My Religion

Mom started dating my father after a blind date (where she was 5th pick, the others bailed out,) and she was only 15 at the time. My father was a 20 year old Military guy. She'd always lived in the country woods, so this New Yorker was just different. There was an instant attraction. It just so happened that they were both the same religion; Methodist. Mom's parents hated the thought of their little girl getting married at 17, but knew that if they made her wait the 3 months before turning 18 to get married, they would not be invited to the wedding, so they conceded defeat. Mom and Dad were married in a Methodist church on June 7th, 1975.

It wasn't long after that my mom discovered she was pregnant. My brother was born on July 25, 1976. My parents never had a Honeymoon (btw - neither have I). Instead, my dad left the Air Force and moved her, while still pregnant, to upstate New York where he got a job in a grocery store and they lived with my Dad's Step-Dad, my Grandpa Frank. That's the way I understand the story, anyway.

They went to church with grandpa Frank all the time. He was the kind that would swear like a sailor and then repent on a Sunday. Eventually I think my mother got tired of it and decided that the church had too many hypocrites in it. That's when they stopped going.

Sometime after that, Dad joined back up with the Air Force. In the summer of 1979, Mom was pregnant with me and Dad got stationed in Germany. Mom said that the last thing she wanted was for her last child to be born somewhere other than the states. She wanted an all American baby. (LOL! And here I'm so proud of my Irish heritage...) So, Mom moved back to Arkansas with my brother to be with her mom to have me. I guess she was about 8 months along when she decided she couldn't take it anymore and moved to Germany to be with my Dad. Then I came along in December that year, 2 weeks to the day before Christmas.

Got a little off track there ... sorry.

Anyway, My brother and I knew basically nothing of the church for many years because my mother didn't want us getting "Confused". The only kind of church they had on the military bases were non-denominational churches. Mom and Dad thought that it would only add to the confusion if we went to these churches that Mom thought was full of only more hypocrites. She's got many strange beliefs, most of which I do not agree with in the slightest.

My brother and I used to sneak out of the house early on a Sunday morning and ride our bikes the 3 miles to get to the church for the service. There was rarely a service we missed. Mom and Dad just always thought we were out playing, or sleeping in. They never really knew.

Finally, once we moved to Utah and my brother moved away, there were no churches close by but the LDS church, and my mom would not have stood for me to go to an LDS church. It's the rebel in her, I guess. She doesn't ever want to "follow the pack" if you know what I mean. No offense to the Mormon religion, but Mom didn't want any of us to be what everyone else was. Besides, she was raised Methodist and firmly believed in the religion - just not the hypocrites.

I finally found a Methodist Church on Laker Way in Washington Terrace and somehow I talked them into going to church with me. We had a grand time, actually. Mom and Dad dressed up to go with me, and for the first time in years, my grades started to do better in school. I felt like I had their support finally. Then it came. The letter.

I started my first job at the Wendy's in Roy in the summer of 1996. I think it was Andrew Libby who actually asked me on a date while I was working there. He took me to play Mini Golf - the first time I had ever played. And the last. We had a blast. When school started back up again, he didn't know who I was.

Anyway - getting off the point again.

I wasn't making much money at Wendy's, and it was saving what I could for school clothes and supplies for when school started back up. One day I went to the mail box to get the mail and found something for me in it from the Methodist Church.
The letter said roughly that they appreciated my donations every week. They understood that I now had a new job. They outlined for me how much I made, how much was taken out for taxes and various purposes, and then told me how much I SHOULD be donating every week.

I never went back.

I tried a church here and there for a while and even became friends with a pastor once who was quite good. He expected nothing from me but kindness... but still my heart wasn't in it. It was too late and I was jaded at that point. It's been years now since I've set foot in a church. I imagine it will be yet a few more before I'm even tempted, if ever.

Shack in the Woods

WARNING - THIS STORY IS NOT
FOR THE WEAK OF STOMACH.


By far I think some of the most unusual friends I had in my youth were brothers, Steve and Dan Stakely. For years I had an incurable crush on Steve, who was my age and grade. I was always boy-crazy, but my mother was convinced I would someday marry this crush. Steve and Dan’s mother was convinced equally that Dan would one day marry his crush as well. His crush just happened to me me. It made for many interesting stories involving the bus ride to and from school. At the time, I wasn’t being a very good role model, but I also didn’t realize that Dan looked up to me as much as he did.

