This post has multiple parts to it, so fair warning I’m guessing this one is going to be long.   Lately I’ve been more and more annoyed at traditional hard copy media.  It’s a pain in the butt to deal with and takes up way too much physical space (for those that know me you find that sentence greatly amusing).

Pictures

This started happening over the last year with photo albums.   Photo albums are terrible.   It means normally that one person has a copy of the image and you can’t share them.  It is essentially technology of the last generation.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m a believer in having prints, but the pictures themselves.

I’ve made it my mission to start getting the family photos and scanning them in.   I’ve managed to get most of my father’s photos from the era he was with my mother.   The ones I’m missing are any he has of the kids hanging on the walls in his house.   My next run is going to be the pictures from his current family (so a good 15-16 years worth of pictures to go).

My grandmother on the other hand has been very tightfisted with her photos.  I can understand her being protective, but so far I’ve managed to get 59 photos out of her to scan (out of literally over a 1000-2000).   I have managed to scan my photo album, and more recently used the digital SLR and took pictures of my scrap book from high school.   So both of these can be tucked away in boxes that I don’t need to look at and take up physical space in my house.

All the photos I have are now uploaded to Flickr.   You can also read about my photo sharing issue with my mother over here.

Continued tomorrow in part 2

When I was four years old I really wanted to see Flash Gordon, even at that young age I was a sci-fi junkie.  Neither of my parents however were too keen on seeing this, I think the answer was always no.  I’m not sure why – I think Queen was still popular at the time.   I know that it was based on pop ideals and all in all it wasn’t that great of the movie – but geeze when your four year old is obsessed with something this small and it isn’t going to hurt him in anyway, indulge him.

My grandmother in Greenville seemed to agree with my modern view point on it.    We were down visiting and she agreed to take me.   We only managed to get down to see my grandparents in Greenville a couple times a year, so my grandmother spoiled me when she got the chance.  We went to the movies and I loved it, to this day I still immensely enjoy this movie, more now because of the memories then the movie itself.   After the movie my grandmother took me to McDonald’s and I had a hamburger and french fries with lots of ketchup.

What I have outside of memories is the rest of the story that I had forgotten over the years in direct memory, my parents in later years filled in the blanks.  My grandmother originally was going to get me some food during the movie’s intermission.   It had been so many years since my grandmother had been to the movies, that she thought there still was intermissions.   By the time the movie was over she felt bad that I hadn’t eaten and taken me to McDonald’s.

This grandmother died when I was young,  so I only have a few vague memories and stories about her.  I’m sure the rest I have will make it to the blog eventually.   The interesting side note is my wife once criticized Flash Gordon, I relayed this story to her, and never since has she bad mouthed the movie.

Image from here

I’m going to go out on a limb and call out ages here, I could be wrong.   The first time my brother operated a vehicle he was four years old, which would make me around nine at the time.  The location – my grandparent’s house.  My grandparent’s driveway used to be on a hill.   I always enjoyed just speeding a bike down that hill – if I had to guess it was probably about five cars deep.  So it was about fifty feet long with about twenty of that being mostly flat.

We were getting ready to leave my grandparent’s house and my mother sent my brother and myself out to the car.   Now since this was along time ago (in a galaxy far far away?) some details on which family car this was has been lost in the ages.  I remember one car and different parents remember others.   I’m fairly sure at the age my brother was he doesn’t remember which car it was at all.   What I can tell you is that it was a stick shift.

I was sitting in the back seat of the car and my brother was climbing around the front of the car.   I was reading a book or comic book in the back seat of the car and I noticed my mother coming out of my grandparent’s garage and walking towards the car.   At some point in this my brother had removed the parking break and managed to get the car into neutral.  The car started rolling down the hill.   My mother saw this and started running towards the car.  She made it to the driver’s side car door, but she couldn’t open it.  Somehow my brother had managed to lock the car door.  I was in the back seat frozen in fear (shock?) at what was going on.   My mother was yelling at me to jump in the front seat and stop the car or unlock the door.   I just couldn’t move.

Down and down the hill we went, I know that it took less then a minute or so , but at the time looking back it felt a lot longer.   We passed the end of the driveway and were moving into the street.   We crossed the street and ended up in the yard of the house across the street (luckily my grandmother lived in a cul-de-sac and there was no cross traffic).  In the yard across the street my brother managed to scratch the side of the car across a telephone pole, just missing hitting it by inches.

Since he didn’t hit the pole I guess you could say his first experience was a success.   That isn’t what it felt like for me sitting in the back seat.

My sister’s email I published yesterday has my stories out of whack now.   I was originally going to relate the story of my mother and the cedar chest, but I already did that.   If you missed it, here it is:

I will now give you an example I have full memory and first hand knowledge of. It was at a family holiday dinner a few years ago at my grandparents and somehow the morbid subject of what we would like if my grandparents passed on. I stated I would only want one thing, a cedar chest crafted by my grandmother’s cousin. My grandmother chimed in that it was going to be given to her cousin’s family, well my grandmother has said that my whole life, so for thirty years it’s still been sitting there. My mother then said I couldn’t have it because she wanted it. Selfish? Well let’s continue this story.
A few minutes later my mother asked me why I wanted the chest because she thought it was ugly and tacky. I said it was something that would always remind me of my grandparents, their house, and the memories. To me the chest is kind of like a symbol of my grandparents. This prompted me though to ask why did she want it if it was ugly? Her answer? She said she wanted it because I said I wanted it. So I was shocked and called her selfish, I think that was my annual fight that year and I left. It was petty, you would think as adamant as she was when she said she wanted it, that somehow I knew there was a secret stash of money tucked away in it. Nope, she is just worried about someone else getting something she can’t. What a great mother.

