| School again, school again. |
[01 Dec 2003|02:19pm] |
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Being that I was in a pretty rural area of northern Iowa, my education actually started out pretty well. Again, the area I was in was a pretty strange mix of farmers (great crowd) and people who were completely unconvinced that the 1960's had ended. In a pretty good way, I do believe. People lived off the land, listened to a lot of Bob Dylan, and built energy and resource efficient homes.
Hell, mom worked (occasionally) in a food co-op. I can honestly say that I didn't eat actual chocolate until I was about four. Caroa covered fruit and yogurt covered nuts were my sweet treat. My babysitter was one of the first people to introduce me to Hostess Chocolate cup cakes. My mom really tried to get me to eat well. Anyway, I was raised in a fairly 'alternative' environment before such environments were dubbed 'alternative'.
The parents of young kids in the area were really big into alternate methods of teaching. Additionally, mom hadn't spent much time around kids, so she had no idea what the 'correct' way for a child to act was. She treated me like a person who just didn't have that wide of a life experience. So there were always books and music and toys for me to play with. My favorite thing though, was that she somehow found this massive piece of slate somewhere. Seriously, this thing (which we still own and which has been carted over 4,000 miles without breaking) stands about five feet tall, and two and a half feet wide. We had it propped in the kitchen when I was small, and mom would write the letters out, with lots of space underneath, and I would practice making my letters like hers. Same with numbers.
Additonally, I was always a huge book whore. I'd make anyone and everyone who walked into the house read to me. Mom likes to tell stories about how I would see my grandmother driving up the culdesac off the main road, and I would take off running up the stairs. I'd then drag down as many books as I could carry and greet her at the door with "Gramma! READ ME!"
Mom likes to point out that I always had a really good set of lungs.
Now, I really can't impart how rural this area actually was. This is still the part of the United States where you have to drive a mile or so between farm houses. Yes, I was in a very small town, but most of the population was made up of people over the age of 30. The only children in town were the two teenage boys up the hill (who I can't remember at all), the two kids who moved into the Bank after mom and I had moved out, and me. I was the only one under the age of ten in about a six mile radius. This applied to the rest of the county. As such, the school I ended up going to was what they called a 'regional' school. This meant that all the kids within a ten to thirty mile radius were bused in. Even with that breadth of territory, the class sizes equated to about fifteen to twenty with two sections per grade.
My school (for the year I was there) was North Wynn Elementary and High School. I was in the Head Start program. It was kind of an amalgam of pre-K and daycare. The program started in a trailor out building. My first memory of being there was walking in to the middle of a showing of Cinderella. Yeah, they knew how to hook me from day one. Give the kid some media. Heh. Anyway, by the end of the winter session, they'd finished construction on the main Head Start room. It was seriously cool. There were lots of little play areas, and in the main play area, there was a ladder that lead to a little loft. I always wanted to play up there. Never did because the world of clique's impacted even on tiny little pre-K minds. I wasn't friends with the 'pretty blonde', so I ended up hanging out painting and doing letters and numbers.
I'm fairly certain that the pretty blonde's name was Heather. The first in a rather amusing line of them.
Anyway, while I was in Head Start, I met my friend Julia. I'm not entirely sure that we met in Head Start, but we did go there together a lot. Julia was the oldest of four girls. She lived on a working farm with her parents, her sisters, her aunt and her aunt's kids. Her mother was actually the one to get me hooked on General Hospital. A couple days a week, I'd ride the van home with Julia. We'd get there just in time to watch the last half of General Hospital (Felicia was my gurl), then Julia and I would fight over whether to watch Scooby Doo (her choice) or He-Man (my choice.) He-Man usually won because I was totally terrified of Scooby-Doo. Yeah, I was a little wussy girl, okay.
Still, Head Start was really cool because we did all these neat, rather useful crafts. I actually made ice cream by rolling a coffee can packed with salt and ice around with mittens. And we got to go play on playground equipment. I was a rather large fan of the merry go round, and the little green scooters that you rocked around to make go. Fell off them countless times, skinning the hell out of myself, but I didn't care. I had wheels.