I was a rather poor student at the time one particular adventure took place. Well, I wasn’t exactly a bad student. I was actually quite a good student, when I was at school. I had started skipping classes the year before, and eventually it elevated to entire weeks the next year. At this point, it was just a day here, a day there. I suppose I must have been about sixteen at the time, or almost that age. Dan was most likely somewhere around the age of fourteen.

In the beginning, Dan and I would just decide not get on the bus in the mornings. Instead, we would walk down to the park and meet at one particular place. From there we would decide on where to go and what to do. Sometimes we walked to Sheplers and filled out job applications. Other days we would go browsing through Media Play or Walmart. Nobody ever said anything to us about not being in school. He and I had quite a few adventures, but none so memorable as the day we decided to stay at the park on a snowy, cold, frozen day and tried to find some shelter.

Dan and I had explored the woods behind the Cinedome at the park many times. We knew the trees and the paths through them almost as well as we know our own back yards. We headed up the winding sewage creek towards the top of the hill. We climbed and scrambles our way up the muddy embankment past where the sewage pipe submerged from the sheer mud cliff. We emerged in a clearing and could see nothing around but trees, a wrecked, stripped, and rusted old mail van, and a tiny old wooden shack off in the distance.

For a moment, we lingered in the old van, neither of us wanting to do what was coming next. At this point, it was already clear to me that Dan thought I was the toughest girl he had ever known, and had taken liberty to tell me as much on several occasions. To one person, I stood out in a crowd. I was finally important to someone. I didn’t want that to change in his eyes, or my own. I’m not entirely sure if it was ego or pure stupidity that made me do what came next, but one thing that will never change is that I did something I had thought I would never do.

Dan and I picked our way across the snow dusted field, being sure to only step on the tufts of grass on alternating sides all the way up the path. With each tip toe step on the grass we tried to leave footprints indistinguishable from the grass itself. We continued this way until we reached the old wooden shack. One window looked into the building but was too high and too dirty to see into. I pulled my brand new gloves out of my pockets with frozen hands, and slipped my fingers into the leather extremities. My body heat had warmed the gloves as they snuggled deeply in my jacket pockets, and the warmth felt wonderful on my Popsicle fingertips. I clenched and unclenched my fist a couple of times in order to stretch the leather to my hand just so. When I was ready, I struck. The sixteen inch high, one foot wide pane of glass shattered.

Dan stood back in awe. His mouth hung slightly ajar, and his eyes were wide with surprise. I opened my fist inside the window and with a flat palm, pulled more of the glass out through the fresh opening. I picked the broken glass out of the back of my now serrated brand new leather glove and tossed it into a nearby bush. In my heart I knew that what I had just done went against everything I had ever been taught, but at that moment, it just didn’t matter to me. I wanted to hang on to that feeling of being important and needed. I suppose then that it was my ego getting the better of me. I wanted to remain someone who stood out in a crowd. I suppose that was the turning point. I’ve stood out now nearly every day since.

I drug an unearthed tree stump under the broken window and pulled the loose glass from the sill. Making sure I was properly covered everywhere first, I grabbed the rotten wood lining the window and shimmied into it up to my waist and looked around. The opening was so small that I would have to turn sideways to get my hips through. I was much skinnier in my youth, and looking back on this incident, I know now that I wouldn’t have been able to make this same move only a year later.

An old workbench lined the tiny wooden floored room to my left, it’s edge nearly under the window. All the way on the opposite wall on the right, an old glass-handled door remained closed. I couldn’t imagine what treasures lay just beyond that door, just beyond what I could see. Even the room I was in was filled with treasures. Old rusted tools with fifty years of dust or more were scattered across the workbench. An antique tin tool box sat on the wooden floor under me, it’s lid slightly warped to remain forever open. This was a child’s paradise, a teenager’s fantasy come true, and a history fanatic's paradise.

I tested the workbench with my left hand for stability and found it mostly trustworthy, so I slowly pulled my twisted hips through the opening and turned to my left in order to put one knee on the workbench as I pulled the other leg through the window. I felt like a gymnast performing for the circus, but somehow I made it all look graceful.

Once through and on my feet, I turned to help Dan climb inside. The wooden floor was elevated about a foot off the ground, so the window didn’t seem nearly as high from my vantage point. I peeked out and could still see the short boys blond locks poking out in every direction under his knit cap. He elevated himself on his toes, and his blue eyes came into view.

"Step up on the wood," I whispered to him. Hi hands gingerly reached for the windowsill, cautious as he should be with no gloves on.

