wanted, things would go back to being good again. So I bought a 2005 Mustang from my work so he could have what he wanted.

Of course that didn’t work. So once June came, we took a vacation to Mason, OH to Kings Island. I paid for us to stay in a suite for two nights, our tickets to the Beach and to Kings Island, and tickets for four of his friends.

The day after we got back, he got a late night phone call and told me he had to leave. He said that his half-sister was going to be sent to juvenile hall for stealing cigarettes and that he needed to go see her. Mind you, she had been in there before and he hadn’t seemed like he cared so I didn’t understand why this time was so much different. It’s not like she was leaving right at that minute, so I tried to talk him into going to see her the next day but he refused. So it ended up being a huge fight and he packed some clothes and left.

13. I stayed in our apartment for another two weeks until I moved back in with my parents. I couldn’t afford the apartment on my own and quite honestly, I didn’t want to be there anymore. My parents let me put my things in their storage unit while I was staying with them so I only had to have a few things in the house.

The month and a half that I was there was one of the hardest times. I already had trust issues from how I grew up and I had finally been able to open up to someone and let my guard down for a while only to have it stomped on. Thankfully my parents were there for me, even though I moved out in the manner that I did.

14. Once I got things situated financially, I started looking for someone to get another apartment with. There was a guy that I had gone to high school with that was also looking for a roommate, so we agreed to look for an apartment. Next door to my parents was a duplex and I knew the landlord, so he agreed to rent us the bottom two bedroom apartment. We were also able to work off part of the deposit by painting.

It was nice to have a male roommate. He didn’t hog the bathroom or tell me how to decorate. He didn’t mind when I put up pictures or mirrors and even helped with the Christmas tree. I worked first shift and he worked second for the most part so I was there when he wasn’t and I wasn’t there when he was. We were there together in the evenings a lot, and we didn’t have cable, so we would go to the library once a week and rent movies so we could have TV at night while we ate dinner.

It was while living here that I met Brian. I had been in the sales department up until that point at work but I needed a more stable check instead of one that was by commission, so the owner offered me a position in the service department.

15. There’s no set time that I moved into Brian’s house. Once we got serious, he eventually asked me to stay the night. He asked every night for a few months until he cleaned out some drawers for me and then I think it was implied that I was staying. But even though I was staying with him, I still paid my portion of the rent at my apartment so I could have a safety net… just in case it was needed… up until the lease ended. At that point, I sold a lot of the furniture that I had in the apartment and moved the rest of it into Brian’s house.

I started staying with Brian four years ago this coming December. This is where we have built a life together. He proposed to me here. We have family events here. We have our life here. I get kinda stir crazy sometimes from being in the same place for a while and there are times when I would like to get a house together to where it could be both of ours where we could just start over. But then I look around and see everything that we’ve worked to accomplish and stop to think that this was Brian’s vision when he built the house. So that’s still something that I’m battling within myself. I’ll keep you all updated on that one. But for now, the number is holding steady at fifteen.

Fifteen, part 2

................Continued from Part 1

6. (Horace Mann Jr High/Middle) This time, we landed in Kanawha City, WV. This house was much bigger than the previous two places. It was on a hill with a one car garage underneath the rest of the house. If you walked up the sidewalk, on to the porch, and through the front door, you entered the living room. The majority of the living room was to the left with the dining room straight ahead and a rectangular hallway to the right. Going into the hallway would lead you to my mother and Jeff’s room on the right, then to my brother’s room (yes, he actually had a bedroom this time), then to the room that my sister and I shared, then to a bathroom and a large walk in closet. The walk-in closet had all of my furniture in it other than my bed and nightstand. The end of this hallway would lead you back into the dining area. To the back left of the dining room was the kitchen and then a hallway. The hallway had a door to the left that led to the downstairs garage and to the right was the laundry room. At the end of the hallway was the den that had two sliding glass doors that led to the back patio.

