I’m still internet-less here, and so far, no one has seen fit to allow me to, y’know, borrow their wireless connection. So, I’m typing this up in Notepad with every intention of getting to the office early enough to copy/paste/publish before I start nine hours of pricing negotiations. Of course, that’s my INTENTION. We’ll see how I feel when 5:30 rolls around and my alarm starts playing Fur Elise. (Yes, that’s really what it plays. It’s so horrific, I have to get up to shut it off.)

However, I do have a topic. In the continuing saga of Years Go By, I have a request for 1986. Which, coming on the heels of 1987 SHOULD be easy to remember. Yea? Well, not so much.

However! Dizzy Ms. Lizzy married Mr. Dizzy back in 1986, so she wants to hear what I was doing back in the days of big hair and Duran Duran.

Well, Ms. Lizzy, I was also a newlywed. For the first time. I had moved to West-by-gawd-Virginia in August of ‘85 and finished the final four classes for my degree (the school I graduated from allowed me to take the classes elsewhere and “reverse transfer” them back).

(I know, I’m doing 1986, but I graduated in December and this story comes AFTER graduation. Shush.)

In January, I started looking for that elusive first REAL JOB. I also cleaned house every day. Considering there was two of us in a two-bedroom townhouse with no furniture, that wasn’t very difficult. Or time consuming. We had a 13″ black & white television, a hand-me-down kitchen table with no chairs (I sat on a stool, he sat on milk crates), a recliner with a ripped seat, a faux-bentwood rocking chair (also with a ripped seat) and my bedroom set. Lots of wedding gifts (three toasters! two electric frying pans!), but no couch.

Two weeks into the year, I was stir-crazy. I tried new recipes on a husband whose idea of gourmet dining was putting vegetables on pizza. I met the retired lady who lived in the other side of the townhouse – she introduced me to okra. I took lots of walks down to the river hoping that something exciting would happen. Nothing ever did. (I mean, seriously, we lived downstream from a CHEMICAL plant – there should have been weird wildlife or plants or something…)

I begged for a pet to keep me company. I got a fish.

I went on useless interviews. At one, (they advertised for an entry-level financial analyst), I was told that I could PAY THEM to be able to SELL INSURANCE. Of course, since I was unemployed, they’d give me a loan to get certified to sell their insurance products – then they’d take that loan out of my commissions since there was no actual salary involved. They were sure I’d be able to pay them back after selling only 20 or 30 policies. I was sure I was going to tell them where to shove their certification.

On January 28th, I started cleaning out an antique file cabinet that stood in for an end table. It was full of papers collected over the course of years of schooling (his) and although I certainly didn’t intend to become organized or anything, I was so numb with boredom, I figured that I could, at the very least, make some room to stuff rejection letters and extra copies of my resume.

With the television crackling in the background and the fish swimming merrily in his bowl, I sat on the living room floor surrounded by six years of chemical engineering homework. I have no idea what show was on, but I do remember suddenly hearing the news break in.

I turned and tried to watch through the snow. I got up and fiddled with the aluminum foil (no cable) on the antenna. All I could see was something burning in the sky.

Then I realized. It was the Space Shuttle. The Challenger Explosion. All seven aboard, including Christa McAuliffe, the Teacher in Space – dead – 73 seconds after takeoff.

I sat there the entire rest of the afternoon, transfixed by the images and the news reports, mourning the loss of life. The papers eventually got dumped right back into the file cabinet; unsorted they remained.

—- I got a job the next week. But in the year we lived in that townhouse, we never did own a couch. —-

Nor do I have any desire to. Jen on the Edge took my “Get Ree Out of the Writing Slump of Winter” challenge by throwing the year 1987 into the hat ring. At first, I was really confused – 1987? What the hell was I doing? Then, I remembered.

In 1987, I was married to Practice – an avid ski bum. We’d bought our first house, making us semi-adultish. I was working in Human Resources, hating my boss (who told me, in my annual evaluation that I was abrupt, abusive and abrasive – and while I’ll give her her alliteration props…she was the last female boss I ever had and I’ve taken great pains to NOT emulate her), and thinking about babies.

One day, Practice came home from work with a great plan. We’d go skiing! In Montana! And Wyoming! And … Idaho!!! Oh yea. We had a friend, Bob, who had grown up in the west and he knew all of the primo spots to break bones ski. The plan to see exactly how much torture the Hotfessional could stand was hatched.