I’ll get re-organized through my drafts and getting something new up tomorrow.  Even writing about her is aggravating and putting me all out of sorts.

Read Part 1 Here

Read Part 2 Here

Read Part 3 Here

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Read Part 11 here

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Read Part 18 Here

Read Part 19 Here

Sorry – this one is a couple of days late.

My parents don’t get along. I mean really don’t get along at all. I’m not sure I can stress this enough. My father always seemed to be doing what he did in the best interest of the children. My mother on the other hand was in a money grab and used leverage. This was nothing out of the norm from before the divorce however.

From about age seven until age fifteen, I was keenly aware that my parents did not have a good marriage.  I remember telling my friends that my parents were going through a divorce.   Ironically, they managed to keep going and going (along the way they also had two more kids).  My parents were a mismatch from the beginning, and if I had not entered the picture they might not have gotten together.  They did and now for some historical information.

My father attempted to be the disciplinary or the family, my mother was the enabler.   She was very much the enabler.   If  my father tried to set something down (this is looking back mind you), my mother would take a position just to be the opposite of him.   Of course if my mother wanted to agree with him, I could just bring out that everyone was doing something, this would normally allow me to gain her consent.

Now some of this I remember and some of this is stories passed down, I’m going to try to remove the bias and just give you some examples:

When we were living in Elyria, we didn’t make a ton of money.  Sometimes we were scraping by month to month.  It something that happens to a lot of families, and even as an adult I still find myself doing that most the time.  One month we had twenty dollars left in the bank account.   My father was counting on this money to provide lunch meat for himself for work.   My mother on the other side had other plans.  Knowing full well how much money was in the bank she went out and bought wash clothes, effectively draining the bank account.

My mother was never happy with what she had.   My father was constantly remodeling to her tastes.   He learned a lot of things about working on a house, so I guess you could say that’s a good thing.   I however remember the house always being in the state of flux as some project or another was constantly being performed.  Of course now as an adult I leverage my father for knowledge he gained from that experience, but my wife can’t live in that sort of atmosphere.  So that tidbit is something to take for taste.

During the early nineties my mother decided she wanted her own money.   That’s a good thing.  She decided she was going to make dolls and enlisted my father and my grandmother on her venture.  She made enough to buy a living room set after hours and hours of labor and sewing on all three of them.  I remember I did a bit of stuffing myself, but I don’t believe I did much else.   Now you would think that this is a good example of the family working together.  However, my mother didn’t seem to understand the concept of “cost of manufacturing”.  She believed that it was pure profit and just poo poo’ed all the money that it cost to create the dolls before sales.   Thinking back I hope my father set the profit margin, since my mom would have probably sold them for a loss and then went “Golly, look at all the money I have from sales”.

Before moving on to the post divorce era I’m going to relate one last story.  There was a movie I wanted to see (I was 15) – it was “People Under the Stairs” and I wanted to go with a friend.   My father said no, it was an R rated movie and he didn’t want me to go.   My mother snuck money to me and dropped me off to see the movie.   She was in full enabler mode.   Later when my father found out the fight between them was explosive, don’t mix two volatile chemicals together.   I have my father issues I may write about another time, but this month is about mom.

After the divorce my father and I didn’t talk for a few years.   We talked lightly after awhile, but it didn’t start getting regular until I was traveling for consulting.   This led to a whole new ball game in dealing with them.  I didn’t want to accidently pass information from one side to another, but at the same time I had to make my feelings known.   I would get my fahter to talk about things my mother had told me – indirectly inquiring.   I also did the same thing on the reverse.

The problem is I normally sided with my father’s point of view.   I was this go between, trying to maintain peace on each side of the family.   When I first moved into my house i was in the middle of everyone, so my house was going to be the holiday get together place.  A Switzerland where neither side could fight.   Well that didn’t last long before i stopped talking ot my mother.

The most interesting thing was the Thanksgiving when we first moved back to Ohio.   On my father’s side all of his siblings still get together the weekend after Thanksgiving to have a family meal.  My brother lives next door to my father.  My mother was staying at my Brother’s house that day……

Somehow, in some wierd mix up of the galaxy, my mother invited herself over to my father’s house.  (I’ve mentioned that they do not get along at all).   Her excuse was to see all of my aunt’s and uncles who could care less about her.   The rest of the family completely agrees that she was there only to see the house and see how my father was doing.   I don’t know how she managed ot get the nerve, but I wouldn’t enter the den of a place where I know I’m not wanted.

But maybe she just wanted to see if my father’s curtains made her look fat……..

Read Part 1 Here

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At one point in this whole debacle where I stopped talking to my mom, Xie thought she would try to mend things. She dropped me off at burger king to eat and went over to my mothers to talk (this is all second hand mind compared to most things I’ve written). Xie sat her down and told her she was going to push her children away one by one if she continued down the path she was going. That my mother had to pick herself up, get a job and move forward being an example (I’m sure Xie will comment on this story to fill in more details).

The selfish thing my mom said to my wife? “You don’t have to have a job why should I?”

Now because this is second hand I normally wouldn’t have included this, but I wanted to point out Xie’s effort. This wasn’t the first time my mother had said this. There are a lot of answers to this.

1. Xie has a supportive husband that hadn’t left her once and possibly will again
2. Xie spends her free time learning and expanding herself – my mothers expansion comes from Oprah and Dr. Phil
3. Xie doesn’t have two children at home not even teenagers yet that need to eat and hopes daddy will give mommy child support money
4. Xie isn’t a leech that feels entitled to it, she has offered to work many times, I don’t understand why both of us need to be miserable for a few extra bucks

While my mother is grazing the home shopping network for things to buy, Xie is doing Algebra out of text books for fun. There is a world of difference. Most notably my mother needed an income she could trust to take care of her kids and not ask friends and family for money to get by.