"I’m already on it," he said with a bit of a sneer, thinking I was poking fun at his short stature. I couldn’t help but smile to myself. I pulled on his arms as he braced his feet against the wall of the shack. Somehow, he got turned around and ended up looking at the ceiling.

"Eww! What’s that," he asked, completely disgusted. I followed his gaze to the corner of the ceiling nearest the two of us. From a distance and in the natural dark, they looked like chicken drumsticks hanging on wire hooks from the ceiling. It seems like not only a weird thing to hang in a workshop or shed, but a rather gross thing to leave around anywhere until slightly molded and covered in cobwebs. I told Dan not to worry about it, as was my usual answer, and pulled him the rest of the way inside. I was never an extremely graceful person myself, but Dan’s entrance made me look like a prima ballerina. He was all arms and legs, getting tangled crazily. He landed on the floor in a pile.

As Dan looked around, I became curious about the drumsticks in the corner. I crawled cautiously onto the workbench, still not fully trusting the rotten wooden blanks. They held my weight though, and I inched closer to the dangling pieces.

I nearly screamed. I bit my tongue to avoid shouting out loud. Those weren’t just old chicken legs. They were bats that had been tied upside down from wires around their feet so long ago that the flesh was rotting off the bones. Part of the skull was protruding in the area of the mouth and the eyes were mere empty sockets of complete nightmare. They seemed to stare straight through me with complete nothingness. Just about the time I was going to jump down from the workbench and onto the floor, I saw one more hanging only inches above the window, It also happened to be only inches from my nose. The stench rolling off the rotted corpse gave away its location long before I saw it. I gulped and scrambled down from the table, not letting a syllable utter from my lips. Dan turned and looked at me.

"What’s the matter with you," he asked. "You’re white as a ghost. You feeling OK?" I didn’t say anything for a moment, but I guess the way his expression changed as he watched me that he could see the wheels turning in my head. An evil grin slowly spread across my face.
"I got us in here," I began. "Now it’s your turn." He looked puzzled at first. His eyes darted to the corner of the room and back to me again. Suddenly his face completely melted.
"No way!" he cried out. His shout echoed off the snow covered ground outside.

Much to his rejection at the thought, we searched around for something to help Dan to get what he still thought were chicken legs out of the old shack. The two of us finally decided a pair of pliers and some old wire cutters would do the trick, so I grabbed an old key chain flashlight out of my pocket and got back up on the workbench. Dan followed behind me, tools in hand.
Dan clutched the base of the mystery object with the pliers and something crunched under the pressure of his light grip. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the decaying smell something similar to that of road kill after it’s been in the sun a few days came wafting out, turning both our stomachs.
Dan couldn’t see the wire in order to cut it. I knew that would be the case, though I really resisted using my flashlight. Finally, I knew I couldn’t avoid it anymore. I tried to catch only the thin line of wire in it’s beam, but the bony toes were caught in the light. Dan made lurching noises, and for a moment, I thought he was going to burst. He rocked back on his heels and I just barely caught him before he fell off the table. Unfortunately, the light jarred in my hand when I reached for him and the dim illumination fell squarely on the now crushed head of the bat. Something like oatmeal oozed out around the pliers. Every bit of color drained from Dan’s face, and I’m sure mine was a mirror image.

Dan flung the last of the bats out the window as I stood back ’supervising’ his task. I’ve since blocked out everything in between, though glimpses of the process to get the to the opening still haunt me at times.

Dan and I met at the old shack nearly daily for a while that winter. We’d have to meet outside and I would have to help Dan in since he was too short, but it quickly became one of our favorite places.

The same day we had given flight back to the long dead bats for a few seconds, we’d explored beyond the door at the end of the workbench. The room beyond had once been a carriage house. Dirt floors had long since been cluttered with various things, but faint wheel marks could still be seen from a history long past. A pedal powered knife-sharpening wheel sat by where the double doors once opened outward. Antique brass headboards and foot boards leaned against the wall. Rusted spring-loaded animal traps hung from nails in the framework. Ancient chains covered in grit and grime dangled next to machetes on the ceiling. An old mule-pulled plow sat heavily on the ground next to the door inside. It was truly a treasure chest.

I knew Dan was as tired as I was of climbing through the tiny window opening, if not more so. My mind, ever-devious back then, came up with a plan one day.