Being in West-by-gawd-Virginia meant that there was no direct route – so we flew to Cleveland and Salt Lake City on the way to Bozeman. This was not a problem for me…but being married to a man who absolutely hated flying and got airsick with alarming frequency challenged even my patience.

When we arrived (finally) in Big Sky country, I made a pact with our host’s Mom. If the temperature dropped below 20, I was staying with her – snuggly in their big ranch home, venturing out only to shop. I didn’t understand the attraction of strapping really thin boards on my feet, bundling up in 17 layers of wool products and face-planting on mountains that were better seen while sipping hot toddies in front of a roaring fireplace. The only wool I was interested in had been knitted into sweaters and afghans.

Of course, as luck would have it, it was one of the warmest Marches on record – at least according to the locals – with the temperatures hovering around 32 and brilliant blue skies.

The first day we skied in Montana was lovely. The trails were nice and wide – well groomed and fairly empty. Big Sky Resort wasn’t a huge tourist attraction, so I was able to take my time and enjoy life at 10,000 ft. I would have been perfectly happy not moving the rest of the week. Alas – it wasn’t up to me.

Next stop – Jackson Hole – brought all new terrain. Can I just share a quote from The New York Times?

Jackson Hole is a standard-bearer among United States resorts, and its multiple bowls, rock-strewn chutes and plummeting glades, as well as a liberal out-of-bounds policy, are why so many pro skiers and snowboarders call Jackson home. In some cases, orange, lollipop-like warning signs are all that stand between you and a potentially bone-jarring cliff drop.

Bone-jarring cliff drop, they say! More like piss-in-your-ski-pants inducing runs, I say.

Jackson has these things called “bowls”. Picture your average cereal bowl lined with snow. Now, picture it in a ginormihorrific size. NOW picture it nearly 2 miles above sea level and a mile deep.

Picture yourself standing on the edge.

Got it?

Now. Picture.yourself.throwing.yourself.off.

Voluntarily.

Are you screaming yet?

I was. And I kept screaming until I crashed and burned, about midway down.

My right ski was buried from the back end up to my boot binding. And sticking straight up into the air. With my foot still attached. My left ski was somehow underneath my ass. I was laying ON MY BACK, staring straight up into the sky. A brilliantly blue sky, but still. My head was downhill. I had one ski pole still attached to my wrist by its strap – but the other was about 30 feet away when I found it. Unfortunately, it had not STOPPPED and was still making its way to the bottom of the bowl.

As I lay there, contemplating divorce my predicament, a man appeared at my side. “Do you need any help?” he asked. I told him I thought I could manage and reached up to unfasten my boot from the slat of death ski that was vertical. (Thank goodness I still had some abs – that was the hardest sit-up I’d ever done.) He nodded, smiled, and whisked off down the mountain – graceful and smooth – just like on television.

Did I mention that he was about 80 years old?

No way was I asking a founding AARP member to help me – a 23-year-old attempting to pretend I could actually ski – dig myself out. What if he’d broken a hip? How would I have lived with myself?

After that spectacular performance, I hobbled the rest of the way to the bottom and made directly for the lodge. When the rest of the crew finally found me and convinced me to join them out on the slopes again, I tried to make them promise to not venture any further than 300 yards from the nearest ski patrol/red cross/paramedic outpost. They refused – but promised me beers on the porch at one of the cabins situated nicely half-way between the top of the trail and the bottom.

I blame them, to this day, for the “beers for the knees” mantra I chant every time I exert myself.

Our last stop on the journey was Grand Targhee, Idaho – home of potatoes and Sarah Palin. Of course, Idaho was also the birthplace of Ernest Hemingway, so there is that. It was more like skiing in Montana and I would have been happy enough there were it not for the guy that stopped me at the bottom of the lift and said, very sweetly, “You have mud all over the bottom of your face.” After I finished brushing at my chin and wondering where the holy hell I could have gotten MUD on my face in a place where the snow was 500 inches deep, I realized that it wasn’t mud.

It was my tan.

After skiing for five days in the “brilliantly blue” sky while wearing a ski cap and goggles, I had a perfect tan. From the bridge of my nose all the way to my chin. Obviously it looked like dirt because no one tans like an Arab girl when exposed to a week of sun – even if it was the only three inches of my body that wasn’t covered the whole time.