I will now give you an example I have full memory and first hand knowledge of. It was at a family holiday dinner a few years ago at my grandparents and somehow the morbid subject of what we would like if my grandparents passed on. I stated I would only want one thing, a cedar chest crafted by my grandmother’s cousin. My grandmother chimed in that it was going to be given to her cousins family, well my grandmother has been saying that my whole life, so for thirty years it’s still been sitting there. My mother then said I couldn’t have it because she wanted it. Selfish? Well let’s continue this story.

A few minutes later my mother asked me why I wanted the chest because she thought it was ugly and tacky. I said it was something that would always remind me of my grandparents, their house, and the memories. To me the chest is kind of like a symbol of my grandparents. This prompted me though to ask why did she want it if it was ugly? Her answer? She said she wanted it because I said I wanted it. So I was shocked and called her selfish, I think that was my annual fight that year and I left. It was petty, you would think as adamant as she was when she said she wanted it, that somehow I knew there was a secret stash of money tucked away in it. Nope, she is just worried about someone else getting something she can’t. What a great mother.

Read Part 1 Here

Read Part 2 Here

Read Part 3 Here

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Read Part 11 here

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Read Part 14 Here

My Mother, a grown woman now in her 50′s is still scared to death of her father.  She will do anything to avoid getting a lecture from him, this includes just telling him what he wants to hear, regardless if she is sincere or not.  My grandfather does have wisdom, but at the same time he doesn’t understand the world I live in, so I will challenge him, or tell me when he is wrong.

My mother on the other hand sometimes gets upset and will snap at him, but for the most part she cows down to him, or turns to my grandmother for support.  I think in her mind, if she attempts to placate him the issues won’t be there, the fear she has, the feelings of inadequacy that she seems to show after dealing with him.  She tells me I don’t understand.   I do understand, my grandfather is one of the most intimidating people in the family.   My siblings are still scared of him, we also all adore him.  My wife thinks he is just like a big gruff teddy bear – I’m not sure I would go that far…

If my grandfather showed up at my mom’s house unexpected and she noticed him, well then she would attempt the ten second clean up as he walked to the front door. I know she loves her father, but she (at the time anyways) dreaded his visits because she knew she was going to get lectured.

Like I said I stand up to my grandfather, my grandfather once asked my mother why she doesn’t stand up to him like I do. Maybe it’s a challenge to help her grow. She has somethings she definitely needs to work before she is capable of not being that ten year old girl in his shadow any more.

Read Part 1 Here

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My mother loves to gossip.  She loves to spread gossip.  She loves to receive gossip.  If you are familar with the musical “The Music Man” at all she is one of the “Pick A little, Talk A Little Women”

She would go to the community pool under the pretext of watching my sisters swim. If however there was no one to gossip with she would pack up and either take my sisters home, or get someone else to watch them. I’m sure my mother misses the hey day of the beauty parlor where all the women sat around and gossiped. I’m sure in some areas these still exist, but not really in her neck of the woods. Besides she felt superior becuase she had “her” beautician that she went to.

Her beautician always made sure that her hair came out with that blond color that she was born with. All those pictures I’ve posted of her as a toddler on up that have dark hair? Well I guess my mother believes that those are all bad exposures since she swears the blond she has now is her natural color. Ironically it’s because of her and the lies about her hair color that I refuse to ever dye my hair to hide my gray. I’m not going to tell people my hair is a certain way. Granted I’ve dyed my hair black for a costume, I’ve also done purple and blue – heaven help those that thought those colors were natural. I actually have my mother’s native hair color, I’m just not in denial.

My mother would love to gossip. She would spend hours on the phone talking to friends about who was having marriage issues, who was having works issue, who bought something new, and who was stuck with something old. If she didn’t have any friends at a given time she would either try to get me involved (I never had an interest so I’m sure she bored of me) or she would enlist my grandmother (who had the same enthusiasm as I did).

You would think she would like to discuss something of interest, but the most poignant she ever got to real life events was what new Longaberger baskets were coming out or discussions about Dr. Phil and Oprah – it seems to her these are the messiahs of the new world order. Who knew?

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Read Part 11 Here

While I lived in Oregon, a lot of my life was peaceful on the family front.  I only spoke to my mother maybe a dozen times tops while I lived there.   I didn’t have to deal with her drama on a weekly or daily basis.  I was 2500 miles away and it was easy to avoid.  Just don’t pick up the phone.   That part is really easy for me, since I hardly notice the phone or pick it up naturally unless I’m on the clock and the phone could be work.

I either had to deal with family emergencies or the occasional holiday call. i didn’t talk to any of the family with regularity until I was traveling for work, at that point I was talking mostly with my father. Occasionally I would call and end up talking to one of my sisters. They would tell me of what my mother was doing to them. Some of it was exaggeration, some of it was deserved, but some of it was not.

In the few occasions I thought my mother took it too far, I called my grandmother.and tried to get her to intercede on my sister’s behalf. Sometimes she didn’t believe me, seeing how her daughter couldn’t do anything like that. Other times she said she had talked to her about it and couldn’t take it further. Neither of my grandparents are bad people. They both have my love and complete devotion. They are just in denial over what my mother actually does.

Neither of them are callous. They have both earned my respect. My grandmother once even told me that they have enabled my mother to be helpless and rely on other people. She also said it was a mistake and never intentional.

So while in Oregon life was good. The stress of family was at the lowest point ever, I didn’t worry about it.  I’m almost there again.

