I Need This!

As Morgan used to say when she was a kid; I need this! Ducati 1198 Superbike, in Red!! 1198.4 cc's and it weighs less than 400 lbs!

Yep, as soon as I have 17k lying around I'm buying this!

On This Day in History: Can One Person Really Make a Difference?

On December 1st 1955, a middle aged black woman riding a Montgomery, AL city bus home from work when she and three other black men were told to give up their seats for four white men. Rosa Parks refused to comply and the driver called the police. Her arrest prompted the Montgomery Bus Boycott and is widely credited for being the galvanizing factor that kicked off the Civil Rights Movement that would eventually lead to the most sweeping changes in civil rights laws in the history of the United States.

When asked in a radio interview in 1956 why she decided not to give up her seat Parks replied, "I would have to know for once and for all what rights I had as a human being and a citizen of Montgomery, Alabama."

So, the next time you think that one person, or one action no matter how small it may seem, won't make a difference, remember Rosa Parks. Remember also that choosing not to act when you know acting is the right thing to do, all because your effort won't make any difference doesn't make for good reasoning, but does make a person at best apathetic and at worst a coward.

If you would like to read more about Rosa Parks and this event you can go to:
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/rosa+parks

The Right Motivation

I’m a reader. That very well may be the understatement of the century. I read incessantly, voraciously, and can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t have at least three books on the go at any one time. As a young girl I gobbled up Judy Blume’s books, the adventures of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, The Island of the Blue Dolphins and other O’Dell books, The Outsiders and S.E. Hinton’s quasi-sequel novels.

Before the age of 11 I graduated to what would remain a standard love of mine, Science Fiction and Fantasy, with books like The Mists of Avalon and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I gobbled up books by Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Orson Scott Card, C. J. Cherryh, William Gibson, Ursula Le Guinn, and Raymond Feist, to name a very few, faster than they could write them.

Into my adulthood I’ve continued to read at the average pace of 3-5 books a week, depending on how busy my week is. Admittedly, there are the really crazy weeks where I can’t spare enough time to finish a single novel, but then there are the slow weeks, when the teenager is away visiting friends or relatives, and I’ll get through a dozen books. I’ve always maintained that sleep is way overrated, and I often opt for only 5-6 hours of sleep a night to get a few hours of reading in.

So given all of this, you can imagine how disappointed I was that my daughter didn’t seem t o be nearly as interested in books as I’ve been. As a child she loved to be read to, and she learned to read for herself before she started Kindergarten, but it was never a priority for her. We read her the first three of the Harry Potter books, and then there was a span of several years during which she saw the first three movies, grew considerably, and forgot much of the first three books that were all read to her before she turned 5. When it came time for the Goblet of Fire to be made into a movie, she picked up the book and read most of it, but at what I considered an abysmally slow pace. Despite being a huge fan of the movies, she just didn’t seem to be invested in the characters of the book as much, especially as they referred back to things in the first three books that she couldn’t remember. She was slightly better with The Order of the Phoenix, but as the release of The Half Blood Prince film approaches she’s less than 1/3 of the way through the book which she started earlier this year.

For a long time I’ve blamed myself. I didn’t encourage her to read enough or offer her the right incentives to read. As a single mother for most of the last half of her life, our schedule is a bit crazy leaving her little time for any leisure activity. When I was young, school got out at 2:30 and I was home before 3:00. Even with homework and chores I still had several hours a day for reading. We leave our house at 6:45 in the morning and she starts school at 7:30, it’s 5:30 most days before I pick her up at school, and if we have no errands to run then maybe she’s home by 6:00. Dinner, walking the dogs, and then homework, and she’s lucky to be done and in bed by 10.

I also thought perhaps the availability of quality TV/movies that filled her need for fantasy and science fiction had a lot to do with it. I read myself into space adventures and although Star Wars, Battlestar Gallactica, and the original Star Trek did have me hooked, they came along much later in my adolescence. Perhaps she never felt the need to read about space fiction when she’d grown up on 4-different Star Trek “Next Generation” series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, Farscape, Stargate SG1 and Atlantis, Firefly/Serenity, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, and Spiderman, Batman, Fantastic 4 and X-Men moves right and left. The age of being able to bring high-quality science fiction and fantasy to the screen had arrived with a vengeance. So, while she would wait with baited breath for the next episode of Buffy or Star Trek, she never showed any interest in the companion books that had been written about those series. Even the Lord of the Rings movies, which she lived and breathed for from the time the first one was released, never spurred her to pick up the books to see how they compared, or even to read The Hobbit, of which no (good) movie had ever been made.