"Hey Dan, why don’t you check out the side doors from the outside, see what they’re locked with. Maybe we can find a key and use that as our door from now on," I explained after finding an old she box full of keys under a floorboard in the small room. Delighted at the idea, he hurried out the window as fast as his fat, short body would allowed, and ran around the building to the other side of the doors. After explaining to me what the lock looked like, I began to make guesses as to which key would be the right one. I slid the keys one by one under the door, and one by one Dan tried them all and passed them back.

"I got an idea," Dan said to me, after the last key was safely back in its box. I heard him run back around he building and I met him at the window in the next room "Hand me that saw," he said, pointing to the workbench. I handed him the wood saw, not knowing exactly what he was going to do with it, and went back to the inside of the double doors as he tossed his jacket inside along the wall.

First, Dan tried to saw a bracing board in two, and when that didn’t work, decided to try the metal chain and lock that held it in place. Finally fed up with the resistance, Dan grabbed a rock, determined to smash the lock apart. All the noise he was making should have raised the dead bats from their shallow, snowy grave. Just about the time I was going to tell him to stop, to be quiet, I heard a strange voice.

"Hey Kid," a deep, growling voice yelled. "Get away from there!" Heavy footsteps outside warned me that whoever it was decided walking wasn’t getting the m to Dan quite fast enough. I heard Dan’s rock drop to the ground and I knew he was gone, running like a mad man through the woods. I was trapped inside.

There were apparently two men who had come to investigate. I could over hear them talking as they made their was around the inspection of the shed. I crawled, silent as a mouse, into the smaller room and hid under the corner of the work bench closest to the window.

"Aw, shit. Look at this, Chuck," the one who had yelled at Dan said. I didn’t need to look in order to know what he was talking about. The man was standing right over me, looking in through the window. I held my breath. "That damn kid broke the window."

"I s’pose we should nail it up before it snows again tonight," the other replied. "Let’s get a board and some nails." I heard the two start walking back the way they came and my spirits lifted. They were just about back to the double doors when I heard them pause.
"Wait," the one named Chuck paused. "What if the brat comes back?" he asked. "I better wait here while you get the stuff."

My body sprang into action before my mind had time to think. I jumped up, my head glancing off the table above me, and stood before the window. I knew without a doubt that they heard my head hit, and I didn’t have much time.

I lept into the air and twisted my body miraculously like an Olympic diver would ff a high dive and instead of diving into water, I sailed through the open window. Just before passing all the way through, I saw Dan’s only winter jacket on the floor by the wall where he had left it. It was too late. I could only pray he didn’t have any identification in it.

I landed on my hands and rolled roughly onto my back, catching a sharp stone right in the kidney. An old branch tore at my leg. I heard shouting behind me and didn’t take the time to catch my breath after the landing knocked it out of me. I pulled my feet under my sore butt and fled down through the woods, I imagine much the same way Dan had.

It wasn’t long before I caught up to Dan and passed him. My legs were much longer.

Neither of us skipped a single class in school for a month. Eventually Dan’s mother began asking where his jacket had gone. Not knowing what else to tell her, finally he just said that I had it and would get it for him. The retrieval of his jacket was the last time I ever went back up that hill in the woods, but that’s another story.

The Guard's Daydream

Originally Written : Feb 5, 2009 8:57 PM

Work that day was slow. There wasn’t much going on around the Guard shack, so I ended up just watching the video monitors. Things were always slow when it rained. I liked it that way.

My mind drifted to the way the sky looked the night before, with a big ring of clouds around the moon. Someone special told me that it was a Fairy Ring, the moon and the Fairies were battling for the sky. The moon would surely spill its rain if it won, but might be delayed a few days if it didn’t. It looked as though the Moon won.

Quiet days were the best for calm meditation. Normally I could think just a little clearer on the days when it would rain, like the water would wash my thoughts. For some reason, the same feelings kept permeating my thoughts. Thinking clearer was a bit harder on this unusual day.

I sighed, stood up and paced across the floor in the Guard shack. I walked out into the rain for a moment, not caring if my uniform got completely soaked. I loved the rain; it was beautiful. The fog was rolling in, making things seem even more mystical and mysterious. I couldn’t see the million dollar mansions on the hill before me anymore. The top of the trees protruded, creating a cloudy, wooden paradise with everything from palm tree to pine.