Read Part 1 Here

Read Part 2 Here

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During this time where really my mother was in complete financial distress and squeaking by.  However she couldn’t stop buying frivolous things at all. She was glued to the home shopping channel, when she didn’t have the money to buy something out right she would jump on their payment plan. When she was really excited about something she would call my grandmother.

I swear something was being shipped to the house every other day from the home shopping network. If I had to venture a guess during the months between I moved back and when I cut off communication she had to spend the equivalent of a couple mortgage payments. It got to the point that she attempted to hide this purchases from me since she knew that she was going to get a lecture from me.

She continued about how she needed her house modernized so it looked good “for the children”. This was her priority in her life. No job, no income, three children living under her roof, and she’s complaining about the flooring (which was adequate and better then some other people’s flooring).

There was an extreme lack of food in the house. There was tons of dry cereal and maybe if you were lucky bread and peanut butter. She ordered out more then cooked anything meaningful, she would also go grocery shopping every day so she could get out of the house. Ironically she didn’t buy much of anything.

My seventeen year old sister who was working had to buy her own food for lunch’s and mostly dinners also since “supper” conflicted with her work schedule. Now for some people this would seem like a fine thing to do, but my mother was getting hundreds of dollars a month in child support for my sister. Yet my sister never seemed to benefit from it. Instead I would have hear about my seventeen year old sister using my mother’s make-up or wearing my 12 year old sisters shirts (yes my sister was almost that small, but also liked tight fitting clothes). Never once did I hear her say anything good about my sister, it was more complaints on how much she cost or the attitude she gave.

To my chagrin my grandparents paid to have new flooring done for Christmas. Sometimes I think my mother is as spoiled as my youngest brother.

Read Part 1 Here

Read Part 2 Here

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Last week it seems my grandmother fell and cracked her tail bone. No one told me. I’m am very unhappy about that. My sister told me last night at the VCMA practice. I had stopped by my grandparent’s house last night before practice, but no one was home. I then stopped over at one of my sister’s apartments, no one home. Then I went ot another sister’s apartment, no one home. I though it strange, but let it go.

Then practice started, my youngest sister showed up (she plays saxophone in the band), and told me the news. On the drive back to my mother’s to drop her off (I don’t get out of the car), my grandfather called me. I asked if they were going to be awake, he said yes, so I rushed over there.

My grandmother seems fine, that I’m very happy for. My youngest sister has now be given explicit instructions to call me me immediately any time if she hears that something has happened to either of my grandparents. My mother wants to give me a cradle that my great Aunt Doris (pictured below feeding me) bought for me as a baby.  I’ll take it, she can leave it at my grandparent’s house and I will pick it up.   I don’t know how giving my mother is going to be though when she reads the series I’ve written for next month called “A Month With Mom”.   We’ll see.

Earlier this week this email (it’s been edited to protect names- edits in italics) showed up in my inbox:

Hi Brent.. I just want to know that I miss talking to you.  I am thrilled for you and XIE as you await the birth of your new little son.  I remember when the two of you came to see YOUR YOUNGEST BROTHER and I after he was born saying you will neve have kids and I said oh give yourself another ten years things may change.  Here you are….I am sure XIE is getting all prepared, reading planning, etc.  I think she will do great during  delivery, they have so many different ways to help with relaxation during labor.  After YOUR SON is born the two of you will be so amazed at that moment and your life will change forever.  You will never look at certain things the same way again.  And the way a new baby smells, its a special scent that only lasts a few days then fades away to the sweet smell of baby lotion bath wash.  You will see, I think its a good thing for both of you, you will have alot of fun.

Love mom

Now grammar and spelling mistakes I didn’t touch, just the names to protect some people’s identity.  When I told Xie about the e-mail she was miffed that my mother didn’t call.   I told her that was the only smart thing my mother did for this situation.  I’m sure my mother knows by now that if I heard her voice I would have just hung up the phone and she wouldn’t have had a chance to get anything out.    Score one point for my mother.  Though I’m going to make the wild assumption that she didn’t assume I was going to post this on my blog.

I read the e-mail out loud to Xie.   I started reading it in my mothers tone and voice pattern (I do a fairly passable impression of her speaking mannerisms).   I didn’t make it through the first sentence before Xie said she would smack me up side the head if I didn’t read it normal.   I submitted and read it normal.   The first thing Xie said after her rant on my mother e-mailing, was “So she wrote that whole thing to say ‘I told you so’.”  I replied with “Yep.”

One point of view could be said that my mother is attempting to repair a bridge between a fractured relationship.   Like eveyrthing else my mother attempts to do this is a selfish act.   When I was younger she put guilt trips on me for not having kids because she wanted grandkids (bear in mind I’m the oldest of her 6 kids so she was bound to have grandkids).   My brother already has a daughter and a son that should be born in the next couple weeks.  My brother is on speaking and family terms with my mother so she has two grandkids she would have access to.   My mother’s only access to me is messages that my siblings or my grandmother deliver.   The only message I ever send back is that I don’t care.

As it stands right now my grandchild will never have access to her.  I know how she screwed me up my siblings and myself (though I have a different world view, so I’m sure they think that I’m the one that’s screwed up).   I don’t want to risk exposing my child to that.   After my child is of legal driving age and can take himself over there, it will all be in his court on what he decides to do.  My child won’t be forbidden from going there, but I’ve been told that I’m not welcome there and can’t come over.  So I’m holding that to heart for the rest of time.

My point of view if you haven’t figured this out, is that my mom wants to be seen as the good grandmother.    She follows the theory in life that it’s better to appear good then be good.   Now I’m not going to say that I am any sort of saint.  I am who I am.   I don’t put on false airs for anyone.   I don’t pretend to be someone I’m not.   I’m rough, I’m honest, and I can be brutally blunt.   I’m used to that and I can deal with the consequences, because I enjoy who I am.