I never did actually go to 'real' school at North Wynn. The summer I turned five, mom (who'd earned her teaching degree that year) got a job in Southern Texas. Eagle Pass, Texas to be exact. Half way between Del Rio and Loredo on the Rio Grande river.
Something I will recommend to anyone who ever makes it up towards Decorah Iowa is to visit Phelps Park. It's got some of the best views ever of the Iowa river, an awesome playground, a neat little museum area, and you can hike all over town from there. You can even get to the Wal-Mart really easily. Plus, there's a fountain you canplay in when it's hot weather. ;)
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| Northern Iowa is actually a lot like Ireland. But with fewer potatoes. |
[04 Nov 2003|03:45pm] |
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So I really haven't described the area I spent my early years in. I still have family up there, so the memories are a bit fresher than those of a five year old child too short to reach the countertop at the local store. My conscious years were spent in a little teeny, tiny town called Highlandville, Iowa. It was about half an hour out of Dechorah, Iowa (home of Luthor college, and the Vesterhiem museum - the largest Noreweigan museum outside Norway) and about an hour and a half away from Lacrosse, Wisconsin. It was pretty damn near the Minnesotan border too.
The town, which consisted of about eighteen houses, ran along a road in the curve of a creek valley. Despite common thought, Northern Iowa is a very hilly place. Highlandville was nestled in a kind of meeting of a group of hills, so there are hills around it, and approaching it, but the town itself is in a stretch of alluvial flat land created by Buck Creek. There's great fishing and a really pretty little campground right across from the Highlandville School House. Which isn't really a School House anymore, but rather a general town building. There are dances (which are SO FUN!), and town meetings and town sales.
I remember this one town sale where they brought in all these miscellaneous items from across the country side and piled them all at the School House. It was completely fabulous because all this stuff was (I think) getting auctioned to raise money for the upkeep of the School House. I mean there was stuff everywhere. Farm equipment (logically), kitchen equipment, board games and clothing, etc. But the hit of the entire sale? The things that kids from miles around bugged their parents to go and see? A fully functioning set of drums. The snare, the cymbal, and the base all set up and ready for people to try out. I have this completely clear memory of standing on the School House porch begging my mother to let me go sit on someone's lap and have a turn.
She finally agreed and for three whole minutes, I was in hog heaven. I got to beat and smack and drum my little heart out. It was fantastic. And when mom finally dragged me off and dumped me in someone's lap (I was three, everyone was old, you do the math) I sobbed. Well, until someone gave me watermelon. I'm pretty sure it was that same day I tried to inhale an entire watermelon by myself. Picture it, the middle of July with the midwest sun beating down. No air conditioning anywhere, a porch with several rocking chairs and old men sitting in them. A pile of watermelons roughly the height of a small child (me), and the grim determination that you will finish this, so help you god.
Yeah, after making it about three quarters through the melon, I couldn't look at it anymore. I was completely wet from chin to shoes, covered in pulp, and when someone reached down to pick me up, I dripped. I still can't look a watermelon in the face. Or gord. Or. Something.
Another amusing factoid about the Highlandville School House is that it wasn't one-room. It was the 'elite' school that had a coat room and kitchen attached. And it had two outhouses. One for boys, one for girls. I'm pretty sure they haven't switched them out yet. As of 1991, they were still in working order. AND! They had the nice seats! The ones that you didn't fall into if you were four. Man, that was a bad experience.
So anyway, the main blacktop runs through the center of town. You can come in from three directions; the south brings you in from Decorah, the east comes from Waukaun and Harper's Ferry, and the North comes in from Spring Grove. In my mind, you always come into town from the south. This means you go by Big Canoe Lutheran (best pulled pork sandwiches ever!), and enter into town past the Egge house (I miss Gramma Egge. She made darn good waffles and mom still has the wedding quilt she gave mom and Bill), and past the first store. I'm having a memory blank-out right now, because I can't recall the family who owned it. (And yes, having more than one store was a big deal.) Right next to the store was a little back culdesac road that lead right past the Buttermaker's house (the childhood home I remember the clearest), and the Bank, then looped into the blacktop again. You went over this bridge, and then drove up past the Highlandville General Store which is on your left.
