painting with silly head |
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bio I live in Austin, Texas with one husband and a ten-year-old dog. I was born in 1948 in a small town in Texas. I spent the first ten years of my life on a black land farm. This allowed me to hone my ability to entertain myself. I had a football. I would kick it as far as I could. Then I'd go get it and kick it again. I spent hours imagining a fence with a 4x4 top rail was a motorcycle when I found an old key to play with. I liked 'Sky King' when we finally got a TV. I was shy. I didn't learn to read in first grade. I learned to read with a vengeance in second. But I couldn't spell out loud, understand others when they spelled out words nor tell my left from my right. Math seemed natural. Learning disabilities hadn't been discovered in the fifties. When I was small, Mom sold milk and butter door to door. Dad milked the cows and tended cows, pigs, a few crops. He also worked a midnight to 8 AM shift as an orderly in the nearby Veteran's hospital. Before I went to school, I had my parents to myself during the day because my sister was four years ahead in school. I sat on the basement step and drank milk from a little half pint bottle. Moments before the milk had been strained by my mother and moments before that had been handed to my mother through a ground level window by my dad. Fresh milk from the cow. It was still warm. I refused to drink milk once it was refrigerated. There were battles at the table over milk and green beans. I loved cheese, bologna and sodas like Dr. Pepper and R.C. Cola in a twelve-sided bottle. And Grapette. My dad let me follow him around when I was big enough. I went to get things for him or tried to 'help.' "You're handy as a pocket in a shirt," he'd say. My grandmother lived in town with my grandfather who was much older. He sat in a chair and whittled or played mandolin or violin. She kept chickens in the yard and thought nothing of killing one, plucking and cleaning it and baking it for the lunch of a five-year-old, complete with giblet gravy and cornbread dressing and homemade rolls. She was a saint. My grandfather had some property but never seemed to work or give her any cash. My grandmother sewed and kept other people's children. And us, of course. I played with the spools and scraps of fabric while she sewed. I slept with her when I visited because my grandfather slept in his own room, next to the chair he spent so much time in. I have an early memory of playing with my grandmother's tape measure. "Don't stretch it." I carefully examined it and assured her that I hadn't. Must have puzzled her. I had no idea what 'stretch' meant. I must have been quite young. Amazingly, I knew my numbers. (Remember I didn't read until I was seven.) I remember clearly examining the measure. The numbers were still in order so I couldn't have hurt the tape measure. Mother went back to college when I went to school. She drove to another town for school so Dad, still farming and going to the hospital, was now hustling kids to school or picking them up when she couldn't. We got to go to the college with Mom some Saturdays. We walked around the many sidewalks and pretended we were in college. I read through the college catalog when I was nine, planning courses I'd take. We moved to another small town when I was ten. We lived in town (a town so big it had a bowling alley!) and Mom taught school. This teaching salary propelled us into the lower middle class. Dad quit farming. The land he'd farmed belonged to my old granddad sitting in the chair. He helped other people with stock and crops. Of course, he still had to drive to the hospital to work his night shift and it was now thirty miles away. "Be quiet, your dad's sleeping." We corrected papers for Mom and cut pictures out of magazines for projects. I graduated from high school without another move. Vacations were spent with my grandmother or going camping in the states around Texas (particularly New Mexico and Colorado). We camped with an army of aunts, uncles and cousins. Looking back at the photos, The Grapes of Wrath comes to mind. We went to a high enough altitude to get cool. We didn't have, you see, air conditioning to speak of. Not in houses, cars, schools. A window unit here and there. A few car A.C.s. I got to go to both Florida and California after I graduated from high school. I had a wanderlust but limited means. I spent three and a half years in college. I couldn't afford to go to a private college nor go far away. Mom got her Masters the same week my sister went to college. I was four years behind her. Beginnng my fourth year of college, still undecided as to major or future, a counselor said, "Take eleven hours of electives and I can give you a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics with a Minor in French." I did and they mailed me a diploma. I'd been working in the college bookstore since my Freshman year. I thought I might just manage a bookstore. I got one job offer from the recruiters who came around the campus. Times were hard. Computer programmer, the letter offered. So I took it and have done something with computers for thirty years. Still trying to decide on a course for my career! I took a break from the real world for five months in 1972 and traveled in Europe. I'd saved money from that first job, had received raises but no promotions. (Hmmm...wonder why that white male got a systems analyst job when I'm solving his dumps?) This trip allowed me to hone my ability to sit and drink and watch people. It helped me overcome my shyness and build compensating behaviors. (I was hesitant to ask strangers for help in a shop in English. After trying my hand in other languages, it seemed much easier!) The trip fueled my wanderlust, though. I did go back to work in a few months. I found a job in Austin, Texas in 1975. I found Austin and FFP in 1975. I've been married to FFP for over twenty-five years. Thank goodness. There is no one else in the world I could be married to, I'm convinced. I like fine dining, art, travel, wine and combinations thereof. I love to read and have many, many books. Many are unread, though. There is so little time. I like to have lots friends with lots of points of view. I like to write, mostly journals, not just the online one. I casually collect toys especially bendable, posable figures although that collection is, in large part, in storage. Collecting is too easy these days...since ebay. I'm increasingly jaded because I've gotten to do many things and have many things. What I want now is time to think. Time to savor. Time to read and write and sit and watch people go by and dream their histories. FFP or Forrest - The husband. He's the best. Best friend and helper as well as a great husband. Has run his own ad business for twenty plus years. SuRu - Good friend, neighbor and co-inventor of eXtreme dog walking. Appears often due to the central role of walkies in my current exercise program. Owns Zoey, black standard poodle. Chloe - The dog. Mostly spelled Chalow since that's how we pronounce it. Long story. Mom - Lives here after moving from the Dallas area in spring of '00. Always doing a project. Trying to learn computers. Dad - Ditto. On the move and the projecst. He is trying not to learn computers. He and Mom have been married over 60 years. Still have separate bank accounts. He likes growing things and the natural world. He likes to travel. Mom, too. In-laws - Live nearby. Never been out of the state or on an airplane. Travel is a frightening thought to them. They've never even been to Dallas. My sister, brother-in-law, nieces and great nephew - All live in another state. Sister had a aneurysm rupture in December 1998. Has made a miraculous recovery, but is still working at it. A stack of other friends and acquaintances and business associates. Some aunts, uncles and cousins. Some for Forrest, too. A few enemies, no doubt. Probably quite a few. Friends include the Nancys, the Lindas (it was a thing with baby boomers), Maggie of South Africa, and many more. Some of the friends you will meet here, I haven't met yet. There are 350 people on my Christmas card list. I remember who most of them are and where I met them. So people are always coming and going in my life. For example: Deb - Met her on an airplane. She and I share a birthday, one year apart. Our mothers had the same birthday, one year apart. Sam - Married Deb in our backyard. In 1998. Our Son, John - We took him to raise when Forrest had a certain fast-growing computer company as a client. He went to work for Michael when Michael's company fired the agency. Has been here and there since. His son says, "I know you aren't really my grandparents." Indeed. If only we were and if only he'd stayed at that company! Cheryl, Juan and son Benjamin - college buddies. Ben lives here and married Amy in June 2000 . Cheryl, Juan and I go back over thirty years. Amazing. Don't see them enough. They live in the Ft. Worth area.
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us, by a professional, don't try this at home
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