I haven’t put more than a passing thought into my mother in the last year.   When someone mentions her I give my knee jerk “I don’t care answer” and forget about her.   But this email has forced me to bring the pasts thoughts to light (just when I’m in a peaceful place again).   So in the upcoming month look for some articles about the problems I have with my mother.   This email may look like an honest attempt for reconciliation by some, but I know my mother’s methods.  I will concede that is what she believes she is doing in her mind.   She is just too naive to really look at herself for who she is though.

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I was King of the Circus.  Seriously.   When I was somewhere between four and six my mother won a radio contest where we got free tickets to see Barnum and Bailey’s Circus at the Richfield Coliseum.  Part of this prize pack included the child being crowned King or the Circus – I also had a  Queen of the Circus whose parental unit must have also won a contest.   I don’t know where my queen is, we haven’t kept in touch.

The memory is fuzzy, but I remember being taken down and sitting at the sidelines for a little bit with the circus performers.  I was then put on a little train (next to the queen) and taken on a circle of the Coliseum and waving to the whole crowd of thousands.   At the time it was the greatest day of my life (the worst day was finding out I was no longer going to be an only child).   They cheered and I got to take home my cape (I told you I had thing with capes) and a crown.

I was as high as a kite and bragged to all of my friends over the next year that I was king of the circus – at the time I even had pictures to prove that – so take that disbelievers (for all modern disbelievers the pictures are now lost so please suspend your disbelief, thank you).  Life was good and I was king.  Nothing could knock me off my thrown until the following summer.

The following summer the news announced it was going to do a little piece on the Barnum and Bailey circus coming back to town.  I thought “great I’ll go back and ride on my throne again”.   However, during the piece the newscasters showed another kid wearing the crown and taking the tour.  HOW COULD THEY?  USURPER TO THE THRONE PREPARE TO MEET STEEL!!!  I went to the back room of my grandmothers house and put on my crown and cried.   I think I through away that crown that day too.

The situation had to then be explained to me – I was not happy.

I don’t hold a grudge though.

I haven’t been to the Barnum and Bailey’s Circus since.

But I don’t hold a grudge.

Bastards.

Picture from here

Picture from here

You know those moments when your a kid and you find something that you can do that you think is extraordinary?   I had one of those moments and it dealt with climbing walls.  I was so convinced it was extraordinary that I thought I had been bitten my a mutant spider.  I think it helped that I was into Spider-Man at the time thanks to the Electric Company.

My super power was being able to climb walls, literally.   In the townhouse I grew up in (it was called a condomimium, but I don’t really think it was a condo) the walls in the stairwell were close enough together that I could shimmy up the walls by putting a set of hands and feet on both sides.   My grandmother’s house was the same way.   I’m sure having a child somewhere between 5-8 years old literally climbing the walls of the house was enough to run my family up the walls themselves.

They spent hours trying to convince me that I wasn’t related to Spider-Man.  I also remember them not being happy about scrubbing footprints off the wall at eye level.  Somewhere along this time frame I also managed to get a picture of myself on Spider-Man’s lap taken at Midway Mall in Elyria.   I had that picture for years, but for some reason it’s now missing :(.

I do remember attempting to fly and levitate for years, but I wasn’t as successful as I was at being a wall crawler.

When I was young I loved capes.   I don’t know why.   The first cape I can remember (I’m sure there were predecessors) was one I had at my grandmother’s house.   It was dark blue with red trim.  I did the normal pretend I was Batman or Superman routines, but I just like wearing it.  I don’t know why.

Following that for years I had inferior capes, normally the halloween vinyl capes.  I hated those capes.  They would tear within an hour and most the time you were left with the collar and no cape.    Then I finally made it to working at the haunted school house (picture above though the cape is somehow behind my back enoguh you can’t see it).   I designed a character named “Vlad”  who I played off an on for 3 years – note the costume all put together probably ran me 400.00.

Since I stopped working at the school house I’ve only pulled out that cape on a couple occasions.   I still have it and it’s in the closet.   Maybe sometimes I dance around naked only wrapped in my cape…..wouldn’t you like to know.

Picture from here

I talked to my grandmother today trying to get her to give my some photographs to scan in, she agreed.   She also informed me that her and my grandfather were going to Michigan this weekend to go my grandfather’s 60th high school reunion.  She commented that it seemed like along time ago.   At first it did.   It seem like this far off memory.  Graduating in 1948 must have been like it was an eon ago, somethign I can’t fathom or get in touch with.   She also told me that my uncle was coming in a few weeks to go to his 30th high school re-union.

After thinking about it for a bit, 60 years though didn’t seem that long.  From a purely cosmic level it’s an instant.  A brief nanosecond in the scal of the universe.   However I normally deal in more relative time.   While we were talking I realized that next year will be my 15th high school reuinion.  I’m already a quarter of the way there.   I’m not sure how I feel about that, but I do realize that the 60th reunion doesn’t seem as far away as it does on the surface.

Original From parentphobia.com: And So Start The Baby Presents

You know I thought people at least waited a bit for they started getting out the baby presents.   Xie is only eight weeks pregnant and yet we already have our first baby gifts.   Last weekend it seems that her mother bought us a crib, we haven’t seen yet but we have a crib.   We told her mother we don’t even want it until we’re well into the second trimester.   Her grandmother, not wanting to be left out of the fun, purchased us a playpen, something we won’t need for at least a few months after the baby is born.

It seems everyone wants to get into the celebration and be a part of the pregnancy.  The best sign of that is that it seems we will have an excellent support network to draw from.  Of course there is always the chance that after baby is born everyone disappears when we need help.  I don’t think that will be the case.