Now, Highlandville General has passed through a few hands (I think the Stark's (Strouds? Not sure) still own it. Mrs. Stroud/Stark was the nurse who pointed out my chicken pox), but when I was little the Goldbro's owned and operated it. If you've never been in a smalltown store, you really don't have a frame of reference on how cool they are. Basically, it's a Walmart shrink-wrapped into a 7/Eleven. Highlandville General was a hardware store, a grocery store, a neighborhood hangout, a restaurant, and a post office all in one. They used to let me put my colored posters in the front window to 'sell'. Mom always bought 'em, of course, but I was always thrilled when we went up to the door and my art was missing. And Dennis would always give me my 'profits'. I think the most I ever got was a nickel, but when you're four? High times, yo.
Highlandville General was also the only place in town you could get a 'private line'. Kinda. It was the only place that had a pay phone. And the pay phone wasn't attached to the 'party line' set up in the village. Yeah, we could call people just by dialing their four digit extension. That was quite a surprise to mom when she caught me 'talking on the phone' (I was totally facinated by that contraption. What, me? Talky? Pshaw.) and when I handed it to her so she could talk to Diane, she totally thought I was just chatting at the dialtone. So, when she picked it up and said, in a rather condecending tone, "Hello?", she was rather shocked when Diane said 'hi' back.
Anyway, got stuff to do, but if you want to see a hand-sketched map of the town, click here.
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| Time jumps are my friend. |
[20 Oct 2003|01:00pm] |
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Okay, so I owe you all the fun adventures in roller skating, and the explination as to why mom and I ended up in southern Texas for three years, but I don't want to write about that right now. For some reason or another, I was thinking about something that happened just after I moved back from Texas. Well, the year after.
So, moving from Texas was actually a really hard thing to do. A lot of stuff changed for me and mom, and most of it wasn't very good. Mom moved away from her job, I moved away from three years of work on getting accepted in a community, and we moved in with a man who we didn't know (at the time) was an active alcoholic. Plus, I had to leave a lot of my stuff, and my cat back in Eagle Pass.
Additionally, some stuff that happened in Texas (nothing really major, just the wonderful, normal child politics) really worked against me. I had literally no confidence in my ability to make and keep friends. I was terribly shy, not the most 'beautiful' or 'gifted' child in the school, and totally insecure about fitting in in this entirely new situation. Plus, home life was pretty unstable because not only was I getting used to a whole new environment, I had to deal with a stepfather (which is by itself a huge shift in the family dynamic when there's never been a father figure at all before), and that stepfather drank, so his behavior was completely inconsistent. And, my mother pretty much bottomed out with her own depression.
Mom has since been diagnosed with clinical depression and is currently on mild anti-depressants. You can see what this situation did to her. But me? I was eight. All I knew was that mommy was crying all the time, we were living with this guy, and he would yell at me when he drank a lot of beer. And when he didn't too.
The point to this short little depressing tale is that by the time my birthday rolled around (May of 1989), I didn't have all that many friends at school and I was pretty well emotionally shaken. Mom had been getting better (she'd joined Al-Anon, a very good support system for the family of alcoholics) but still wasn't exactly totally functioning. Anyway, she decided to plan a birthday party for me. So, I invited a couple of my friends to go skating with me (oh, skating... you are the bane of my early years) and we were all supposed to meet at the rink. I invited like five people.
Anyway, day of the party dawned, and mom and I headed over to the rink to wait for people to come. We waited for over an hour and nobody showed up. Damn, that still makes me cry. We later found out that we'd written the wrong date (not day) on the invitations and the three girls that were going to come just didn't know the right date and never bother to call. But when you're nine and have had the shittiest year in your life to date, that's not really the point, or what's important.