Now don’t get me wrong, she does read. She’s read the biography of her biggest hero, Dr. Sally Ride, and other books here and there over the years. Usually though they are either non-fiction books about space or astronauts, or fiction books based slightly on real events of the same type. She read all the assigned books for English Lit classes, getting through The Outsiders and Of Mice and Men very well, and absolutely crawling through The Scarlet Letter. Still by her age I could have finished The Outsiders in an hour easily, and she seemed nowhere near that point. Her reading comprehension scores on her SAT’s were way above her grade level every year, putting her at the college level on her last years SAT’s, so it wasn’t that she didn’t read well, she just didn’t seem interested in reading for pleasure.

So, I resigned myself to the fact that maybe she would just never have the same interest in reading fiction that I did. Maybe it was the scientist in her, she was just too focused on her goal of making it into space, and maybe she would just be one of those scientists who spent all of their time reading the latest theories and publications. I was ok with that, in that her focus was admirable and it would surely help her attain her goals to keep that focused, but still I felt she was missing an extremely important part of stimulating the imagination.

Then it happened, the phenomena called “Twilight”, and I learned that all you need to turn a kid who is a decent reader into a reading addict, is the right motivation.

First, you start with a subject that she’s always found extremely interesting and romantic: Vampires. She grew up watching her parents and their friends play the Vampire: The Masquerade role playing game, and watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Blood Ties, and Moonlight. She’s had a crush on Spike from BtVS for years. Dracula to her is not Béla Lugosi, it’s Gary Oldman! In her world vampires are tortured, noble creatures who fall in love with the girl but refuse to get “involved” because they consider themselves too dangerous, old, unworthy etc. Unrequited love, the biggest draw of every hopeless romantic.

Next you add peer-pressure. All of her friends had read the books and could talk of nothing else. They awaited the movie release with a frenzy and their excitement began to rub off on her.

Finally, you add an impending movie release starring, as the noble and tortured vampire, “The sexiest, cutest guy ever.” (That’s a direct Morgan quote folks).

The result, Thursday morning Morgan picked up my copy of Twilight. Despite spending 6-7 hours at my sister’s house for Thanksgiving, where her cousins kept her constantly engaged, she finished it by 10 AM Friday morning. She read all through the night, sleeping from 4:30 am to 8:00 am, and lo and behold she discovered she could eat a 544 page book for breakfast!

That night she moved on to New Moon, book two of the series, and conquered that 608 page book by Sunday morning. She would have finished it Saturday except I insisted that she stop reading long enough to finish the 5 days of homework she would be missing during her trip to Japan next week.

So, with two 12 hour flights to and from Japan next week I expect she will easily finish the last two books in the series. Now we’ve confirmed she has the aptitude, and the desire to read like the book consuming monster her mother is, all she needed was the right motivation!

The Kindness of Strangers

After the rather dark view of the state of human nature I posted last week, I decided to share a past experience that serves to show how, despite the fact that the bulk of humanity seems hopeless; there are still people out there who can make you believe there’s a chance for us.

Just under three years ago my household consisted of myself, my 12-year-old daughter Morgan, my 18-year-old foster daughter Erica, and our 10-year-old basset hound Aeryn. Aeryn was the absolute epitome of the word spoiled, and was quite the princess as a result, ruling the apartment and all her subjects within.

We’d acquired Aeryn about a year earlier from an ad on Craigslist. The family was giving her up because both the adults traveled constantly and the daughter was leaving for college. When I first called the owners, the father explained that as much as they adored her she was used to constant human affection and they were sure she would simply die of loneliness if they left her home for weeks on end, with no companionship other than the neighbor coming over to feed her. She was a beautiful, 79lb, red and white basset, pure-bred, with papers, and apparently the daughter of a famous champion basset from San Diego. We were completely unconcerned with pedigree, we just strongly believed in adopting rather than buying and our local basset rescue did not have any dogs available, so she was perfect.

The owner passed on her vet records and told us she was in perfect health, which she very much seemed to be. He mentioned that she’d had several seizures in the past but that her vet determined it was the flea meds they were using, so they stopped using them on her. She’d had no seizures since. We took her home with us that very day and she settled in and began taking over the apartment immediately.