Original From parentphobia.com: And So Start The Baby Presents

In the picture above is my maternal grandfather and my great grandfather, it seems I am going to be joining on them on the ability to reproduce and pass down genetic material to the next generation.  Yes I am going to be a father, Xie want and annouced the pregnancy on Twitter just a few hours ago with the following message:

As of yesterday I am 7 weeks pregnant – coming from the person who would never in a million years want kids, I am very excited & happy :D

I sent the follow up:

@xielanthia congratulations who is the father……nm :P

Then I sent this:

As of yesterday @xielanthia is 7 weeks pregnant and I’m going to be a father – wish us luck – we’ll need it.

So we have announced to the Web 2.0 World (WTW? W2W?) that we are having a baby and doing it in true web fashion.  We have known for about 3 weeks and over that time eeked the information out to family and friends.  The first person I told was the IPS guys I played SWG with that I have constant e-mail communication with.  The first family that knew was my in-laws and followed by Xie’s grandmother (I wish she had a blog i could link to).   Then it was ghoulishcharm.  From there I told my father and my brother who was also there.  I went and told my grandparents last Sunday and drove over to tell my sister, but she already knew it seems that she found out from my father who knew the week before.

I did find out from my sisters that my grandparents had already known about the pregnancy (having heard it through her) but yet they acted like they didn’t know anything.   Welcome to my family, we can act surprise even if we have known something for months.   I know I used to unwrap my Christmas presents before hand and rewrap them – I got that trick from my godmother.

Picture taken from here

Last night I we had our community band practice moved to a church for the night.  Ironically it was the church of the girl I lived with before I was with my wife (over a decade ago).  I wish I could tell you that we broke up over a mutual disagreement where we went our own separate ways but it didn’t work out like that.   Since at one point of time she was once a huge point of my life I thought I would document her, at that point the facts will be recorded and I’ll put the past behind me.

When I was a freshmen in high school I met Kim the night of the High School Homecoming dance (back in 1990 – cripes this memory is of legal age).  I had friends in marching band (this was the year before I started playing trumpet at all) and I was hanging out with them some girl was just wandering around a circle of people crying on the shoulders of those around her.  I was one of those people, this girl was Kim.   She had just been dumped by some guy and the marching band members were taking the pity circle approach.  She started crying on me and I didn’t know who the hell she was.   Eventually she moved on to the next person.  A few weeks later she started dating my best friend, fortunately I didn’t go out with them to do anything so I saw very little of her the rest of the school year.  She popped up occasionally but for the most part she was a non issue.

Picture of me and my best friend that brought Kim into my life – bastard.

The next summer I got conned into joining marching band (ironically I didn’t play an instrument at the time) and I was there around the time my friend dumped Kim (who graduated the previous year) so he could have a shot at chasing after another girl.   Kim hung around the marching band practices like graduated seniors with nothing better to do occasionally do.  One day it was raining and I asked her for a ride home – curse her.   This started to be a regular thing, she was still upset with my friend leaving her so she would talk to me about him, and other things.   After a couple months of becoming good friends we started dating.   On a cool fall day down the road from house at her friend’s house I had my first kiss sitting on the hood of her 1991 powder blue Topaz.

I started sneaking out a lot at night to see her, I think this was the start of my 4 hours a night sleeping routine.   I had sneaking out of my house down to the science.   Sometimes I wonder which was greater, the nights I did sneak out or the nights I didn’t.   My parents were not too ecstatic with their 15 year old son dating an 18 year old.   I’ll also be kind enough to leave out details and allow you to read between the lines when it comes to intimate details.

This was also the year I started writing.  I started with poetry and found I had a knack for it.  I did the silly love letters and so did she.   I think I still have a few of them.  Almost all of my poetry is already is already on this blog but I’m sure there are some journal pages (folks that was analog blogging) I’ve left out.   I’m sure reading them today would sound very Emo-ish.  If I can find them and read through my chicken scratch hand writing I’ll put them up.

The summer that followed we spent most of our time with one another, we went to movies, to Cedar Point, and other related activities.  One thing I can remember sticking out in my mind was when we left Cedar Point because the weather was picking up.  As we were driving back there was a Tornado siting in our town.  We watched the skies carefully and made it back to her parent’s house.   We found out later that a tornado did touch down about 2 miles from us.  It was very crazy and stupid to be driving out in that.

We dated for 9-10 months and the following year in marching band I took my friends lead and dumped her.  I started dating another girl Mari.   About 3 months later that relationship didn’t work out and I left Mari.   We’ll discuss more on Mari another day.   At this point Kim was going with Nate, some guy ahead of me in school.

Mari from back when I dated her.

Well Kim and I started talking again since we had always been good friends.  On December 31st, 1992 I was having a New Years Eve party at my house (with a fair amount of people as I recall) and I get a phone call from Kim.   She wasn’t going to stop by because some of the people there didn’t like her, which was fine.  She was at her friend’s house at another party just a couple streets over.  What ever was going through her mind, because though we had been talking again off an on, she wanted me to stop over and talk for a few minutes.   So like a good friend (fool) I wander over to talk to her.   What I don’t remember if she told me was that her boyfriend Nate was there.

We were talking (and sitting on that damn Topaz again) and someone started yelling inside the house.  Out of this house busts this big guy.  All he said was “Nate wanted me to mess you up.” and I got punched in the face.  Since I was on the edge of the car he caught me in a spin and knocked me down a few feet from where I was standing. This was the second time in my life I have been punched (in a true fight and haven’t been punched since).  I think he may have gotten in a couple more shots, it’s been so long ago it’s a blur.  This guy’s girlfriend and Kim dragged him off an pulled him back into the house, Kim apologized and I wandered back home.