I went, in one year, from having a birthday party of nearly sixty people (oh, the latin culture does birthdays in style), to nobody. That hurt a lot. It still does.
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| What do you mean, 'rocks hurt'? |
[08 Oct 2003|08:02pm] |
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You know, the way I tell my life, it really sounds like I tried to kill myself on a daily basis. It didn't seem like that at the time. In fact, I was recently having a conversation with my mother (who still talks to me, surprisingly enough) about how I was a pretty obediant child. I really didn't do the things mom told me not to do. I just had a really good imagination, and did a whole bunch of things mom never thought to tell me not to do.
I don't really remember much of my second year, nor do I have that many amusing anecdotes. I got sick, screamed a lot, and was a generally obstinate two-year-old. Kinda bland stuff, no? But year three... Heh.
So, most parents complain about year two being the terrible year? Well, I mostly remember when I was three. Nine times out of ten, if I have a story to tell about when I was little it comes from the year I was three. When I was three, I got the chicken pox. Twice. Seriously.
The first time was in like January. I got really horribly sick with it. High temp, bad headache, and dehydration. I didn't nearly die, but I was one sick little girl. Thing was, I only got a few little pock marks. Admittedly, one was on the tip of my eyelid and killed the hair folicle on the end (thus why I have a weird pit on the edge of my eyelid wherein no hair is wont to grow), but otherwise, I had one here or there.
Four months later, just before my fourth birthday, mom took me to church. Now, I still have really fond memories of this church. Big Canoe Lutheran (not lying here) was a really fun Evangelical Lutheran church (the least crazy of the lot) not too far out of Highlandville. The ladie's circle could quilt and cook like no one's business. Plus Mom and Bill (more on him later), got married there. It was and is a really beautiful church, and I'm still a member.
So, Mom took me to church. She'd noticed a spot on my forehead when we went into church but thought it was a mosquito bite because 1.) May in Iowa, 2.) I'd HAD the chicken pox already. So, I was sitting quietly in mom's lap, watching the sermon. Forty-five minutes later, the lady in front of us (who happened to be a nurse) turns around to say hello, and basically screams at my mom.
"What are you doing with that child in church? She has chicken pox! Don't you know how contageous that is!?"
Heh. Yeah, it was my mission in life to humiliate my mother during church services. Mostly, it got me spanked, but more on that later!
Happily, the second time I wasn't very sick at all. I mostly looked like some rabid three-year-old who'd attacked herself with a permanent marker. I was covered head to toe in pox and itched like hell. Spent most of the week in a bath tub looking rather put out. Especially since it was during my birthday. Which, really, wasn't all that much more exciting than the rest of the year, it just meant I got a free trip to the bookstore.
Seriously.
Yeah, I was a huge bibliophile from the age of about two onwards. I used to see my grandmother coming up the lane in her car, and drag a huge stack of books down to meet her, then shove them at her and do Big Eyes until she read me the whole stack. I guess it was better than hitting her up for candy. Well, I did that too.
So, my trip to the bookstore had to be postponed. Happily, I got an extra book from my grandmother to make up for it. I am, and was, such a little mercenary brat.
Anyway, the summer of my third year was the first time mom tried to teach me how to ride a bike. The main road out driveway was off, was a gravel one, so you can see where this is going. Still, I think she felt it was better to distract me with something a little less dangerous than rolling down the stairs, and a bike with training wheels was it. Thing was, that main road wasn't exactly level. Plus, the man mom kept getting bikes from (he rebuilt them in his garage and traded 'em off cheap) really didn't know what he was doing. The first bike I got was a really neat yellow one with a banana seat. I was thrilled. It was aligned wrong, and every time I tried to ride it, I fell into the bushes.