Three months later Aeryn had a set of seizures. Off we went to the emergency vetspital, because of course it was 10 PM at the time. The vet was able to witness the seizures because Aeryn went into another one just as we got her onto the table. They hooked her up to IV Phenobarbital and took a bunch of blood tests. The vet explained that she most likely had Epilepsy, which is apparently common in purebred bassets, and had been misdiagnosed by her last vet. He told us that there was also the possibility she had a brain tumor of some kind, but that to do an MRI would cost us 10k and even if it was a tumor and it was inoperable, which was very likely, the treatment would be the same as for epilepsy.

Aeryn came home the next day and we started a new regimen of Phenobarbital tablets twice a day. The better part of a year passed with her having a seizure on average once every three months. The meds, coupled with her extreme laziness and her complete love of food, caused her to balloon up to 98lbs, or roughly the weight of a jersey cow. Other than that she showed no ill effects from either the meds or the seizures.

One morning about five am, just about a year after Aeryn came to live with us, she went into a seizure. We had the seizure routine down by now. I stayed with Aeryn, making sure she didn’t bang her head or hurt herself on something while seizing, Morgan ran for towels because the seizure process causes the bladder, bowels, or sometimes both to purge, and Erica ran to the kitchen and started the timer on the microwave to time how long it lasted. The seizure seemed normal, lasting under 5 minutes and Aeryn seemed to recover fine.

At about 7:30, as we were getting ready to leave, Aeryn had another seizure. Again it was a perfectly normal one, but fearing she was going into a “cluster” that would require vet intervention; I called in to work and stayed home with her. The third seizure came about 4 hours later and lasted a little longer, so I called the vet who told me to give her an extra dose of Phenobarbital and see how it went. At about 9 pm the fourth seizure came. Erica and I each spread out blankets on the couch in the living room where Aeryn slept in her beanbag so we would hear her when she seized. (The seizures were silent but the tags on her collar clanked together during a seizure.) The seizures came about every 2 ½ hours all night and first thing in the morning found us at the door to her vet’s office when they opened.

Other than her vaccines, the occasional ear infection, and the blood test every 4 months to check her Phenobarbital level, she had never needed to go to the regular vet. As a result, we did not know too much about the clinic, ABC Veterinary, which we chose because it was near our house. When we arrived with the frequently seizing Aeryn they seemed confident they knew exactly what to do. I specifically told them she would require IV Phenobarbital to stop the seizures and that the oral meds were not cutting it. They told me that she would have to stay overnight and because of that the cost would be $1300, which I needed to pay up front. I had about $500 in my checking account, no savings, and no credit cards, so I borrowed the rest from my brother, wiping out his reserves in the process, and delivered it to them about two hours after we first brought Aeryn in.

At 5:30 that night I got a call from the vet saying that Aeryn was still having seizures and I would have to come get her because they couldn’t leave her alone all night with her having seizures. Very confused I rushed right over to their office. The vet told me that they had been giving her Phenobarbital suppositories every time she seized but that she was still having about one seizure every hour, and they were lasting about 15 minutes. I asked why the IV Phenobarbital wasn’t working and they told me that they didn’t keep any in their office, so they hadn’t given her any, AND that they don’t have anyone who stays at the office overnight so they can only leave animals there that don’t require night monitoring! They went on to calmly explain, after keeping her 9 hours, that if I wanted her to get the IV meds I would have to take her to a vet ER. More than a little upset at this I demanded to know how much of a refund they were going to give me since they were not keeping her overnight as I paid for, and that I would need the money to take her to an ER. They claimed that the price was the same no matter how long she was there, and there would be no refund. If I wanted to take it up with their corporate office I could call during business hours tomorrow. They gave me some Phenobarbital suppositories and ushered us unceremoniously out.

Angered beyond belief I loaded Aeryn into the car and headed home. A block from the house she went into a seizure. By the time we got her into the house the seizure was into 10 min long. I immediately gave her a suppository, which had no effect. Meanwhile I began calling emergency vets begging could they take payments, etc. They all wanted money up front, a credit card guarantee, or something like. By ½ an hour Aeryn was still seizing, Morgan was lying next to her on the ground crying quietly, and I was hysterical. I gave her another suppository with no results.

By now I was at my wits end. In a last ditch attempt I called the local Humane Society thinking that they might have an emergency vet for cases where people couldn’t afford treatment. Of course they were already closed for the day, but they had an emergency line. I called it. A nice young woman explained to me, between my sobs, that they did not have such services, but that there was a hospital in El Cajon that not only took payments, but that worked with several charity organizations. She gave me the number of the Animal Medical Center Foundation & Adoption Center.