When I got there I was fuming, I grabbed a baseball bat from my bedroom and started back towards the front door.  Luckily from a police record stand point I was talked down by the people at my party.   Granted half the guys wanted to go over there and start something, but the girls at the party and some of the other guys cooled down the situation.  I never went over.   Since that night was one of the few times I have been punched it’s etched into my brain.

Things calmed down and Kim and I continued talking.  A few months later things didn’t work out between her and Nate and they broke up.   We dated a little bit for a few weeks, but just kind of maintained a friendship point of view.  After that we went our separate ways for awhile.   In spring of 1994 my girlfriend at the time dumped me right before prom (today we have different takes on how this went down).  Shortly after that (somehow I don’t remember) Kim and I started talking again.   Talking lead to dating.    This was the road that it always was with Kim.   Being friends and trying to keep it platonic always lead to something more.

We dated through the summer and she even went to my Mother’s wedding.  My step-father and I never really saw eye to eye, he came into the house trying to be an alpha male.  It wasn’t happening though.  We never got along though for time periods we could fake it and even be civil to one another.   Why is this relevant?  Well right after the wedding took place ( I played trumpet so I was part of the service) I guess my step father made a lot of derogatory remarks to her about her and about me.  Then and there I didn’t know this.  She told me as we were driving back to my mother’s house for a wedding reception.

I was fuming.  I arrived to the house just a couple minutes before my mother and my new step father.  I happily started a screaming match on the front lawn.  Luckily Kim was house sitting at her sister’s place for a couple of weeks I went inside and grabbed a couple changes of clothes and left for a few weeks, never even calling.  Sometime during this time frame being an young fool I asked Kim to marry me and she said yes.  I was just a couple weeks past eighteen and I was engaged.

I came home and stayed for a couple weeks before I was to leave for college.   The big day arrived and I was supposed to use my mother’s mini van to haul all my stuff an hour south to school.  Originally my mother was going to drive me down to school and Kim and my friend Tim were supposed to come and help move stuff.  My mother said she would go but my step father also had to come.   I didn’t want him there and asked if we could just take the van and Kim would bring it back afterward.  Well this escalated into a screaming match that rivaled the wedding reception just a month or so earlier.

I hadn’t been on speaking terms really with my father at this point, and there was a lot of animosity between my mother and him.  My step-father helped fuel this by mocking me and saying my father should take me down (I literally had to be at the school the next day for college marching band camp).  Time was dragging on and the fighting escalated, I ended up kicking the mini van in the front passenger side fender and leaving a huge dent that stayed there for a few years until my step father pounded it out.   For a little FYI the mini van was already packed and filled with all my stuff.    Even if I had compromised and capitulated and had him go there literally was no room for a fifth person in that van.  My mother had enough at this point and handed us the keys.

I think I cried the whole way down to college this was the second time my mother chose my step father over her child in what was an important day in his life.   We made it to school and I settled in.  We were going to do the long distance relationship.  There was a phone on campus where i used to make collect calls to her (or I had a huge roll of quarters sometimes).   When I called collect I used a fake name so her parents wouldn’t know it was me and think it was a wrong number if she didn’t answer the phone.   She came down and visited once (which looking back for a 40 minute drive really is pathetic – that’s less then one way in my daily commute).   After three of four weeks I had enough and broke it off with her.  I started dating someone at college and I called it a day.

Christmas break rolled around and I was kind of in between girlfriends at the time (another post for another time) and Kim and I managed to get back together.   We spent most the month with each other and when it came time to go back to school, I took a side trip to see my grandfather who was in the hospital.   We drove down to the Dayton area about 4 hours away and stayed at my my grandfather’s house since no one else was there.   That night Kim went to bed and I stayed up and wrote a letter to my grandmother.  The next day we headed to the hospital but stopped at my grandmother’s grave and I left the note for her there.   We went and visited my grandfather who had suffered and stroke and lost 60% of his body mass.  She was there for me and I appreciated it.

School rolled around and I reconciled with my girlfriend from the previous semester.  Now for some reason this should have been a straight break up with Kim moment.   I held off for a couple days and Kim came down to visit.   The situation was not a surprise to my college girlfriend, she knew what was happening.    I took Kim to the local mall and we walked and talked, but my college girlfriend stalked us and was obvious about following us. After getting back to the car Kim asked what it all was about, I explained and broke up with her.  She dropped me off at my dorm room and I thought then that she left.   I went up and spent time with my college girlfriend, while this was happening Kim proceeded to make out with my roommate’s best friend.  That’s the kind of rebound girl she was.

At this point you would think that the Kim college years era was over, well not quite.   I get a phone that she is pregnant and needs to talk.   I arrange it that I come home that weekend to talk to her.  Problem was college girlfriend insisted on going and I had not told her about the pregnancy.  I manage to get up north and slip away for a little bit to talk to Kim.   This leads me back home and my college girlfriend is upset.  She tells me she is pregnant (I had not told her Kim was pregnant yet).  So I’m 18 years old and I find out in less then seven days that I have two girls pregnant.  To add to the top of the tower here, college girlfriend and I break up.

A few weeks later I’m dating someone else and I find out both college girlfriend and Kim have miscarriages within a week of each other.  I don’t tell anyone and did not tell either one of them, so it’s coincidence that they both told me, and today I think they were both lying to me over the incident.   Around this time period my grandfather died and I was dealing with that also.   College progressed mostly Kim until summer rolled around.  I was not going back to school the following year, so two weeks after moving back I moved out of my mothers house and moved in with Kim who had taken over her sisters apartment.