I think the time that really convinced mom that she needed to trade that one back, though, was after I'd finally learned to compensate for the wonky alignment and kept going past the end of the slight hill we were on. I went past the bank (our old house) and straight towards the creek. Turns out, the steering had gone too. Happily, I went limp and fell into the bushes at the end of the road. I still have a scar on my elbow from that one.
The next bike was this red one. I had that for a long time. Even took that to Texas with me. It was an okay bike. I didn't fall into things anymore, but then mom limited my bike riding to our dirt driveway which hurt a lot less. Anyway, the red bike was okay, but occasionally jammed its chain. And it didn't have a banana seat. I was very sad about that.
So, that winter was the first one mom let me go outside and play with the big kids. As I've mentioned, our backyard was massive. A whole acre of cut grassland that sloped downward on a gentle hill. Read: Best Sledding Hill EVER. Plus, the bottom of the hill ended in the landlord's farmland, so there was no busy street or insta-death for kids who came over to play.
Mom worked it out with the kids that they were allowed to sled on our hill as long as they all kept an eye on me, and brought me in when I got tired. They were all good with this (farm kids, lots of siblings), so I got to go and sled with everyone. By this point, I'd realized something very important. That I was massively pissed off that I couldn't do things larger kids could do just because I was 4. I struggled with that frustration until I turned 21 and could say "SCREW YOU!" to everyone.
Because of this repressed anger, I tried to prove myself 'just as good' as the larger kids in every aspect. Including staying outside as long as possible and dragging my sled (bright orange! I still have it in the garage!) along with me time, after time, after time. In fact, it got to the point where all the other kids were whining about wanting hot chocolate that mom was handing out, and I was still raring to go. Mom, literally, had to pull me in by my snowsuit every time the kids came over.
Admittedly, this won me huge cred with all the random neighborhood kids (and by this, I mean the teenagers from 30 miles around) because I would do pretty much anything. And I had the Insane Luck to back it up. Example: They tied me to a toboggan with a dog and sent me down the hill. Looking back, it was all rather stupid, but I was four, and there you go.
This was also the the year I managed to give myself a concussion putting on my snow suit. As you might have deduced, I was very much into the 'I can do it myself!' portion of my youth. This extended to getting myself into my purple and pink snowsuit. I loved that thing. It kept my ass completely warm all winter long. So, one afternoon, I was wanting to get myself ready to go outside and play. Mom had asked me if I needed help (that woman learned early), and I pretty much turned her down flat. But with more screaming and stomping.
So, I went into the foyer to get everything on. Now, getting into this suit was rather something of a trick, because I was starting to grow out of it, so it was a bit tight. Read: I had to do a hell of a lot of wiggling to get myself into this thing unless my mother lifted the snowsuit up and off the ground with me in it, allowing gravity to help out. So, I was jack-knifing back and forth like nobody's business and didn't notice getting really close to the wooden door frame leading into the parlor.
Yep. Face-first bending as far as I could inwards. Gave myself a bloody nose that didn't stop running for like five minutes. Plus, it really stained the wood on the frame. To the point that you could still make out a red stain on that trim when we moved out two years later. After that, I let my mother put my snowsuit on.
Okay! So, we didn't get to rollerskating (yet), but next time! Rollerskating and A.j. and Mom's big adventure: Texas.
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| The first year. |
[06 Oct 2003|05:02pm] |
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Okay, so where was I? Oh, right. I'd been born.
Anyway, so when mom gets up from her nap and I'm all more conscious and not screaming, she calls up my grandparents (yes, the crazy ones, but more on that later!) So, my grandfather cries, my grandmother yells at mom for not calling them when she went into labor (Mom's response: "Hello! In LABOR!"), and they agree to come up and 'help her out' and see me.
Being me, I had to make things difficult, and I didn't get to leave the hospital until I'd put on some weight (first and last time in my life *that* ever happened). The doctor (Dr. Brey, who was cool and had like six kids himself, so knew damn near everything about every childhood malady in the books) told mom that she could take me home if I broke 5lbs 5ounces. Took me a week of constant eating, but I managed it. Mom went home with me and tons of doll clothes (I was too small to fit anything else) at the end of the next week.