The heater blasted inside the guard shack, humming its merry little tune, warming the retreat from the elements. I didn’t want to be warm, though. I wanted to let the rain wash away my worries and concerns. I faced the sky, feeling the drops splash onto my cheeks. Slowly the drips started to pool on my face and run down my neck. It was cold outside, so the rain sliding down the outside of my throat was like ice water. I rubbed my neck and closed my eyes. What a glorious, beautiful day!

His face stuck in my mind. I couldn’t shake it. I looked at my cell phone only about fifty times a day, as I had his photograph on the wallpaper. It was a close enough image to see my most favorite feature, his long, curly hair. He had beautiful chestnut hair that wound into soft coffee colored waves that extended just below the base of his skull. His masculine jaw line was outlined by perfectly sculpted facial hair that would tickle anyone who got close enough to it. It was a good tickle. His piercing blue eyes held worlds of wonder and amazement and were themselves magical in the most sincere of ways. He saw the world as I saw it, finally proving I was not alone in my mysticism and fantasies. Magic did exist, and he was the living, breathing proof. He was born of the Fairy kingdom and raised by Pirates and Rogues. It showed in everything he ever touched.

Suddenly I was inspired to write. I didn’t know what I was going to write, just that I was going to spend a few minutes telling a story about this wonderful person. I stepped back into the guard shack and started tapping away at my laptop computer. The rain continued to pour outside, the wind picking up a little with each passing minute. My eyes grew heavy as I sat in the white plastic seat in front of the warm heater.

Sheets of rain started to sweep across the parking lot, showing how uneven the water fell from the sky. The sheets would zigzag across the black pavement, leaving odd snakelike patterns that would disappear in seconds. Pools started to form and rivers began cascading through this blacktop jungle. Bubbles formed where the large drops merged and fell into the puddles from the pine needles of the tree near by.

The water grew deeper all around me, forcing its way into the elevated guard shack. I knew I would have to get out of the guard shack if I was going to make it to shelter. I couldn’t believe it was starting to fill with water. I would have to swim to safety.

I swam to the nearest tree and looked back. The guard shack wasn’t a guard shack at all! I had been hiding under a huge mushroom! I turned to climb higher in the tree and that’s when I realized it hadn’t been a tree I swam to at all. It was a gigantic reed, like the kind at the edge of a river, but multiplied in size ten fold. Where had the tree gone that I knew was by the guard shack? I looked around and didn’t see it anywhere. I climbed higher to get a better view.

Dry land wasn’t far away. I would have to swim a while to get there, but it looked close enough for me to make it. A proud, twisted old tree stood on the banks of the dry land, also of an unnatural size. I jumped from the reed and dove into the surging water below. The mushroom was completely under water now. I swam hard towards the land I had seen. It seemed like the rain was starting to let up.

A huge piece of driftwood was partially buried on the shore when I reached land. I looked around bud couldn’t see the other end. Then I saw it. This wasn’t some piece of driftwood I was climbing over, it was the root to a colossal tree! The bark on the tree was thick and coarse, but not stable enough to climb. I needed to get a better view of my surroundings. Just moments ago, all of this had been a big parking lot!

The clouds finally parted and the sky cleared enough for me to look around. I climbed as high as I could on the tree roots and held my hand over my eyes to shade myself from the glaring sun.

A whole new world lay before me. A river off in the distance coursed its way through a wide valley. Everything was ten times bigger than it should be. Mushrooms provided shelter for potato bugs and silverfish; birds were beginning to take fight from the trees again since the rain had stopped. A couple of earthworms surfaced and worked to dry themselves on a slab of granite. From under flowers came the most beautiful creatures I had ever seen. They looked almost human, but their fingers were longer and very thin, their faces drawn taught and almost squinting. The hair on their heads was trimmed short and was in an unkempt, unruly manner. The strangest part of these creatures was the odd pair of sticks that sprouted from their backs. At first they looked like sticks, but upon closer inspection I began to realize that those sticks were just the frameworks for their beautiful iridescent wings. They bent their knees slightly, jumped into the air, and flew with the speed of hummingbirds.

One came rather close and looked at me. She was as big as I was! Or, it started to sink in, I was as small as she was. Her hair was a light blondish pink, and her eyes, what I could see of them through her narrow almond slits were an unnatural brilliant green. She had seen something on me and reached out her spindling fingers to grab it. As I watched her, I realized what it was she wanted. She was reaching for a bright golden key around my neck. Just about the time I thought it might be wise to stop her, she wrapped her fingers around it and was taking off. I grabbed her arm and held on. Her wings were so powerful they lifted me right off of the ground, high into the air, and never once did she let go of the key. If I had let go of her, she likely would have choked me to death with the string holding the key on my neckline!