I called immediately and they gave me the name of a group that authorized initial visits, and then the name of a private citizen (Cynthia) who also helped people with their vet needs. I called the first group who, who’s name I’m sad to say I no longer have, and they immediately authorized $200 to an account in Aeryn’s name at the center. With the help of our neighbor we loaded the still seizing Aeryn into the car and headed for the Center, which was about a 25 min drive from our house. I’m fairly sure I broke every traffic law in the state on my way there and the drive seemed to take forever. Thanks to Bluetooth technology though I was able to call Cynthia and leave a message while in route.

We arrived at the center and I was immediately impressed. Nurses raced out with a gurney to fetch Aeryn and had her in the treatment area in minutes. The lovely people at the front desk took our information, and were extremely patient with my inability to focus for more than 30 seconds. Just as I finished with the paperwork my cell phone rang. The woman on the line introduced herself as Cynthia, and got right down to business asking me all about Aeryn, what was wrong with her, what had we been able to do, where had we taken her (She grumbled angrily when I got to the ABC Vet part and commiserated that I hadn’t known that they were not only stupidly expensive, but in her opinion incompetent.), and what we were trying to do for her now.

About this time the Dr. called us back, Cynthia stayed on the phone with me while we went back into the treatment area. Aeryn was on a table being wiped down with towels dipped into buckets of water and ice. She had an IV started already and the seizing had stopped. The Dr. explained that when she came in her temperature was over 105o and that they were trying to bring it down. They were giving her IV fluids to cool her and they had given her IV Phenobarbital at stop the seizures. She was breathing heavy and her eyes were closed. We petted her and kissed her and the Dr. Led us into a private room off the treatment area. Cynthia was still on the phone, talking to me reassuringly and asking me how Aeryn looked. She then asked to speak directly to the vet, who explained to Aeryn’s condition to Cynthia and me at the same time.

They would keep her heavily sedated overnight to keep her from having seizures and to get her temperature down to normal. Tomorrow morning they would bring her out of the anesthesia and see if she seized any more. The Dr. warned that there was a good chance she had brain damage from the high temperature, but that we wouldn’t be able to tell until tomorrow when they took her off the meds. Cynthia authorized the hospital to do anything Aeryn needed overnight and charge it to her account. She said she would call in the morning to find out what else needed to be done and to see how Aeryn was doing.

The next morning I called the vet first thing to see how Aeryn was doing. They had taken her off the anesthesia and she hadn’t gone back into any seizures, but she was not responding to any stimulus. They wanted to give it a few more hours before they could say for sure how bad the damage was. Cynthia had already called them for an n update, and had authorized any additional treatment Aeryn needed that day.

A few hours later I talked to them again, and it was clear to the Vet that the brain damage was severe, and that other than basic functions like breathing, her brain wasn’t processing anything. The vet also strongly felt that the symptoms she observed in Aeryn pointed to a brain tumor and not epilepsy. She felt that the tumor had reached the size where it was putting constant pressure on the brain and that it had contributed to the brain damage along with the fever. In her opinion, the seizures could not have been permanently stopped at this point because the tumor had progressed too far.

The girls and I went over to the hospital and said our goodbye’s and stayed with Aeryn while the vet helped her to the bridge. Cynthia had called just before we arrived and told the vet to tell us she would pay for everything, all of the vet bill at AMC, her cremation, everything. I was overwhelmed.

The next day a card arrived from Cynthia telling us how sorry she was that we couldn’t save Aeryn, and how glad she was that she was able to make Aeryn’s last hours as good as they possibly could be.

I never saw a single bill for any of the services, but I’m sure that from experience that when all was said and done it was over $3,000. We sent Cynthia a thank you letter, and a pair of sapphire earrings that I made, but it will never seem like we can thank her enough. A total stranger who never laid eyes on me or my beautiful basset gave Aeryn the help and peace she needed out of nothing more than a love of animals and the goodness of her heart. I try and think of her whenever I get depressed over the state of the humankind, and I hope that there are enough people like her out there to redeem us as a race.

Six Words

A coworker of mine was talking today about a story writing format where the writer must write an entire story using only 6 words. I was incredulous, as anyone who has ever read my blogs or writing might suspect I would be. I of course find it hard to get a single idea down in fewer than 6 pages, let alone 6 words. He gave an example of one he’d read:

For Sale.
Baby Shoes.
Never Used.