I did go skiing a few more times between those days and when I finally hung up my Dynastars for good – but never at any elevation above 4000 feet and never, ever west of the Mississippi. Shortman is a snowboarder, and I watch him and think that it would be fun to try again, especially with my son. Then I remember that I’m not 23 any longer, and bones break easier, and there’s a reason that my mother’s nickname for me is “Grace”.

—- This post is in no way intended to insult skiers, octagenarians, founding AARP members, or Idahoans. —-

Badger (who, by the way, this morning was in the TOP 15 (woohoo!) of Babble’s Top 50 Mommy Blogger list) has asked for 1982.

Go vote for her first. This story can wait.

lalalalala. hum dee dum dum. la la.

‘kay? You’re back?

So, 1982 it is.

Can I just tell you? 1982 sucked.

I was still (barely) a student at Michigan State, finishing my Freshman year. (Can I just say that Thank GAWD Shortman isn’t like his mother? Give me a hallelujah.)

That summer, I worked for the Parks & Recreation Department – my 4th year in a row. Besides supervising Summer Camp activities and working weekend special events, I provided set-up and refereeing for Women’s Recreational Volleyball. It was, by far, the worst fucking thing I’d had to do during those four years. Those women were MEAN. And had potty mouths. Especially when they were challenging a call that the ref made. Ehem.

I spent one weekend that summer running a concession stand at a softball tournament. We had hot dogs, candy, pop, hot chocolate, and chips for sale. Since I didn’t want to go home, (MomandDad had found out that my boyfriend and I had, um, taken a weekend trip to Toronto and had, um, shared a bed – they didn’t handle it very well), I worked from Friday afternoon straight through Sunday evening.

I ate approximately 40 hot dogs and 62 bags of bar-b-que potato chips. By Sunday night, I was so sick, I spent part of the time between midnight and 3 a.m. laying on the bathroom floor, just so I was close to the porcelain god. I prayed mightily that night, yo.

By the time late August rolled around, I knew I wouldn’t be returning to East Lansing. My parents weren’t going to give me any more money for college. Student loan funding had been slashed by the government. My grades certainly weren’t going to win me any scholarships.

I quit school. It was the only time I ever quit anything in my life, but I promised myself that as soon as I could scrape some money together, I would go back. Maybe not to M.S.U., but I wouldn’t give up on my education. (Picture me, like Scarlett O’Hara, shaking her fist at the sky.)

First things first, though. I had to find a job. In order to find a job, I’d have to buy a car. In order to buy a car, I’d have to sell my horse.

And so. Dida was sold. Mustang was purchased. Interviews ensued.

Whether struck by the sheer brilliance of my application, or simply doing a favor for my parents, the local National Bank of Detroit branch manager offered to interview me for a part-time teller position they had open. It was the start of a 26 year career in banking. Had I known then what I know now? Well, after 10 mergers or take-overs, I’d have run screaming away when the woman offered me the position. But, at the time, I was young and dumb. And part-timers got health insurance. (Wait, maybe I wasn’t dumb after all.)

Training was in downtown Detroit. In order to save commuting time and gas money, I lived with my grandmother (the same one I lived with when I was born 19 years earlier) and took the bus to the office. I learned to love high-rise buildings and city streets. Concrete, business suits and briefcases replaced my dreams of a white coat, stethoscope and wriggly puppies in need of neutering. I knew then that I was never going to be able to afford to put myself through 10 years of schooling required to become a Vet, so I turned my attention to a new goal. Business School. Boss-dom. I now wanted to be in charge.

(Gawd help the world.)

When I did go back to school, in May of 1982, I attended the same University that I’m sending my son to today. I walked into the Admissions office and enrolled in summer school – telling the Admissions officer that I wanted to major in Management.

Why?

she asked.

Because I want to work in Personnel.

Here I am – twenty-eight years later, using that Management degree and working in the Windy City. All because of a particularly crappy time in my life where I pulled my ass up off the ground and decided I wasn’t going to fold.

I guess 1982 wasn’t so bad after all.

—- Except now, I have to end this so I can go upstairs and pack. That part still kinda sucks. —-

Not mine, silly. Per the requests of Shelly at Not The Daddy and Rachel from Tales of My 30s, I’m reliving 1976. Another excellent choice with some real life changing events.