I was living here when I finally “became a woman” (had my first cycle) and when 9/11 happened. I was also living here when something terrible happened to my best friend at the time (not going to go into details on that one because I doubt he would appreciate it being put out there for everyone to know). I had gotten the news from my grandmother over the phone… I know I had never cried so hard up to that point. But the worst part of all of it was knowing that there was nothing I could do to help him.

I’m pretty sure we were evicted from this place or very close to it because we left this place almost as fast as we did when we left Maryland.

7. (Capitol High) From there, we went to the west side of Charleston, WV on Watts St. This was our biggest house in a long time. There was no garage so we had to park on the street. There was what seemed like a thousand steps to get up the hill to the porch and front door that led to a square floor plan. Immediately through the front door was a foyer. To the left front was the living room and to the left back was Jeff’s office. Straight through the foyer was a staircase and to the back was the main floor bathroom and door to the basement where the laundry was done. To the right front of the foyer was the dining room (that had French glass doors) and to the right back was the kitchen and the back door. Once to the top of the stairs to the right was my sister’s room. To the left was a bathroom, then my room, then my mother and Jeff’s room (which had an attached bathroom and a door to the terrace), a door to the attic, and then to my brother’s room. The attic was one big room. All in all, this house wasn’t a bad place. There were hardwood floors throughout the entire house, except in bathrooms and the kitchen. There was plenty of space in this house for the five of us.

There are a few fond memories from this house. We were able to sit on the terrace and watch the 4^th of July fireworks that were being let off from a barge on the Kanawha River. I was able to walk to the mall from this house and I could walk to the Regatta from this house. I was also living here when I got my ears pierced – and passed out in the middle of the store (Claire’s) in the mall afterwards. We got a puppy – Simba. (This puppy is not a puppy anymore – from what I understand, he has become an old man.)

One day, my sister and I were cleaning out the basement so we could put Simba down there (Just for while we were gone or at nights? I don’t remember…) and we were moving an 80lb bag of Quikcrete that had gotten wet and had hardened. Her end slipped out of her hands causing my end to fall also – directly onto my left foot. I bounced around and cussed at her. I’m pretty sure I called her every name in the book before I was done. Once we got everything moved, I went into the living room and sat on the couch. I took my shoe off to rub my foot and there was blood everywhere. My mother took me to the E.R. and they had to reset my toenail on my big toe. It didn’t help because it still ended up falling off.

I was living here when I found a water bill with my name on it, when I found out that my Dad and Cherie were separating, and when I lost my virginity and the downward spiral of events afterwards happened. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read my “Old Lies” blog and it will explain.)

8. (Stratton Middle) As one of the results of the virginity debacle, I moved in with my Dad in Beckley, WV. This was a very small house, but it didn’t need to be any bigger because it was just the two of us. The living room was at the front and kitchen to the back right. To the back of the living room was a bathroom and to the left were the two bedrooms.

I was only technically living here for about a month, but I did like the time I got to spend with my Dad. Up to this point, I really didn’t know him well… at all. He was always gone when I was little and once my parents got divorced, I rarely got to see him. Most of what he had to eat in the house was frozen pizzas when I first got there, so we had our first grocery trip together very soon after I moved in. I was used to just walking through the store while my mother put things in the cart, but my Dad really had no idea of what I liked, so I got to pick out whatever I thought we needed. I started doing the laundry and would hang up his clothes and even match them for him sometimes so he wouldn’t have to do it.

9. (Stratton Middle) Not too long later, my Dad and Cherie decided to get back together. For various reasons I’m sure, but my guess would be they did it for me and my brother – Boo (Grant). So when that happened, my Dad and I moved into Cherie’s house. To the right of the living room was a small hallway – a bedroom on each end and a bathroom in the middle. The kitchen was off the back of the living room with a door at the very back that led to the basement. The basement had 4 rooms – a computer room, another “living room”, my room, and the laundry room.

10. (North High) However, a few weeks later, my Dad got a job offer in Springfield, OH that he accepted. We had two weeks to find a house and move. I ended up living here for about 3.5 years. The main floor consisted of a foyer, living room, family room, kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom. The upper level had another bathroom and two more bedrooms and the basement had the laundry room, a storage room, and two extra rooms – one of which was my bedroom for a period of time.