Ok, I admit, that’s a story in six words. There’s emotion, surprise, a plot arch. I was amazed. So, anyone else think they can do it? I haven’t been able to yet, but if I do manage it I’ll post it here. If anyone has one and wants to share they can post it to the comments.

Spaying, Neutering, and the decline of Humanity

There are a lot of things in this world that make me angry. To even begin to list them here would take more time than I’ve allotted to get this post written, so I won’t even try. I’m an extremely passionate person, sometimes to a fault, so I tend to take all of my emotions, including anger, to extremes.

Recently though, while reading a post on “The Daily Drool” (DD), an internet mailing list for basset hound lovers, I came across a post that angered me more than anything in my recent memory. I must be very clear here, it was not the poster, or anything she had done that made me angry, in fact I am in complete agreement with her on the issue. Rather it was what she was recounting from experience plus the very fact that she was forced to have said experience that made me angry.

I had been following a thread on the DD for several days, about the pros and cons of spaying/neutering your dogs. Beverly, a frequent poster to the DD, momslave to several dogs, and an extremely gifted writer of “Nigel and Lewis” adventures, wrote in about her experience over 15 years working for a kennel (I think a humane society like one but I’m not positive). Beverly came down firmly on the side of spaying and neutering and from these excerpts it is easy to see why.

“one of my jobs was to go through the stray and abandoned dogs and cats periodically, and put a big, black *X* on the cage cards of those who were going to be put to sleep because
1. They were vicious and not adoptable
2. They had been there too long (usually a couple of months)
3. They were ill with something that required continual or extreme
treatment-- cancer, severe mange, etc
4. Or worst of all, we were coming up on a holiday and needed the space.
So of course, perfectly healthy, happy dogs got euthanized.…
… What fun it was to put a leash on a young, excited, happy dog, wagging his
or her tail, delighted to be out of kennels, trusting me (because I did it,
I held them) to be nice to them, and then-------killing them.

I don't care whether there are health benefits or not. I don't care whether
you show or don't. I don't care whether someone thinks it's too young or too
old or too pretty or too anything. If you are not involved in a breeding
program and you don't have room for all the overflow then you need to neuter
or spay your pet. Anyone who thinks it isn't necessary has not had an
"accidental" litter that you then have to deal with, or held a year old Lab or
Pointer or Basset or Mutt while he wags his tail and the doctor puts a
needle in his vein to stop his heart. Do that a few times. Do it maybe a
hundred times and then come back and tell me that neutering and spaying
doesn't make a difference in dogs that get loose and roam because they're in
season, or the bitch down the road is.”

I cried for about an hour after I finished reading her post. For the next two days I alternated between crying and quite literally boiling with anger. It’s taken me more than a week to calm down enough to write about it, and actually it’s what spurred me to give in to increasing peer pressure and start my own blog.

So other than the obvious, the images of puppies in my head, and the horror at Beverly’s firsthand recounting of it, what made me so angry I could think of little else for days? The answer is complex, but I will do my best to winnow it down to a manageable read.

The first aspect that angered me was the fact that we, the human race, feels that we have the right to pronounce and carry out a death sentence on a healthy, happy, sentient being. I know what you’re all thinking here, we do it all the time. We kill chickens, pigs, cows, sheep, etc. by the millions to eat. It’s true, and it is somewhat at odds not only with what I’m trying to say here, but also with my own philosophies, and it’s something I’m still working out for myself. I’ve toyed with the idea of becoming a vegetarian, and I buy only organic, free-range, cruelty-free meats. Still, I realize it’s a contradiction. All I can say in my defense is that at least we are eating them, using their skins, sometimes their bones, and other things. I’m not saying that makes it right, or wrong, but I digress.

Let me approach this from another angle, the second and ultimately strongest reason I’m so very angry; arrogance! More than 2,000 years ago the human race began domesticating dogs. They took them out of their natural wild environments, and brought them into their homes. They trained them as companions, and dogs proved extremely adaptable to domesticity. Over the next 2,000+ years humans began to genetically engineer dogs to their liking, breeding them for certain traits that made them more desirable either as working dogs or as pets. Traits were bred into them that rendered them unable to survive in the wild. Inbreeding and other irresponsible breeding practices resulted in entire breeds being prone to debilitating or deadly disorders like epilepsy and hip dysplasia. Dogs became completely dependent on humans for their survival. Can you imagine a pack of wild Basset Hounds, Pomeranians, Daschunds, or Shar Pei? Never going to happen.