I was in seventh grade – changing classrooms every hour for the first time ever. A bunch of new teachers, but the only one I remember at all taught Social Studies. His name was Mr. A-something-or-other, I think it was Armenian, and he was nice enough, but the only one that called me out on my 7th grade new-identity experiment.

See, I figured that by going to a new school, with new people, I had a chance at re-invention. Part of that process included changing the way I spelled my first name. No, not Ree – I wouldn’t have had much luck with that, I fear – but the name I was born with. Which ends in an -i. Since my sixth grade teacher had made some snarky remark about how many girls my age had names than end in an “i”, I figured that by changing it, I was DIFFERENT.

Wow. I guess I just realized that that’s kinda been a theme throughout my life.

Annnywayyyyyy. The way I was spelling it was not the way it was on his roster, so he called me on it. And I refused to spell it the way it was on my birth certificate.

Maybe that’s why I never saw any of my homework returned.

Seventy-six was also the year that my Dad no longer had to be a resident of the city in which he worked. See, the powers-that-be had insisted that all cops reside within the city limits. That year, though, they changed that rule and only mandated that they live in the same county.

Along with that change came the freedom to move out of our tiny house in the suburbs and into the country. Five wonderful acres with a barn and a pond were in my future. Horses, cows, chicken, geese, dogs and cats. ALL in my future. It was a wonderful way to get through teenage years. Oh, the chores sucked donkey balls (not literally, we never had any of those), but plenty of room to get away from family members certainly didn’t hurt.

The nice thing was that although we weren’t moving until summer vacation, we (and by we, I mean MomandDad of course) had signed the purchase agreement and were 100% certain that this Shangri-la was going to be our new home. We befriended the current owners – who immediately hired me as a babysitter – and I got to spend many weekends hanging around with their toddler son as a mother’s helper.

There was little or no pay for my time, but the other perks were endless. Fresh air. No siblings. No parents. I was treated like an adult(ish). I had my.own.room. Heaven.

One weekend while I was not having to deal with my family watching little Jonathon, their Great Dane Athena was in heat. She was a beautiful brindle they were intending to breed (they were not irresponsible pet owners). As Jonathon and I were playing in the yard, we noticed that Athena was missing. Calling for her, I saw her ears sticking up out of some long weeds over near the pasture fence.

I started towards her, hoping that she hadn’t gotten tangled in any of the barbed wire. I got closer. She still wasn’t moving. Now, I was less worried about her being stuck and more worried that she was sick.

Closer. “Athena. C’mon sweetie. Let’s go. What’s wrong?”

She still wouldn’t move.

Finally, with about 10 yards to go, she got up and sauntered towards me – tail held high. Breathing a sigh of relief, I jogged towards her, Jonathon trailing behind me.

THEN I saw what had been keeping her occupied.

The male daschund from next door had been…well…having his way with her. I hadn’t seen him because she LAID HER ASS DOWN for him to be able to get to her lady bits.

Snatching her by the collar, I hauled all 150 pounds of post-orgasmic-Dane up to the house and yelled at Christine.

Chris! Athena and one of the weiner dogs were just in the pasture together! Oh my gawd!!! I think he was on top of her.

I have to admit, I had to try really hard not to laugh.

Chris called the vet, loaded Athena into the car, and whisked her away for a morning-after pill.

Athena survived. Chris survived. I survived. The vet said that any hanky-panky probably wouldn’t have resulted in any viable puppies, but – since I now own a Chocolate Lab/Daschund mix – I’m a little suspicious about that particular statement.

Summer came. We moved. I started spelling my name the way it was on my birth certificate again. I still had to share a bedroom, but there were plenty of other places to get away from everyone (the barn was an awesome hangout). And there were plenty of adventures waiting for me during the nine years I called that place home.

About 8 months after we moved in and Chris and her family had moved down to Florida, we got a call. Our baby was being loaded onto a flight from Ft. Lauderdale. All 30 pounds of 12 week old female Dane puppy. We named her Habibi – “beloved” in Arabic. She lived with us for the next 14 years – the same vet that had treated her mom that day proclaimed her “the oldest Dane” he’d ever heard of.

—- And yes, she was ALL Dane. Not a speck of daschund anywhere in her. —-

1969 then… two years after the famed (infamous?) “Summer of Love” – Woodstock, hippies and all that stuff – Google it if you really don’t know. Maybe that’s how YOU (directly or INdirectly) came into this world! … Yeah, I know you’re only 21, but pretend, eh?