This is where I lived when I started finding out the majority of the things I had known throughout my earlier life had been part of a big lie. But other than that, there were many good things about this house and the memories with it. I graduated high school and was accepted to OSU. (If you’ve read “Envision” then you’ll know why I didn’t go there.) One of my favorite things to do was work in the yard with my Mom and Dad. I even stayed home from school one day to help Mom build a rock structure for her rose garden. I was living here when I got my navel pierced – and almost passed out again. This is also where I was living when I had my one and only “drink-so-much-that-you-pass-out-and-wake-up-throwing-up” experience. I decided the next day that I’m too much of a control freak and didn’t like it when the room was spinning and I couldn’t walk in a straight line. Haven’t drank that much since – ever. Not even for my 21^st birthday.

I also bought my first car while living here and paid a whole $200.00 for it. It was a white ’92 Chrysler LeBaron with a broken convertible top – my Dad propped it up with a 2x4 and then duct taped the glass to the fabric so it would stay up. It burned oil like crazy and the floor filled up with water every time it rained. It got to the point where I had a “rain plan” if I couldn’t get the water sucked out of the car with the shop vac before I had to go anywhere. I kept a pillow in the back seat so I could sit on it instead of a wet seat and I kept flip flops in the back to put on if I needed to and would just roll up my pant legs so they wouldn’t get wet. I was in an accident a couple of weeks after getting this car where I ran into the back of a Toyota Tacoma. There wasn’t a scratch on the man’s chrome bumper but the entire front end of my car was crushed like a pop can. I drove it to work and then back home when I was done. My Dad, being the genius that he is, hooked one end of a chain to my car and wrapped the other around a tree, got in my car, threw it in reverse, and stomped on the gas which pulled the front end back out. There were a lot of dents in the hood, so he got on top and started hitting it with a mallet trying to get them out. The driver side door panel didn’t line back up correctly so when the door was closed it wouldn’t hit the little button to turn off the interior light. So my Dad took six pennies, stacked them up, and duct taped them to the inside of the door so that when it was closed, the pennies hit the button. But the best part was the headlights. They were falling out so my Dad found two of the flattest rocks that he could and propped the headlights up.

I moved from here a couple of months after I turned 18 for a number of reasons. I wanted to have my independence – do what I wanted when I wanted with whomever I wanted – and to prove that I could. The opportunity came with the boyfriend I had at the time.

 

 

....... To be Continued ........

Fifteen, part 1

I’ve moved fifteen times. “Wow, that’s a lot”, you say? It’s ok. I say it too. Here is number one through five. The rest will come in Part 2 and Part 3.

 

1. (J.E. Robins Elem School) I started out on Georgia Street in Charleston, WV. This house was owned originally by my father’s side of the family. It was pretty small and next to a railroad. And when I say “next to”, I mean you could lay a grown man with his feet touching our fence and his stretched out arms would be touching the train tracks. It was a one bedroom house. As you would walk on to the porch and go through the front door, you would enter the living room. There were two doorways from there. To the left was the dining room and straight forward was the bedroom. And from those two rooms, there were entrances to the kitchen. So it basically formed a square. Off to the side of the bedroom was the one bathroom and off to the back of the bedroom was another smaller room. This little room was my bedroom and was the one that I shared with my brother when he was born. I’m not sure what this room was originally for though. Off of the back of the kitchen was the back door which led to a detached garage and the back yard. Eventually the front porch was screened in.