So now, here we are, several thousand years later with a multitude of beautiful and useful dog breeds that we in our infinite wisdom created. It’s progress right, evolution? We members of the human race love to tout all of the progress we’ve made over the millennia. So to recap, we’ve domesticated dogs then bred them to be human dependant, and even if we hadn’t we’ve taken away most of what could have been their natural habitat were they still wild animals.

Now don’t get me wrong here, I LOVE dogs and I’m glad we domesticated them! I’ve had dogs all my life, and I can’t imagine life without them. My dogs are as much a part of my family as my daughter, and believe me my daughter agrees. We’ve often given up luxuries and cut down on necessities when money was needed for vet bills or pet meds, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. My sister-in-law summed it up the other day when we were discussing the dogs being abandoned at shelters because of home foreclosures and not enough rentals accepting pets. She said, “If we get foreclosed on it will be me and Bandit (her minpin-chuahua) living out of the car together.” I feel exactly the same way.

That being said, that’s me and my family. There are others out there who feel the same, I know some of them, and there are certainly a lot of them on the DD. However, we have a RESPONSIBILITY, as a race, to care for our creations. Stuffing them in kennels and shelters because we don’t want to see them roaming the streets and then killing them when we don’t have the room, or the money, or the time for them, is unacceptable. I know what most of you are thinking, “I didn’t create these breeds or domesticate the dog, so why should I be responsible?” This is the human race’s favorite justification for inaction and apathy. In America we are especially good at it, “I didn’t own slaves, why should I have to help the millions of African Americans stuck in a cycle of poverty because of slavery and its after affects?” or “I don’t know anyone in Darfur, so why should I do anything to stop the genocide there?”

I’ve spent most of my life trying to justify to myself and others why the human race is worth trying to save, that the atrocities they commit in the name of their god, or country, or belief can be attributed to ignorance and isolation and with time, education, and understanding we can evolve into a race worthy of being the dominant species on the planet, and perhaps someday even becoming productive members of the universe by joining the other life forms that must exist out there. I’m an optimist; I believe that the human spirit can rise above its current state of pettiness, selfishness, greed, and arrogance. I watch the news, war coverage, politics, murder, poverty, apathy, and still I manage to believe. When I see these horrors it makes me want to try harder to help the human race become a better species.

But I have to say, Beverly’s posting made me doubt my belief in humans for the first time in a really long time. If we as a race can justify taking a healthy, happy creature, wagging its tail and wanting nothing more from us than our love, and killing it, no matter how humanely, for ANY reason, then perhaps we in our arrogance, apathy and greed, don’t deserve to be the dominant species on this or any planet. Perhaps the best thing for the universe would be to let the human race continue on its current path to imminent extinction.

Who Am I?

Who am I? It’s a question I ask myself frequently and the answer has changed many times in the 37 years I’ve been on this planet. The answer is many-layered, with some layers being decidedly harder to define than others. Some of the definitions are easy; I’m a mother, I have a lovely daughter Morgan who will be 14 in one month. I’m an animal lover, especially dogs, and most especially basset hounds of which I currently have two, Copper (age 11) and Elphaba (age 2). I’m a Systems Engineer, designing medical devices and safety controls for medication distribution. (This is what I do for a living, but honestly it has less to do with who I am than almost anything else.) I’m a Thespian, loving all aspects of the theatre from technical to stage acting. I’m a sibling, one brother, and one sister, both younger than me. I’m an aunt, one nephew (age 13) and one niece (age 11). I’m also a daughter, granddaughter, niece, and cousin (I have hundreds of 2nd, 3rd, and 4th cousins). I’m an ex-wife, several times over actually.

Most of those things are who I am to other people. Definitely aspects of me, but really only a small fraction of me as a whole. The me that informs my everyday actions is a much more complex, tumultuous being. She’s an armchair anthropologist, struggling to understand the human race, where they have been and where they‘re going. She’s a dreamer, who can envision a planet where the people have put aside their petty differences to live in harmony. She’s an optimist, who despite seeing the massive failings of our race and their unwillingness to recognize those failings, still believes there is hope that the human race can live up to the vast potential they have barely begun to tap. She’s a hopeless romantic. This perhaps has been one of my biggest downfalls, and yet it's the aspect I’m least likely to relinquish. She’s an activist who believes in putting your time and money into what you believe in. She's a lover of science fiction, fantasy, and mystery.

More than anything, she’s constantly conflicted.

This intro doesn’t really give true insight into who I really am, but I’m hoping that if you keep reading my blogs, a better sense of understanding will be revealed, quite possibly to me as much as to any of you.