The Woman Behind the Blog

I was told, from the day I began this website and blog, that I should have an “About Me” page. Totally not a fan of about me pages. Most of them just tout someone’s achievements and accolades and that’s not me. There was also having to call the page “About Me”. Ick. But this morning it finally came to me how to do this page.

Just an FYI…I write my own stuff and the only help I get is spell check. I used to use Grammerly for structure and punctuation but decided it was not worth paying for.

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I was born and raised in the “Valley” and was one of the original 80’s Valley Girls. My parents divorced in the mid-seventies and went in totally different directions. My father moved to Hollywood, CA and my mother, Hidden Hills, CA.

My father was an open person. Too open in some cases and he was a slut. Women and drugs coming and going in the house from the time I was 8. He was abusive, mean, and severely OCD about cleanliness. His father used to beat him, and he used to beat us. It turned to verbal after the divorce though. He was fond of public humiliation.

My mother is a closed person. Not OCD about cleanliness but OCD about other things. Growing up (partially) in Hidden Hills was cool. We rode horses after school and I competed in Gymkhana there (think rodeo stuff: barrel racing, pole bending, jumping). But my stepfather would kick me out and I would end up back in Hollywood.

I had never had a good relationship with my family. Could it be me? Sure. Could it be them? Sure. It’s probably a mix of both. Everything happens for a reason.

My time was split between the homes, after getting kicked out for one thing or the other, from one home or the other, and I ended up staying in Hollywood until I graduated high school at 17. Then I left. Got a job in an accounting department because I was in the computer club in high school. Ok, my name is listed, I am not in the picture, and I was totally high during my senior year. It could have been real, it could have been a typo. It got me my first corporate job.

I had a child young, as I was told after surgery for cervical cancer that my chances of having kids were going to go down to zero by the time I hit 30. Shit. Really. This was 1987. It was a prominent hospital. I believed them.

(I found out later in life, (see blog), that the cancer was caused by undiagnosed HPV.)

So, I tried to get pregnant. Felt I NEEDED to get pregnant. Did not care who the father was. One of the founding members of L.A. Guns thought it was him. It was not. Remember, it was the late 80’s in Hollywood and I partied on the sunset strip. So few men ask if you are on the pill and when you are trying to get pregnant it works out. I got around and it was a blast.

I ended up at this house for rent in the Valley and the other person that moved in also didn’t ask if I was on the pill. He got me pregnant. It had taken two years and I thought I was sterile at that point so to me, I had no chance of getting pregnant. I gave up. I got pregnant.

It was explained to this person that I would sign anything for him to go away. I was not able to move before I started showing. He did choose to stick around and did a half decent job of co-parenting my son.

But, getting pregnant scared me at first and my mind spun. We weren’t getting married, weren’t even dating. It was roommates with benefits. So, I was single and pregnant at 21. I thought about abortion. I got an attorney to give it up for adoption. Yes, at this time it was still an “it”. But then I found out it was a boy and I fell in love. Sorry ladies, I did not want to raise another me, I may have gone through with the abortion had it been a girl. I do not know, it did not happen. I am glad I had the choice.

I was working for a big travel agency chain at the time, and they were consolidating their accounting departments and offered many of us a chance to move, so I did, and off to Minnesota I went. With a 3 month old. I lasted almost a full year and a friend drove us back to Los Angeles. I moved around the valley a bit, I estimate that I have lived in more than 40 houses, apartments, condos etc. so far in my life, and ended up in the South Bay when the kids’ father moved there. I stayed there until my son was just about 18.

Living in the South Bay was hard. I was a young single mom who did not wear beige and I was looked down upon by the snooty women that sent their kids to the same school. The kid’s dad married a girl who did fit in.

My day job did me well though and we had a great home. I was a kindergarten mom, I went on class field trips, I was a baseball coach. I started my own business.

The only thing about sending your kids to schools in a more “affluent” place? Better school, better drugs.

So, in high school, my kid got expelled, got arrested, stole from neighbors, damaged peoples’ cars, damaged public property. Went to rehab. Is in AA and as far as I know, sober more than 15 years. We have not spoken in more than three years.

Yes, absolutely every parent is as responsible as the next. We weren’t bad. We didn’t beat the kid. No verbal abuse. But we had split lives, spouses. Who knows what caused it. I know what my cause is. I know why I did stuff. I have no clue why my kid did stuff, other than it runs in the family. My father got kicked out of school for booze and theft, my kid for pills. I never got in that kind of trouble, have never had handcuffs placed on me by the law.

So, the kid gets expelled, ends up at a transition school but decides, after much prodding, that a high school diploma would be better for him, and he wanted to go to prom and graduate with the class. The school did not want to let him in, but I forced the issue and got him re-instated in school. He got his diploma. He went to prom.

During this time, I had developed a relationship with a guy from Philly. We’re still married. Almost 17 years.

I moved to Philly to be with him. We moved to Florida to get warm. We ran from Florida because it is fucking nuts there and now live in Hawaii.

I’ve been married twice; neither is my kids dad. The first marriage was to a musician. He was a decent human, in the beginning, but had no business sense at all. He also stopped wanting to have sex, at least with me. Turns out he had a “type”, and I was NOT it. His second ex-wife told me all about it.

That marriage gave me a huge complex.

At the end of that marriage an old flame came into my life and re-opened my world to sex. I thank him for a whole lot. We were on a “date” when I met my current husband. We’ve been together for more than 17 years and have adventure after adventure.

It’s actually a whole lot more interesting than that but I don’t want to get into more details for personal reasons.

Let your minds wander.

That’s as much of me as you are going to get right now.

If you want to chat, call the hotline. I’m the one who answers.