Tell you the truth – I have never once in my life had blueberry pie. The idea of squishy blueberries doesn’t thrill me; they need to be crisp and fresh. So why name my blog after a pie that I don’t particularly find appetizing. Well, there’s a song by Bette Midler about Blueberry Pie and as silly and childish as it is, it makes me happy.
What have I done in my life? Well, I’ve lived in several different places. No, I wasn’t a military brat. My father died when I was four and my mother never remarried. When her father, my grandfather, died (when I was seven), she decided to move us from a townhouse in Gaithersburg, Maryland to his single family home in Berkley, Michigan. So, the summer between my third and fourth grade years, I said goodbye to my best friend in the whole world, Katie, and sat in the car for the eight and a half hour drive north to the Great Lake State.
We spread my father’s ashes that summer on a windy day in the Upper Peninsula. We stood on Whitefish Point, opened the box, and let him fly free. I am pretty sure that is an illegal act, but my mother figured there were so many dead sailors at the bottom of Lake Superior, what were a few ashes going to do? The wind blew him back in our face anyways. I can remember my younger sister commenting that she got some in her eye. Mama said that way Dad would always be with us.
Life went on as life does: high school was traumatic – as I am sure it is for everyone, so I won’t bore you with my grisley details. At the end of my high school career, I decided to attend Lake Superior State University. Maybe it was the appeal of that windy day standing on Whitefish Point or the fact that I wanted to study history and I couldn’t think of a better place (that we could afford) than a school that used to be a fort. Let’s be honest here, there are no great Georgetowns, University of Virginias, or any Ivy Leagues in Michigan. There are Big Ten schools – which are just that, BIG. I didn’t want to be lost in a sea of people. So, I packed my Jeep (my baby) and headed North.
I spent two incredible years in the great white north. Let me tell you now; there is nothing in this world that will prepare you for the winters up there. They are incredible and beautiful and hard. But it was worth it. I met my best friend, Amy Jo, up there – and I introduced her to another good friend, Nick. They became better than friends and have been happily married almost as long as I have. There really aren’t two people in the world more made for each other than they are. I directed a play, joined a sorority, built a snow castle, sat on more washers and dryers than I’d like to admit, lost my virginity, and, for the first time in my entire life, I fell in love. So, deep in love, I moved away from everything and everyone I knew to be with him – all the way to Denton, Texas.
Because my education was (and still is) very important to me, I finished my degree at Texas Woman’s University. In everything I learned in my two years in the great state of Texas, my education was the most worth the experience. The diversity of the school and the classes offered was much more than I would have received at LSSU and half the price. Outside of the classroom, I learned that I cannot sell Kirby vaccuum cleaners. I learned what happens when your paycheck bounces. I learned how to make ends meet – even if it meant cleaning urine from toilets in a double wide trailor while your client’s oldest son attempts to flirt with you. I also learned that love can be brutal.
Let me make something very clear – we had our good times. However, as time went on, those good times grew much farther apart. I was being replaced with something I couldn’t compete with - Star Wars Galaxies; an online role playing game. In his desperate attempt to save a relationship he knew was failing, I was plopped in front of the computer and shown how to play said game. His justification was that if I was playing, I couldn’t get mad at him for playing. Very well – so I played. However, I am not a computer gamer. So my version of playing was meeting other people online and chatting while we did something game related. That’s how I met a Bothan, who introduced me to someone I could not live without - I just didn’t know it at the time.
As things got harder at home, I found my new friend online was the only person I could confide in. One fateful day, things went awry – the man I was living with read the conversations I had had with the man I was falling in love with. Thus came my desperate attempt to hold together a relationship I didn’t realize at the time I didn’t want to be in. I ceased playing the game all together. And I missed the man I was falling in love with, my superhero, as I so fondly called him.
After a month of trying, I gave up and got back online. If he could have his game, I could have my conversations. They were just that – conversations. But my superhero had taken the month I had disappeared for hard and we had a rocky reunion. I gave him my number and asked him to call me. So our typed conversations became real conversations. My superhero had a voice and an Ohio area code.