That comment came from AF – over at Scandalous. Now, how am I supposed to deny someone who would flatter me like that? (Oh, and AF? I may have only been 6 in 1969, but dude. I AM a child of the 60s.)

Oh, there are things I remember about this year. I was in Kindergarten at John Hill; Mrs. Staub was my teacher, Mrs. Marvin was student teaching that year. I loved them both – as only a kindergarten girl can love a teacher. Mrs. Staub was a skinny version of my favorite grandmother. Mrs. Marvin was young and beautiful. We all wanted to dress smartly in shirtwaist dresses with fashionable, but comfortable heeled pumps.

It was the year I had my first boyfriend, Roy M. (the SMARTEST boy in our class, both of his parents were math teachers, for cryin’ out loud). I learned to play Duck, Duck, Goose. Roy always goosed me. Snirk. One afternoon, during circle time, Mrs. Marvin asked us all what we wanted to be when we grew up. All of the girls responded with “Teacher” or “Nurse”. Thinking I was being very clever and non-conformist, I answered “Secretary”. It still makes me giggle to think about it. I guess I ended up in the corporate world, but I’m sure all of the Administrative Assistants that I’ve dealt with in those many years would laugh hysterically thinking about me trying to do what they do in the course of the day.

My sister was born in February – right after Valentine’s Day. My brother and I were sent off to stay with Gramma until Mom and Ski came home from the hospital. My new baby was beautiful – gorgeous, thick black hair with a blond streak running down the back of her head (seriously – how unfair is that?) and a tooth already in her mouth. Dressed in her red snowsuit, she looked just like a little Inuit baby – and therefore, forevermore, she will be Skimo to me. It drove me crazy when she got older and kept me awake gnawing on her crib slats (really, Mom, couldn’t you have gotten her a teething ring instead?), but in 1969 she couldn’t pull herself up to chew she was small and cuddly and always smiling.

My grandfathers both died in 1969. My dad’s dad, who I never remembered being out of his sick bed, finally succumbed to colon cancer on February 20th. My mom’s dad suffered a fatal heart attack exactly two weeks later. Birth and death. Even at 5 1/2, I was struck by the circle of life. (Cue Disney song here…)

But, I don’t want to just list through things – I really want to think of a defining moment – to tell you all a story – and this is probably the one I remember most from that year.

In the garage was my bike. The turquoise two-wheeler with training wheels that I sped back and forth down the street on – from my house to my best friend Laurie’s house. Eventually, the training wheels were so bent that it was obvious that I wasn’t really using them any longer and off they came. Patty (our babysitter extraordinaire) held the back of my seat as I peddled furiously. She ran behind me, yelling, “Just look where you want to go and you’ll go that way!”. I looked back at her to see what she was saying, and promptly steered off the sidewalk and into a tree. I guess if this had been 25 years later, I would have been wearing a helmet, but no one was worried about brain injuries then. Besides, I didn’t even get scratched.

Three or four hundred A few more attempts and I had that sucker down. I could ride a big girl bike! I imagined riding to school instead of walking (yes, I walked myself to Kindergarten – it was only down the block); going to see school friends that DIDN’T live on Birchwood. Freedom. I can haz it.

Then came the fateful day that I saw MY BIKE with the training wheels back on. And my brother riding it. My bike. My freedom. WTF? What did a boy even want with a turquoise two-wheeler? I was pissed and let everyone know it. It was probably the first time my parents called me selfish (okay, not the last) and Patty sang “Big Girls Don’t Cry” to me. But it didn’t matter. It was my bike, not his.

Things got worse. It was my birthday and Mom promised she’d come walk me home from school. The bell rang – we walked out the door – and … No mom. I trudged along – thinking of all of the injustices I’d endured – and here I was, barely 6. How was I going to get through the next 30 years if I had to suffer like this at my young age?

Then I turned the corner. And there was Mom – wheeling a LAVENDER bike towards me. With a banana seat! And tall handlebars with streamers!

All was forgiven in that moment. I thought that I might just be able to survive to become an adult.

—- Who had the #1 Billboard song at the end of October 1969? The Temptations. As a Detroit girl, you gotta know I love my Temps. —-