She had to make up finals, but the professors were kind of understanding as she waved me under their noses. ("Yeah, child ripped from womb. Now, about that civics test...")
So, my official 'debut' into North Eastern Iowan social circles was at the June Strawberry Fest. The area I was born in is really known for its strawberries (and sweet corn, but it's IOWA, so no surprise there), and the local Lutheran church (Big Canoe, and no, I'm not kidding) threw a Strawberry Fest every year. Everything had a strawberry theme, from the strawberry soda (made by a local soda manufacturer) to fresh strawberry shortcake and ice cream. Mom took me and I was duely coo'd over and adopted as the area 'convenient grandchild'.
Yeah, the town we ended up living in? Had eighteen houses. Four were empty, two had single-mom's aged 40ish with teenage kids, and the rest were filled with people who's grandkids had moved into town about thirty miles away. Insta-grandkid.
Still, we didn't live in that town until I was about seven months old. Before that, we lived out in this rented farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. Mom'd done it all up so that it was nice to sleep in. Thing was, that fall, they cleaned out the grain bins, so the rats had to find other food sources. Mom freaked out when she found rats in the house, especially with me there. She ended up shoving my crib away from all the walls because the rats could climb the drapes and *jump*.
Needless to say, we moved ASAP, but not before I got really sick that winter. Mom was freaking out because I couldn't keep fluids down, so she almost had to ride the snow plow in to Waukan hospital. (Of COURSE I had to get sick during one of the 1980's worst blizzards. Are you seeing a pattern in my life yet?) Luckily, the nurse suggested some kind of sugar-water concoction that I kept down, so Mom didn't have to ride in thirty miles on a snowplow with a screaming baby.
Anyway, we eventually moved into Highlandville with the nice old folks and the two stores. There were TWO! In one town! And amusingly, that really is a big deal in that area of the woods. Mom liked Highlandville. It was a nice area and the old folks were pretty okay with her being an unmarried mother with a munchkin. Again, the whole 'insta-grandkid' thing.
So, we moved into the old bank. In later years, it turned into a really awesome home. It had this really cool downstairs that was all open and high-ceilinged, and a kickass loft upstairs. Unfortunately, when we were in it, the roof was caving in, and the pipes didn't always work. She kinda freaked out at the landlord about the roof caving in (a good choice, I feel), and he moved her over to the Buttermaker's house.
Still, it was after I turned one that we left the bank. I know this because I have several really adorable pictures of me sitting in my red wagon waving a stick around smeared in cake. Mom said my first birthday was a pretty big blowout, as most of her friends, and all the townspeople showed up and rocked out. Considering mom was in and around some of the last pocket of hippies in the area, I tend to believe her.
Anyway, we stayed in the Buttermaker's house until I was five. It was a really cool place. It was hidden behind this largeish hedge that grew up and together and left this fun series of tunnels naturally created by branches underneath. The backyard was an acre big (which sucked major noogies for mom during the summer months when she had to mow the whole thing two or three times a week), an had apple trees lining the back edge. Tried climbing those when I got tall enough to reach the low branches, but I sucked at it. Bad upper body strength is kind of a theme to my existence. Along with folk music. *shrug*
Behind us up the hill there were three people and two houses. The one house had this lady who was going through a divorce and had the Demon Dog of Hell. I used to like to play in the back yard and wander around the middle bit. Thing was, she'd release the dog, just when I'd be over the center line bit, and it would come running after me, and I'd go running for the back door screaming my head off, and then I'd be pounding on the back door and it'd nearly kill me.
Yes, I was chased by a dog. A big, mean one.
Still, that changed when the grandfather built a wire cage-thing so my mom could keep me contained. Being my mother, she taught me how to open and close the latch, so I didn't have to bang on the backdoor for her to save me from the crazy dog. I could just run inside the enclosure thingie, and shut the door so it wouldn't eat me. Grandpa put in a sandbox to keep me entertained and away from the other sandbox.