Kim managed to get me a job at the local Speedway, which at the time was about the size of two of the cubicles I have at work now.   I enjoyed working there, I enjoyed the night shift.   One day however I got in a disagreement with the manager and just up and quit.  After that my high school friend that originally dated Kim secured me a job at a local marina.   I did that for a year paying the bills until I secured my first computer job.   All through this Kim and I stayed together.   One day a girl saw us at a restaurant and told me (a year or so later) that she felt so bad for me she wished there was something she could do for me.   I used to go out and hang out with friends until early morning hours and around this time I finally got my drivers license (I was twenty).

One night Kim went out and didn’t come home, she stayed at a friends house – a single male friends house – after a night of drinking.  from all accounts nothing happened, I don’t happen to believe that.  The reason I didn’t believe it was that my high school friend kept saying she came on to him when I wasn’t around.  I believe him, not her.  Things were getting worse and worse over the next year, I would go out more and she would do her own thing.  She criticized my friends, or say they were too young. or into the wrong things.   Though we did manage to go camping twice while we lived together.

The first time we drove to somewhere in the backwoods of Pennsylvania with her parents.  Her parents treated me even worse then she did, so for the week we were there I hated it the whole time.   It’s hard to get me to go camping as it is now (ask Xie) let alone with people I don’t really like.   The second time we went camping I took a friend with me, in the middle of the trip Kim went storming off and said she was taking off and going home leaving use 300 miles away from home with no way back.  While she was so confident and storming off to her car I told her to “Screw off, ” I then laughed at her and told her I had her keys which she asked me to hold.   My friend and I left her at the camp and went off hiking.   Things reconciled and at this point we are at July 1997.

At this point I was hanging out in a different crowd with people with which I’m still friends with some of them until this day.  There was a girl who caught my eye and I was interested in.  My friend from the camping trip and were talking and I asked him if this girl would be interested in me if I was single.   He said she probably would be (he had no clue).  This is a Tuesday night.  I went over and talked to my mother and asked her if I could move my stuff back home.  I then showed up at the apartment with at least 10 people with 3-4 vehicles and I told Kim I was moving out and the group then paraded through the apartment and had me moved out in about 20 minutes.   I told Kim I would come back and we could talk about it after I got everything unloaded.

I went back and spent the night at the apartment (nothing happened) and we talked most the night.   She borrowed 100.00 from me so she could pay rent.   The next day I asked the girl I was interested in out on a date.   Kim called me on Thursday night to see if I wanted to do something on Friday.  I told her I had a date.   The next morning there was books and items strewn across my mothers lawn.   Things that I had forgotten to take with me.   The date went off without a hitch and the girl told me that a year or so earlier she had seen me at the restaurant broken and wished she could have helped me.   This girl was Xie and I married her.

You would think this is where it ends, but there is an addendum.   Xie had recently broken up with her boyfriend.  For some reason it was in her boyfriend’s head  and Kim’s head that we mutually dumped both of them to be together.  It was a matter of circumstance, but to them they felt the logical thing was to date each other.   Xie and I laughed and let them be on there way.  Kim degenerated more and more, she slept around a lot, somehow everyone thought I wanted to here and know about the stories so they filtered in.  After trying to make me jealous didn’t work she dated a couple people and then one day a couple years later I get a note on the windshield of my car outside the apartment Xie and I had.   It said she missed me and really jsut wanted to be friends.   Well we’ve seen how being friends worked out in the past, I never called her.

I did have to deal with her for a few years at the High School Alumni Band every year, but I guess while I was in Oregon she got in a big huff with someone and said she was never coming back.   Yay me!  That was a treat to hear when I came back.  Other news that passed through the grape vine while I was in Oregon was that she worked as a lunch lady for a little bit, my sisters told me they saw her working at the school.  She was married, but the marriage only lasted a few months.   Now it seems that I hear that she is single and can’t find anyone that wants to settle down with her (I don’t blame them).

The last year we were together she was working for my father, and still worked for him a little ways after the break up.   She borrowed 100.00 dollars from him and never paid it back.   So she owes him and I each 100.00 dollars, it’s definitely worth eating the loss to have to not deal with her again.

The last couple years she has been at the sidelines with Tim who helped me move to college all those years ago (as friends they always have been) during the Vermilion Woolybear Festival while the whole band is on the float.  She kept her head down, pulled a hood over her head and wore sunglasses, but it was her.   I think she was hiding from teh band in general then just me since Tim looked shocked my first year back from Oregon seeing me on the float so I’m sure she had no idea I was up there before hand.

I started this off by saying I had practice in her old church.  While on break I wandered around a little bit and saw a K Pearce in the member mail box area with a pamphlet in it.  I then found a board that had pictures of all the members and who they were.  There was her picture.  She looks a good 10 years old then she she should and who knows if the picture is recent.  I thought for a minute to put my initials in an art style she would recognize as knowing where they came from on the pamphlet in her mail box.   I thought about putting my email address, or just typing in “Google Creeva”.  I then realized I might find it funny or humorous at that moment, but it wasn’t worth it.   The humor did not out weigh the pain of maybe actually having to hear from her or deal with her in any way.

If you know her and see her, you can happily tell her about this.   I’m happily married and in January it will be my tenth wedding anniversary.   I’ve managed to sum up most the highlights in the relationship in a few paragraphs.  If she wants to meet in public and talk about them I’ll be happy to…….as long as she has the 200.00 she owes me and my father.  I’ll give her time to finish a coffee at the very least.   I’d even bring the coffee, all conditional on the back debt being paid.   Otherwise I just look at the life she has, where she has gone, and what she has brought upon herself.  Do you know what I do when I do that?  I laugh.