About me...

I want to let you get acquainted with me a bit more..although I am not going to into my childhood that much..it was a normal, little girl growing up in 1950's, 1960's, 1970's...the only tv shows for kids that were on, were on Saturday morning. Our tv, yes one tv, got maybe 4 or 5 stations. No Sony Play Stations, Nintendo, Internet, or computers. My "fun" was roller skating, bike riding and listening to my radio or record player. For you younger folks that are saying "what's a record player?" We used to have these vinyl discs that had grooves in them and when you put them on a spinning wheel like plate and rested an "arm" that contained a "needle", the vinyl music disc would play. First we had monotone then we graduated to stereo. WOW!! I saw the development of tape recorded music, (which I imagine was around long before our small town saw it)...eight track tapes, cassette tapes, cd's and dvd's.Not to mention Mircrowave ovens, refrigerators that had ice and water in the door, computers. (After I was married we had one of the very first home computers, a Commodore 64. We played Space Invaders and Pong on it.) I walked home from school, at times over a mile in the cold and snow or rain or I would go stay with my mom where she worked until it was time for her to go home. (My mom dropped me off in the morning before she went to work.) And always with a pile of books. We didn't have back packs. I wasn't a very good student. I didn't try hard enough. It was all so boring. What I really wanted to do was take wood shop, but girls weren't allowed. Girls got stuck with Home Ec..either sewing or cooking. If I could go back and do it again, I would. Make a different life for myself.
I still sew to this day. I have made clothes for my kids when they were small. When my daughter was in junior high, she took theater classes. What was called Drama class when I went to school. She was in the play " Legend of Sleepy Hollow". I made her and one of the other girls in the play a 18th century period dress. You know the kind..long, to the floor flowing skirt...They turned out really nice. And I got credit in the play program. Then, when my daughter was in high school and in the play " Much Ado about Nothing.", I made shirts for four of the actors.
I think my favorite and best school subject was art. Going to college wasn't an option. There just wasn't enough money. But no one told me if I worked hard enough at something, I could maybe try for a scholarship. That was in the day before women were encouraged to become doctors and lawyers. We were still relagated to nurses, teachers and secretarys amd of course housewives and mothers.
So after graduation, I worked at a restaurant as a busgirl..one who cleans off the tables...then went to work at Nestles', packing candy bars. I met my husband's sister there and she introduced him and me at the company picnic. I should have stayed home that day.
We were married four months later. Everyone thought I was pregnant..but I wasn't. My husbands dad was nice to me. My mother-in-law was a different story. She didn't like me. I don't know why. ( and she admitted she didn't know why..but she wouldn't have told me if she did..or she wouldn't have told the truth.) After spending 20 years of trying to get her like me and trying to figure why she didn't..I gave up. I just didn't give a **ck anymore.
Okay..change of subject.. at the end of July, 2001, my husband and I bought a motorcycle for our 25th wedding anniversary which was coming up in January. We wanted to be able to enjoy the bike before the snow hit. On September 13, 2001, we went for a ride out in the country, and on the way home, a woman in a chevy minivan, pulled out from her stop sign, causing us to hit her left front end of her van. We had the right of way. The collision threw us 15 feet, through the air, into a dirt field. My helmet came off and was found 10 feet away from me. My husband hit her van hood and windshield of her vehicle, then flew into a road sign post, did a half turn and landed on the ground. ( This was revealed to me about 4 years later.) He was pronounced dead at the scene. I was transported to the hospital by two ambulances...the first one was from a small town and wasn't really equipped for serious trauma, so they were met half way by an ambulance from my town and that one took me the rest of the way. An emergency tracheostomy was done (a tube that gets inserted in the front of the throat at the base by the collar bone from the outside)..because of neck trauma that caused swelling, putting in a breathing tube wasn't possible. After I arrived at the hospital, they cleaned me up and stablized me, let my children see me.. I was awake and alert..I told my son to call Grandma and Grandpa (husbands parents) but to drive to Grandma Dorothy's (my mom, and tell her. I knew she would try and drive up and I didn't want her doing that, she would be to upset besides she was 82 yrs old. I was flown by Lifeflight helicopter to a trauma center in Neenah an hour or so drive from my home. There I went through surgery. My left leg was broken in four places. My left arm broken in two places. All of my ribs were broken and I had a bruised lung and a collapsed lung. I spent a total of 36 days in the hospital, between recovery and Physical Therapy. After I was relased, I spent another 7 months having P.T. At which time...7 months to the day of the accident...April 13, 2002, I was back in the hospital..One of the steel plates in my leg had broken. Emergency surgery was required of course.
Then something bizarre happened..on the 13th every other month, something bad would happen.. And June 13, I had to have one of my dogs put to sleep. On August 13, my son was involved in a car accident. We missed October 13..(My daughter stayed home from school that day and we stayed inside). On November 13, my sister had a heart attack. Nothing happened in December and nothing has happened since.
In an earlier entry I said I had an idea of why I survived our accident and my husband didn't. There are actually two reasons..The first one is...(as I was told by a work companion of my husband)...the two of them were talking in my husband's cubicle at work...my husband leaned back in his chair, put is feet on his desk, and said "You know I have a pretty good life. I have a great wife, great kids, nice house. I love my job. I don't think it can get better then this." GOD saw this, laughed and said to himself.."Boy have I got a surprise for him." And BAM!! he was gone.
Now the second reason..In my husbands previous job, he did a lot of traveling, flying around the country. I think he should have been on one of those planes on Sept 11. But because he left his job and we had to move, he wasn't.
He was one of those types of guys that wouldn't just sit and let some terrorists take over. When we would watch films or documentary's about the holocaust,he would say.."why don't those people fight back? Instead of just lining up and standing there waiting to be shot. If you're going to die, you might as well die fighting." He would have been one of the group on that plane that went down in Pennsylvania, that decided to go out fighting.