Yeah, the other sandbox? It was a big tractor tire filled with sand. Thing was, without telling me, mom got a new tire tractor with new sand, and the one spring, I went out to play. Again, no one had informed me that there was a NEW sandbox, so I wandered back to the old one and sat in to play. Unfortunately, the old one had become old because Mom had found a nest of hornets in it. Being me, I sat on the damn thing.
Five minutes later, I was screaming my head off and covered in the damn things. Got stung nearly thirty times, and the only reason I didn't die was because the nurse up the hill made mom soak bread in milk and put it over the stings. Got the poison out. Lord knows I never went near THAT tire again...
The other two guys up the hill from me were this set of brothers. They (along with a lot of other older men in the area) were a little odd, but really sweet. Mom used to make them apple brown betty and soup occasionally because she wanted to make sure they were eating right. As thanks, the older brother (name-blanking right now), carved mom this continuous wooden chain that's still hanging in our living room. It's beautiful craftsmanship and something that's always hung in our home, nomatter where we were/are. Maybe it's a good luck charm. I'd like to think that.
Anyway, the two brothers were fairly decent people. They were more than a bit eccentric, but I was never scared of them. And they both had these amazing collections. When the older brother died (I think I was about four), they had this huge estate sale after they'd cleared the house. The thing I remember most was my neighbor (the only other girl even close to my age in a twenty mile radius. She was a twelve year old girl,) bought this amazing circus miniature set for $10. All the little animals and people were hand-carved and came with this beautiful big-top set up. I think mom was really sad to see them go, in a way.
It's always handy having two crazy old men up the hill.
Well, all for tonight. Next time! Learning to skate on gravel! And why bushes don't make good falling breaks when learning to ride without training wheels.
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| Birth. |
[06 Oct 2003|04:52pm] |
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corr's - when the stars go blue |
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Um... So. My life's story in under 10,000 words. I can do this. No, I really can. Maybe...
So! I was born to my mother in the early hours of May 22, 1980. My conception and arrival is kind of an interesting story. My mom met my dad at one of his family reunions. Apparently the Hammel side of my family is *massive* and mom was friends with one of his (hundreds) of cousins. She went along and met my dad. Bad bit: My dad happened to be married to his wife at the time.
Edit 10/25/03: Actually, mom and I had a talk about her meeting my father recently, and I (apparently) had the wrong story. My mother was sitting eating something in her car at a fast food restaurant when some guy backed into her and damaged her car. She went shopping around for the best person to do the bodywork, and went to my dad's body shop. She was really amused when she pointed out that he didn't get the bid. Yes, my mother and I are both evil like that.
Anyway, he apparently chatted her up, but she was having none of it (because it was my mom and we're scary-similar). She ended up meeting him again a few times. Then she ended up working in the county clerk's office (I think) with a good friend of my dad's wife. This lady warned mom that my dad was a bit of a player, and mom was all "Mmmhmm. I know. Not going there." And it would have been kinda tacky of her to date my dad while having one of my dad's wife's best friends as her supervisor.
So she didn't.
Until after she'd moved on from that job and she decided 'Why not?'. Then she said she wouldn't mind if he stopped by sometime. Mom was laughing when she told me that when she got home that night, he was waiting for her. According to her, I got my persistence and my high endorphin level from him.
Anyway, Mom and he bonded because they were both a little emotionally needy/unstable (Mom has insane parents who we'll get to eventually, and my dad's wife blamed him because she dropped their second youngest son and he got a little 'slow'). They dated over the summer but decided that since mom was going back to school that that was all they really needed to do, and I was a result of some 'fond farewells' and my mother's reliance on the rhythm method. Heh.
Needless to say, she started the pill not long after I was born.