Finally she landed in the center of a large pink rose. It appeared she was bored with the game and let go of my key. I had no idea what the key went to, but I knew it was important for some reason. She flew off, buzzing happily like a humming bird. Seeing that I wasn’t entirely sure what to do from here, she circled back. Her long finger pointed back towards the tree where I had been when she flew up to me moments before. She wanted me to go back to the tree?

My gaze followed to where she was pointing, and near the base of the tree was a small wooden door with a handle in the middle. Just below the handle was a lock. It looked as though this key would fit into that lock perfectly. I guessed there was only one way to figure that out. I jumped out of the rose, slid down a tall blade of grass and made my way back to the tree. It was the opposite side from where I had been, so when I reached the door into the tree I couldn’t see the river anymore. The girth of the tree completely blocked it from sight. Several more flying creatures flitted up on speedy wings, all of them urging me to go through the door. One of them opened her mouth as if to say something, but instead emitted a horrible squeal, steady and shrieking. The only thing I wanted in the entire world was to get away from that sound.

I put the key into the door and turned it with a clanking sound. It slowly opened to reveal…

I was back in the guard shack. My eyes were heavy. The horrible squealing shriek continued! I jumped to my feet and looked around just as the noise subsided. A car sat outside the guard booth, the driver occasionally honking the horn to get my attention. Her strawberry blonde hair and nearly unrealistic green contacts were a stark contrast to the blue gray world of the subsided magical rain.

“Hi there, I was just wondering if you know how to get to the Three Martini’s restaurant.” She paused, shaking the water out of her hair through the open window with her long, spindly fingers. “Damn this blasted rain – I hate this stuff!”

Hello Japan!

Based on my stat counter plugged into my blog profile, it looks as though I'm becoming something of an odd phenominon in Japan. I am not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but since I used to work for a Japanese company, I must somehow assume it's related.

I'll never forget working at that company. Most of the people in the office were Japanese with the exception of a french woman married to a Japanese man and who spoke 5 languages fluently, and my immediate boss, who was Gaijin like me.

When I applied for the job, right off the bat I got along with the woman who would turn out to be my boss. She valued the opinion of the french woman highly though. The french woman, an adorable gal by the name of Aurelie, could read people by their shoes. Imagine that - I wonder where I got the idea from a few years later. She took one look at the lovely little black peep-toe sling backs I had on and knew right off the bat that she liked me. I got the job.

My boss turned out to be one of the neatest people I ever worked for. She was funny and brilliant, though she rarely gave herself the credit she deserved. She took me under her wing and taught me anything I could absorb. Other than a brief period of being burned out and growing lazy because of it, I worked very hard for her. That one period of growing lazy eventually was realized though, and by then it was too late. I had screwed things up royally.

I did work hard though. I learned not only my job, but parts of the Japanese language. I would ask someone for a new word every day. They would teach me and I would practice all day long. I would write it on a sticky note and tack it to the edge of my computer screen. Before long, I had my numbers 1-10 memorized and many of the polite words needed to greet others any time of the day. I didn't tell anyone, but I was getting to where I could understand it more than I could speak it. Even now I can pick up on a conversation and know exactly what is being talked about, even if it's not exactly what is being said.

I made decent money and was proud. For the first time in my life, I could afford my own place (albeit with a roommate) and I fully supported myself. I didn't have to rely or depend on anyone but myself. It was a feeling of liberation. I owed that all to the wonderful Japanese company I so dearly loved working for.

Eventually I moved up from being the phone receptionist and took over the National Sales when my boss Michele went out on maternity leave. I would travel from coast to coast, doing dealer visits, product training and trade shows. I very much enjoyed it, but while I was working for the company I met Pete. He and I started to get more serious, and eventually I couldn't see spending that much time traveling anymore, no matter how much I loved it.

When the job offer came in for me to make nearly double what I was making for the Japanese company, I couldn't afford not to take it. Unfortunately, the job didn't work out and I was let go within the first 30 days of employment. Certainly my old company wouldn't take me back and I didn't blame them a bit. There I was, having moved in with Pete 2 days before, and suddenly going from making TONS of money to not having a job at all.