This house has my earliest memories. I know that I spent the majority of my time here with my biological mother seeing as my dad was a truck driver, but I really don’t have many memories of time with her at this house. I do remember that any time it would storm, my dad would take me on the front porch to watch the storm and show me that it couldn’t hurt me. I now do this with Timothy and Thomas. I also remember spending a day outside with my dad planting bushes along the fence next to the train tracks. I drove by there the first time I took Brian and the kids to West Virginia and those bushes are still there… taller, but there. One morning, I woke up and found a cat toy on the floor and asked what it was for which led to me being told to go in the garage where there was a kitten (Furman). We also had a beagle mix (Puppy), a stray golden retriever (Goldie), several rabbits (One was Bob and another was Nathan… I don’t remember the other ones.), and a couple raccoons. I’ve heard a story about me picking on Bob all the time and one day when he was out of his cage, he stood on his hind legs, hissed at me, and chased me around the back yard causing me to lock myself inside of his cage so he couldn’t get me. I remember finding Nathan at the playground outside of the church we went to and taking him home.

We lived in this house until I was about seven and Stephen was three or four. My dad had fallen off the back of his tractor trailer and slipped discs in his lower back. The doctors told him that he wouldn’t be able to sit for long periods anymore, he decided to go back to school. The school he enrolled in was in Beckley, WV so my parents made the decision to move to a halfway point. He would be closer to school and she wouldn’t be too far from work.

2. (Oak Hill Elem) The house that my parents bought was in Oak Hill, WV. Compared to the house we had before, the new house was a palace. The main floor was laid out like a rectangle. The front door led to the living room. This room had two additional doorways – one towards the back of the house and the other to the left. Going through the living room towards the back would lead you into a small room that I called the library (we kept the bookcases in here). Behind the library was a hallway that would lead three ways – to the back was a huge room that my dad used as his den, to the right was a bathroom, and to the left the hallway continued. At the end of that section of the rectangle, you could either go right to the master bedroom (which had another bathroom attached and was the same size as the den) or go left into the dining room. Straight through the dining room would lead into the kitchen past a stairwell. Off of the back of the kitchen was a side door to go outside and there was another doorway into the living room completing the rectangle. Up the stairs was a huge landing and a long hallway. By the landing was another very large room that Stephen and I used as our play room for all of his cars and all of my Barbies. In the middle of the hallway was a half bath (that was very creepy – I only used that one if the other two were occupied) and at the end were two long and narrow bedrooms side-by-side. My bedroom was on the left and Stephen’s bedroom was on the right.

This house has several memories also. I found a squirrel that was being attacked by a cat. I shooed the cat away and ran to get my dad. We brought it home and put some Neosporin on it and wrapped it in gauze. Poor squirrel didn’t make it, but we did what we could.

The last winter I was there was the host of the biggest blizzard in many, many years. We were under a state of emergency for two weeks – the power was out for most of this time so everyone put their food from their fridge and freezer into coolers and buried it in the snow to preserve it as long as possible. Since we were the only ones on the street with a gas powered stove, we became a heat source. We put up a blanket to cover the stairs so the heat wouldn’t go upstairs and turned on the burners on the stove. We also cooked everyone’s food and took it to their house or they would come over to eat. We would put snow in the bathtubs to melt so we would have water to flush toilets and to wash dishes. The snow plow piled all the snow from my hill at the bottom where the street became a dead end – once they finally made it to our street. But one day, I got the brilliant idea to put on my in-line skates and go down this hill… on an ice patch. Needless to say, I went down this hill unable to stop, flinging my arms everywhere, until I crashed into the snow pile. We also made some killer forts in this pile where we would launch snowballs from.

This is also the last house that we all lived in as a family – my biological mother, dad, brother, and myself – before my Dad went to live with Cherie, the woman that would become my step-mother and then my Mom. I believe I mentioned in another blog about when my biological mother had my brother and I put our dad’s clothes in trash bags and throw them out onto the snow. If you remember that, this is the place we were living at. This was just before the blizzard.