Anyway, mom was at a 'place in her life' where she felt she could care for a child, so she did all the prenatal good stuff and kinda waited. Looking back, wanting someone to spend holidays with was not the best reason for spawning, but mom wasn't in the best emotional spot, so I really can't slam her logic. Plus, y'know. Alive over here.
I was actually supposed to be due on June 20, but Mom was getting ready for her spring finals when, BAM! Her water broke. Because my dad already had four kids
with his wife (and one with another woman), he wasn't real involved in mom's pregnancy, and being at the birth was kinda out, so mom had her friend Beth be
her birth coach. Beth is cool. She and her husband John have this Norwegian Folk band that plays traditional music. They got recorded at the Smithsonian because it was so traditional.
Anyway! Mom called Beth up, but there was a minor problem. Mom was going to Waukan, IA's hospital to have me, and she was in Calmar. Beth didn't know how to get from Calmar to Waukan. So, they ended up driving around the backroads of Iowa until about 1am (Mom's labor started at 11pm) trying to find the hospital. Mom told me she'd ended up leaning backwards across the front seat because that hurt less.
So, they finally make it to the hospital, and the nurses are all excited until they find out mom's only like 6cm dialated. Mom's all fine with this and decides to walk around and do her thing. However, this is before the whole 'letting gravity help' was popular among the medical staff, and the nurses were chasing her around trying to get her to sit down or take drugs or something. Mom brushed 'em off for awhile, walked, went back to her room and slept for two hours.
When she woke up, she sent Beth to find a nurse because she was feeling the urge to push. Nurses came, checked, drug her to the delivery room and called the Doctor. The Doctor was all "How many cenimeters?"
Nurse: "Er. Eight."
Doctor: "Call me back in an hour." *click*
Mom shrugged and took another short nap. (At least that's what she told me.) Anyway, half an hour later, the nurse checked again, called the doctor and basically screamed down the phone that she wasn't delivering this baby and that he needed to be here in ten minutes.
He meandered in about twenty minutes later, chatted at mom while he got his scrubs on, came out leaned over and caught me. Mom was in labor all of 7 hours. Admittedly, I was a month early, so I was kinda little. My birth weight was 5lbs 2oz, but it dropped
to 4lbs 8oz afterwards. Anyway, they were kinda worried because I was a month premature, so they whipped me over to the incubator to check me out and kinda left mom to her own devices. Being my mother, she wanted to see her kid, so she kidna jumped down off the delivery table and wandered over to take a look.
She was peeking over the one nurse's shoulder and kinda cooing when the nurse glanced back and almost had a heart-attack. She dragged Mom back and sat her
down, cleaned her up, and let her know that everything was fine with me. All the right bits had developed fine. I just needed to put on some weight. I was, however, missing my ear lobe. Mom was a bit leary on that score, but they reassured her it would grow in.
It did, and I have both ears. :)
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| Rules and regs, how you bore me. But so necessary! |
[06 Oct 2003|04:50pm] |
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red hot chilli peppers - why won't they go away!? |
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Okay, the first few entries are going to be reposts of emails I sent off to a friend of mine. She, apparently, laughed and cried so I figured, what the hell, right?
All of this is going to be a little disjointed because I really don't have documentation of a lot of the early stuff. I've just got my memory and lots of stories that my mother has told me over the years. Yeah, there will be the occasional embellishment, but everything that's to follow will be the complete truth. At least the truth as I remember it/it was told to me.
Also, as this is my life's story, I don't want people reprinting it without my permission. Excerpts I'm fine with. If a short passage strikes you as funny and you want to repost it in your journal? Fine. No problem. But if you want to use an extended chunk (more than four sentences), I really expect/require you to email me and ask permission. The only group with publishing rights to this stuff is Livejournal and that's because I'm using their medium to publish it myself.
I hope those of you who stumble onto this little corner will be amused by it. The first twenty years of my life seemed at times too quick and too slow. And while I'm the first to admit that reflections can be kinda stupid, they can also be pretty damn amusing.
Closure may be a myth, but recognizing distance isn't.
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