I learned a valuable lesson about loyalty from that brief bit of history. The Japanese people and company are highly loyal and honerable. I wasn't loyal to them in return, and I missed out on something really great. Though I do get paid better NOW than I got paid in 2006 working for them, I miss the culture of the place. I miss the language lessons, the traveling, the kindness, respect and loyalty they all showed to me. I miss Mr. Katayama coming over from Japan for his visits and always wanting to sit next to me at the dinner meetings. I miss Mr. Nishikawa and his kind words. I miss Mrs. Kawano and her angelic face, her sugary voice. I miss Aurelie and her lovely french accent. Most of all I miss Michele. She really was a great boss.

I aspire to be like Michele with the way I run my crew now. She shared a few lessons with me that I'll not easily forget. I adored her and her quirky personality. She had a lovely smile that would light up the room as soon as she shared it. She only had a couple of employees and I have 12 now, but the fact remains that she taught me how to run things.

Probably my favorite story though of working for the Japanese company happened when Michele was out on leave. Nobody was in the office when I returned from lunch and I was left pondering the vacant offices around the hexigon building. I made my way over to my office and sat down. Still wondering where everyone was, I stood up again and poked my head out of the door. Just then Mrs. Kawano came scampering in like a little mouse from the warehouse out back.

"Amanda-san! Amanda-san, ah, we need your help!"

First of all, calling ANY female by name with the added 'san' at the end is a term of extreme respect. I was called Amanda-san by almost everyone in the office, with the exception of the company president and the American born Japanese guy, Mr. Ikeda, who had the office next to mine.

Mr. Ikeda, Mrs. Nakamura and Mr. Masaki were all waiting for me in the warehouse. Mrs. Kawano lead the way to a closed door in the back. When she opened the heavy wooden door on the groaning hinges, it opened into a pitch black room with a vague, distant light shining somewhere in the depths.

As I stepped inside the room, my eyes adjusted to three different lights, shining at white pieces of paper all the way against the back wall of the room. I walked over, slowly.

"Mrs. Kawano," I asked, "What is this?"

"We, ah, need your help. We have brown eye," she said, pointing at her own eyes with an extended finger. Her freshly manicured hand smelled like kiwi melon. "You," she said, pointing at me, "have blue eye." Still confused over everything except what color our eyes were, I arched one eyebrow and scrunched the other to look closer at her. What was I missing? She continued, pointing to the lights on the back wall. "Ah, what color is light?"

"Huh?"

"What color is, ah, light?"

"Which one?" There were three lights shining on white pieces of paper against the back wall. Which one of the three was she talking about? As far as I could tell, all three were slightly different shades of color.

"Any," she said.

"Well," I started slowly. Mr. Masaki looked at me, holding one of the lights up and waiting. Mr. Ikeda and Mrs. Nakamura almost appeared to be holding their breath. "That one Mr. Masaki is holding looks slightly more blue, and Mr. Ikeda's looks like a normal white color. But Mrs. Nakamura's light looks a little yellow."

"AAAHHH!!" Mrs. Kawano exclaimed. "Thank you Amanda-san! So we, ah, all have same eyes!"

"Mrs. Kawano, what are you talking about?" She had clearly established already that my eyes were blue and hers were brown. How could that be related to her statement saying we had the same eyes?

"All of us have, ah, brown eye. We didn't know, ah, if you would see Mr. Masaki's light as, ah, more blue than the other," she paused, "because you have, ah, blue eye."

I pondered over this odd hypothesis they had collectively come up with for the rest of the afternoon and failed by the end of the day to make sense of the whole thing.

I still chuckle to myself over that day. She, as well as the other occupants of the office, were convinced that we all saw colors differently depending on the color of our eyes. It was a strange, funny moment, but one that lives on in my memory with fondness and a good hearted giggle.

Oliver's Twisted Tale

The day Oliver was born I was giving my coworker a ride home. Louisa got the call from her boyfriend when we were about half there. Selena, their cat, was having here second batch of kittens. My foot found a little lead somewhere in the depths. I hadn't seen a live birth since I worked at the horse farm and helped in the birthing of a beautiful black foal with white stockings. I couldn't wait to see the brand new kittens.

Selena had four kittens beside her when we walked in. By all

accounts, we thought she was done having them. Then, her stomach ceased and we knew there was another on the way. The four beside her were all black and white kittens, beautiful and innocent. When the fifth kitten was born, I saw that beautiful orange head and knew instantly that this was MY cat, come Hell or high water. There he was, just beautiful. It was love at first sight. We didn't know until later that he was the only boy in the litter.

"Louisa," I asked, "where is the father?"