The break up was bloody – literally. I came home from class one day to a drunken mess stumbling around our apartment. I had been kind – I didn’t kick him out or force him to leave right away. I moved myself into the other bedroom and told him to take his time. He didn’t take it well. My superhero didn’t take the post-argument phone call in which I informed him I had cut my hand on a bayonet, twisted my knee and ankle, and received several other bruises in an attempt to keep the drunken mess from becoming suicidal well either. In a week, my summer classes were over and I was headed north to visit my mother. I stopped over in Ohio to put a face to the name, voice, and phone number.
Our relationship is a whirlwind – an incredible ride that gets better everyday! We started talking online in April, over the phone in June, face to face in August. We were intimate; but I didn’t want him to be a rebound relationship and I was still finishing up school in Texas, so I hesitated. In October, we finally got together; in December, in his parent’s basement, we got engaged. A year and a half, hundreds of love letters, thousands of hours on the phone, a few plane trips, and one long move from Texas later, we got married. He is a computer gamer at heart, but will take me over a computer any day. Believe me, he has his flaws – but I am almost certain I have more than him, so, while they frustrate me, I deal with them as best I can.
We rented out an apartment in the back upper half of an incredible old victorian home in Cuyahoga Falls. The city really is just as pretty as the name makes it sound. However, we had issues with our landlord; first and foremost being the lack of heat in the wintertime. So we decided to look for something new. We bought a house six months after the wedding in the city of Akron; Goodyear Heights to be exact. I guess you could call Goodyear Heights a burrough, if you will. It’s an area that was built up by Goodyear to support their employees during their big time. We live less than a mile from Goodyear headquarters and can see the Goodyear Blimp Hangers from the end of the block. The area is quaint – full of starter homes and some people who have lived here for years, raised their family, and now look forward to grandchildren visiting. The street is a small tree-lined side street with little traffic. The trees bloom in the spring; beautiful tiny pink flowers that remind you of a fairytale and turn bright yellow in the fall. The best part about our house and neighborhood is the incredible neighbors that came with it. We have a double-wide driveway, for lack of a better way to put it, which we share with two of the most amazing, most country-like city people I have ever met, Maggie and Brian. I will touch on them more later.
Once I got benefits from a new job with the City of Akron, we decided to start officially trying for a baby. We hadn’t been trying before, but we weren’t doing anything to prevent it since shortly after the wedding and nothing had happened. My superhero is twelve years older than I am and while his biological clock lasts much longer, I didn’t want to risk raising my children without a father, as I had been. I know there’s always that chance that something awful could happen, but the sooner we had children, the more I could avoid the health risks that come as human beings age.
We found out we were expecting just before our second Valentine’s Day as a married couple. I took a test in the bathroom at work, just to make sure I wasn’t pregnant before I went for a dentist visit and lo and behold, I was. The local grocery store had toddler sized Pittsburgh Steelers t-shirts on sale, so I headed over there before I came home, got a t-shirt and a Happy Valentine’s Day Dad card and set it on the computer for him. When he read it, I was in the kitchen doing the dishes. He came into the kitchen, looked at me, kind of smiled a little bit, and then asked to confirm what he already knew…there was a little one on the way.
Our bundle of joy showed up on October 8, 2008 – one week later and an induction later than she was supposed to. Our Baby J, as we fondly call her, is the most amazing person I have ever met. She is beautiful, smart, funny, and my most favorite person in the world. In case you haven’t noticed from my blog, I am a little addicted to her.
If you want a tip to give parents-to-be, here’s my most valuable piece of wisdom: Don’t Blink. Before you know it, that little one who is just the size of a blueberry is here, crawling around getting into everything.
There is so much I want to do with her and for her. Some things I have started, others are still thoughts in my head. I want her to learn how to make things; I want her to learn how much more intrinsic value something handmade has versus something bought; I want her to find value in family and friends, not in things and money; I don’t want her to know her place in society – whether it’s low or high; I want her to be a good person.
All of this is why I started a blog. This will be the place to find out how much she has grown, what milestones we have overcome, what feats we have achieved, and what ordinary moments I find extraordinary enough to share. Ontop of it all, you’ll see splatters of my craft addiction, my want to be traditional and “homey” for lack of a better way to put it. I have lots of dreams and, slowly, throughout the years, I believe this will serve as a good record of those dreams becoming reality. So here I am - sweet and simple, like Blueberry Pie.