3. (Staunton Elem) We didn’t stay in that house for long after my parents separated. We had no reason to be so far away from my mother’s work or our family, so we moved to South Charleston, WV into a house that is owned by my grandparents – it was the house that my mother grew up in. It was much smaller than our previous house, but wasn’t too small since it was just the three of us. You walked in the front door from the porch and entered the living room. It spanned the width of the front of the house into an “L” shape. The top of the “L” lead to the galley style kitchen and then to the dining room area. To the left was another little hallway with a bathroom straight ahead and a bedroom on each side. My room was to the left and my brother’s room was to the right. Going straight through the dining room led to another hallway. To the right was the laundry room and back door that led to the carport. Almost to the end of the hallway was another bedroom to the left and the master bedroom at the very end. To the right inside the master was an attached bath. There was also a partially finished basement that was only accessible through an entrance in the front of the house that we had to walk down the sidewalk a little bit to get to. I kept the majority of my toys down there and made a “school room” where I was always the teacher and my brother was always the student.

I don’t have too many memories at this house that I’m fond of. One is when my dad was bringing us home from a weekend visit with him (those didn’t happen very often) and there was an ambulance in front of my house. Apparently my mother was having chest pains. Another is not having much to eat – there was one point where all we had was Taco Bell and cereal. In fact, we ate Taco Bell so much that I get stomach sick now if I eat it. And another is catching my mother with the first boyfriend that she had post-divorce – that I knew of at the time. We came home from school and she was on top of him on the couch. I had never been as mad at her as I was at that moment. I believe this is where we were living when Puppy and Goldie died. We buried both of them at my grandparent’s house in a little clearing at the entrance to the woods behind their house. Goldie loved to watch the deer go in and out of this clearing, so we thought that would be the best place to bury her. When Puppy passed, we decided she needed to be with Goldie. This is also where we lived when my mother met the man that she is married to now – Jeff.

*** When my mother decided to be with Jeff, we were supposed to move to Richmond, VA to be close to his son. Mind you, we barely knew Jeff. When we got there, we had to stay in a hotel until we could find a place to live. (We never actually moved there, so I don’t count it when I say I’ve moved 15 times.) One bittersweet thing that I remember from this time was meeting a little boy that would, unknowingly to me, become my step-brother – Nathanial. It was good because I met him but bad because I was not allowed to tell him my name or who I was. His mother, understandably, did not want my mother around him.

4. (Lexington Park Middle) We bounced around from hotel to hotel for about a month or so until we landed in Lexington Park, MD where Jeff supposedly had a job offer. We had a small apartment above a Laundromat. When you walked through the front door, you could go left or right. Going left would take you into the living room then dining area and then to the kitchen – almost in a “U” shape. If you went right from the front door, you would turn a corner into a hallway. On the left of the hallway was the only bathroom, to the right was my bedroom, and at the end was the room that my mother shared with Jeff. This apartment only had two bedrooms, so we took furniture and made “walls” in the dining area to make a “room” for my brother. We lived here for six weeks. (Yes, I said weeks.)

If you’ve read any of my other blogs, you already know what happened here. This is where I said my first cuss word. Not just any word – it was the F word. There was a huge argument and as a result, my mother locked herself in the bathroom and Jeff was trying to beat down the door. My brother and I hid on the other side of my bed on the floor. Finally, I had enough and went out into the hallway and told him that he was not allowed to talk to her like that and to get the F out of the house. Screaming, of course. I know I threw his keys at him at some point.

5. (Staunton Elem) We abruptly left there. And when I say “abruptly”, I mean I was told to pack my things on a Wednesday because we were leaving that Saturday. From there, we moved back to South Charleston, WV to a duplex where there was an upstairs and a downstairs – we had the downstairs and it was only accessible from an alley. The front of the apartment was in the shape of a rectangle with the galley style kitchen immediately to the right from the front door. Straight ahead would take you into the living room and it circled back around to the other side of the kitchen through the dining area. Off of the dining area was a hallway that went in an “L” shape. I don’t remember where the bathroom was in this apartment, but I do know there was only one. My mother and Jeff’s room was almost at the end of the “L” and mine was completely at the end. Again, we didn’t have a room for my brother so we made “walls” again with furniture.

We didn’t stay here long either. This is when I met my step-sister, Natalie. Not too long after she started coming for visits, she decided she wanted to move in. We didn’t even have enough room for the four of us, much less if we tried to make it five people, so we moved again.

 

 

 

To be continued.....