"That's a long story." I waited patiently, wanting to hear the story, long or not. "Selena had kittens before. We couldn't find homes for any of them, and they were already 9 months old when we took them to the pound. Selena was pregnant again by that time, but she hadn't been outside at all. We think Troublewas the one who got her pregnant. But the father of Trouble is probably some stray outside. We aren't sure. She got out one day and when she got back she was pregnant."

"Her own kitten got her pregnant? These cats are inbred?"

"I'm afraid so," she admitted. "Does that make you change your mind?"

"No," I smiled. "You know you can't take it back when you've already named the pet."

"You already named him?"

"Yeah... Oliver, from the cat in the Disney movie 'Oliver and Company'. What do you think?"

"It's cute! I can call him the Oli-nator!"

By the time I picked up Oliver 5 weeks later, she had also been calling him Olie Olie Oxen Free. I wasn't wild about either nickname. I knew the second he was born that I wanted to call him my Ollie cat, born of a pet and an Alley cat. Ollie could be short for Oliver or Olivia. As with all pets though, he eventually decided on his own nickname.

His nickname turned out to be none other than "Cat", nicknamed for the orange cat in the film "Breakfast at Tiffany's". He also ended up with the nickname "Boo Boo" due to his confusing family history.

He wasn't much company for the first few months I had him, but I will be the first to admit I'd never seen anything more adorable. He fell asleep standing up, laying on his back with his feet up in the air, laying across my feet, leaning against my chest, and curled up in the magazine rack. He played when he wasn't sleeping, and he kept us very entertained. Still, the thought of his being inbred did cause some fear within me. I needn't have worried. It only made him more special.

Days and weeks went by. He kept us so entertained! I was in a struggling relationship at the time where I didn't feel I was getting the love or affection I needed. Oliver somehow managed to fill that void. I took tons of pictures of him in those first few weeks. I couldn't help it, I had fallen completely in love with this little bundle of joy. He was my pride and joy when I had little else to look forward to.

At six months old, we had him neutered and declawed. The poor little guy had the hardest time with two casts, several stitches and a cone on his head. The first day he came home, he fell asleep on my stomach and didn't move for the rest of the day and all of the night. Occasionally I would have to check on him to make sure he was still breathing.

When Pete and I split up, it was only a couple of weeks after he turned a year old. I bundled my poor little guy up in my fathers truck, and we drove 800 miles from Los Angeles to northern Utah, and with a little protesting in the first few hours, he finally calmed down and slept the rest of the trip. His bed sat on the center console between my father and myself. When he got restless, he would just climb into one of our laps and watch out the window.

Two months later when I decided it was time to go home to California, the bed wouldn't hold him any longer. Driving a stick shift car back down over 800 miles, my lovely little redheaded cat sat only in my lap. Half way down when I was robbed of my uhaul and everything I ever owned, my little Boo Boo was safe and sound in my arms. Even that was pure luck. The hotel wouldn't let cats inside, so I smuggled him in hiding in a duffle bag. I was never so glad at having broken rules before that moment I discovered my uhaul was gone and my Ollie was sitting safe and warm in my arms.

He's been with me through many trials and much turbulence, and yet he's held fast to me. He's managed to move 4 times in a year, survived more than 1,400 miles on the road , and learned just recently how to climb a very thin ladder with no front claws on his feet. He's developed some rather odd habits, including the habit of fuzzing out his tail like a pipe cleaner whenever someone points at him. He doesn't go crazy like some other cat's I've known if you hold him on his back, and in fact he seems to enjoy it. He takes baths, including sometimes I'm not aware of if I don't watch him closely. He would climb into the bath as soon as I got out sometimes and really frighten me half to death. He can't swim!

He's all I have for a reminder of a previous life. Sometimes he's frustrating and I don't know exactly what to do with him, but then there are times when all he has to do is nuzzle me with his little orange and white cheek, and my heart melts.

I've never been much of a cat person. I've had dogs all my youth. I wasn't sure what to do with a cat. I don't know if it's his inbreeding that's made him so unique or the fact that I raised him like I would a dog, but everyone who meets him tells me that he's incredibly unique. I'm still not wild about cats, but my little guy isn't really a cat at all. He's a half breed monkey boy and dog mix. He's part cowardly lion and part brainy scarecrow. He's my pathway home, he's my reminder of where I come from, and he's the reason I keep fighting to make a better life for us.

He needs me... and likewise, I need him.

He's my much needed source of unconditional love.