My life in a nutshell

My bike rides have been giving me a nice amount of quiet time to think…without interruption.

I get some great ideas for blog posts, only to get home and feel too exhausted to type them out.

Today, I was thinking that I really like to read blogs, but most of them are blogs that start off out of nowhere, give a brief "hi, I’m so and so" and there is no real sense of history, or who that person is.  I call them "Big Bang Blogs", without the evolution.  KWIM? Internet birth at its finest.

So I was thinking I might give a brief glimpse into my past life, BT, or Before Typepad.  Snippets from time, so to speak.

I was born and raised in Ft. Worth, Texas to an amazingly smart, aeronautical engineer father and a lively Italian mother.  <snore>  At my birth my mother hemorrhaged, and it was at that point that she claims she lost most of her hearing.  How post partal hemorrhage can cause deafness has eluded me all these years, but that is her story, and she is sticking to it.  It came in handy a time or two during my teenage years when I would yell "You make my life miserable" and she would roar in rage and frustration "Yeah, well, you made me deaf, so there!"  The one time she did that within ear shot of my father, I could hear his feet stomp down the hall across the flagstone floors, and in a flash he was in her face with his wagging finger saying "By God, don’t EVER let me hear that come out of your mouth again.  Do I make myself perfectly clear?"   

WAKE UP!!!  It gets a bit better.

I was a very busy child.  I loved to play with animals and was always into something.  I was independent from the start, and was always trying to escape my mothers overprotective, watchful eye.

At age 3, as the story is told, I figured out one day that if I ran out the back sliding glass doors, I could put a mop handle across the back and my mom couldn’t get out to catch me as I ran pell mell out of our unfenced yard, making my way to the creek in search of my beloved older brother.  A fence went up shortly after this episode, and I was trapped.

My love for animals was extreme.  I brought them home in lunch boxes, jars and little handmade paper boxes.  On any given day there would be a horned toad, tarantula, snake or some kind of rare spider loading into the carpool car with me at days end.  One day I brought home an enormous black widow spider and just about gave the carpool lady a heart attack as I explained to the rest of the kids in the car that the large pulsating egg sack that accompanied her in the jar (with many air holes in the lid) would be hatching any minute, releasing hundreds of baby black widows. 

I watched Jacque Cousteau every time he was on TV (back in the days when TV was actually filled with lots of good shows) and vowed I would one day be a marine biologist and sail on Calypso in search of exciting sea life.  At age 3, I once asked my mother if I could have a dolphin and keep it in the bathtub. 

Skipping the teenage years would be a good thing, as life in Cowtown was a real drag, and I longed to get the hell out of FT. W and start my life by the sea.  I was basically a good kid, had a steady boyfriend, didn’t sleep around, drank beer occasionally and did not do drugs.  A ho-hum kid. After graduation I attended a Jr college for a year.  My grades stunk in high school, as I had zero motivation to do well.  I rocked my first year in college, and got accepted to Berkley in California…….my dream was to study marine biology in California.  Unfortunately, to send me there, my father would have had to cash out on his entire life insurance policy and sell his first born.  Out of state was outrageous back then, so I enrolled in my second choice, Texas A&M University in Galveston, Texas. 

It was here that I learned that, living on an island made of crushed shell, in addition to its positives, also had its downside.  The island that TAMUG was built on is called Pelican Island, and there was only one way to get on and that was via a drawbridge.  This bridge would get stuck almost daily, so we coined the term Pelicatraz, as we would frequently have no way to leave our little mosquito island in the sun. 

I also learned at TAMUG that I loved flaxen haired men, Tecate, siestas in hammocks strung across dorm balconies, and that tequila can make you as sick as hell for days.  I also found my friend Tom, with whom I had a most excellent time and whom I shared many an adventure for over a decade. 

I had a boyfriend back in Ft. Worth and it was this person, and a lack of a GPA that had me reluctantly heading back to Ft. Worth at years end, and then on to Arizona, where I spent the worst year of my life. 

It was a very abusive relationship….mentally and on 2 occasions physically.  One of the defining moments of my life was picking up the phone and calling my beloved father and saying "Dad, he hit me" and hearing my father on the other line choking on his words through tears as he said "Girl, get back here to Texas right now!!"  He wired $500 to me, and I rented a U-haul, loaded it with all of my things, climbed into the car with my collie, pet parrot, box turtle and cat and, at the age of 20, crossed the Arizona dessert, the mountains of New Mexico, and trekked half way across Texas back to my family. 

I spent 2 weeks there, then drove back to Galveston to start over fresh.  Again, my beloved Tom was there to help me get past all the mind games that had been done to me in Arizona.  For this, I am forever grateful to him. 

Four months after my return, I got the dream job of my life and started training dolphins, sea lions and exotic birds.  I lived for each day that I could wake up and spend the day in the company of dolphins.  It was hard work, but so very amazing.  It was a time I will never forget, and will always cherish.

Through one of the trainers that I worked with, I met this really nice guy.  He was such a quiet and gentle person.  He wore wire rimmed glasses, wore paisley button down shirts, had blond, blond hair, surfed, did triathlons, and had a gorgeously toned, tanned body!  He spoke to me in a calm voice and watched me with curiosity, genuine interest and fascination. This was Bill.

Bill and I dated for about 4 months, and then I got a job in Florida with Ocean World, in Ft. Lauderdale.  I was hired to put together a bird show for the park, and I spent 5 months there.  During that time, I saw animal abuse at its worse.  Dolphins being hit with poles, baby sea lions taken home to stay in trainers bath tubs…..it was unreal.  I blew the whistle on the park, was fired, and then approached by a guy from a marine animal protection group.  Through him I gave a deposition detailing all the abuse at the park.  Heads rolled, people were fired, and in the end the park, which had been open since the 1960′s, was closed down for good.  Yes, republicans can be activists for our planet, sea life and oceans.

I had almost taken Arizona guy back at the time when I met Bill.  Whew.  God, I shudder when I think of all the joy I would have missed with my husband.  It reminds me of just barely avoiding a fatal car crash.   (If by some chance you are reading this S., sorry, but it is so very true, and you know it).

Upon return to Galveston, I reunited with Bill, and through the eyes of the man that was to be my husband, I healed from my ordeal in Arizona.  I learned that I was worth while.  I learned that I was a valuable human being with a great deal to offer.  I learned how to love again.  I felt satisfied and felt complete joy with life.  Surfing, running, hiking, camping, swimming, bike riding, sailing, and endless nights of drinking frozen margaritas and talking into the wee hours of the night filled our lives together. 

I then married this man, the one of my dreams, became a research associate at UTMB in Galveston, graduated with honors from nursing school, supported Bill as he became a PA, and then had 4 of the most amazing children with him.   

My life, to me, has been charmed.  Each event intertwined with the next.  I feel that there are no coincidences, and each part of the puzzle led me to the next. 

Good God, how I can’t wait to see how the rest of it unfolds!!