My little world and zoo.

I haven't been doing much of anything but working and sleeping. (Not even eating like I used to. Maybe I'll lose weight!) But I have been steeling myself for April. (See my last blog.) On that day, and everyday leading up to it, I act like it's no big deal, but inside, I feel like I'm dieing a slow death. I honestly thought I would get a little better every year as time went on, but my one sister and I, (she used to say my parents had me for her, so she would have someone to hang out with, and the other three of our brothers and sisters would stop picking on her. Isn't that cute? I felt special, and we always had an extra connection together.) Now, our lives are so caught up in work, in-laws, kids and animals, we hardly get to see each other. Thankfully we live only an hours drive from each other, so we do see each other when time and schedules permit. She is probably the one of very few people in my life that I can talk to about ANYTHING. My sister is smart, funny, fun, and beautiful. Looks wise, we are exact opposites,....she is tall, dark straight hair, blue eyes, long limbed with big boobs, and I am short,(5 foot tall on a good, hair day,....teasing does wonders with height challenged people like myself.) For most of my life I've been petite, as in 100 lbs. soaking wet,.....(now, not so much, but I'm working on it.) Thick, dark, naturally wavy,curly hair, brown eyes, and extremely introverted. Painfully shy I should say. We looked like Laurel and Hardy together. My sister always knew what to say, how to say it, and make everyone laugh,....she is extremely smart, school-wise, and common sense-wise, (as in life decisions, altho I know my brothers would argue otherwise.) She did great in school, went on to college, and even went to the Sorbonne in Paris for a few semesters. (I missed her horribly when she was gone, and counted down the days til she came home.) Then when she did, she met one of my brothers friends, and eventually they got married, and she moved out. That killed me. I was so lonely and lost. I didn't fair too well either on my own. When I was young, I had two, not-so-great, teenage, relationships that did not go too well,....the first one was horrible, unbeknowst to anyone really.I was 16, and he was 26. My parents didn't like him, and HIS friends even warned me about him. (That right there should've made me run, but I was stubborn, and a teenager determined to make my own decisions, and stayed with him for almost three years.) He was lazy, verbally abusive, and ended-up being physically abusive twice to me, and that was it for me. A few months later, I was already 'dating' someone, that I ended-up with for 7 years. He was controlling, and very self-absorbed. Same thing with age also. By then I had just turned 18 and he was 28. For my 18th birthday, he threw a huge b-day party for me at my parents house, paid for everything, and proceeded to NOT show-up, and I found out he was arrested, and spent the night in jail. How nice. My parents still accepted him. They didn't want to judge, and they didn't,.....until I moved-in with him, and NEVER spent ANY TIME with MY FAMILY AT ALL. ALWAYS with his family who lived in the same neighborhood. My parents lived only 10 mins. away tho,---not far at all. I still hardly ever spent holidays, birthdays, or anytime at all with them. (To this day, that eats away at me,...that I didn't stand-up for myself and family and spend time with them like I should have.) Seven years. Yeah, my brothers, and sisters, weren't too fond of him either. Altho the one good thing he did have, was that he did love animals. I don't know tho if he liked saying he had them, or genuinely liked them,---there is a difference. I was the one who took care of them; feeding, bathing, vet visits, and most importantly, spending quality time with them. We had two dogs, two blue-n-gold macaws, a blue-front amazon, a squirrel we saved, and then another time, a racoon that we saved. We had one black shepard, that was the sweetest thing, but needed alot of attention.Beautiful shiny black, with the saddest brown eyes you ever saw.(Noir.)And I worked so hard with that dog,...until one day I came home from work and he was just gone. I was so heartbroken. I don't know if someone took him, or he ran away,....and I'll never know, I just hope he got a loving home. The other dog was really smart.(Trucker.) Extremely smart. He was part wolf I know that, and he looked it too, alot of people were very wary of him.He looked part wolf and part shepard,( he was built like a small shepard,).....smart, quick learning, and very lovable. He was like my best friend.(He WAS my best friend.) He went every where with me, except work. If he couldn't go, I wasn't going. He sat in the front seat of my truck like he was a person. (I even seat-belted him in, and it was like he knew he had to have it on.) He was such a good boy,....and SO SMART, it amazed me. Then we had our blue-front amazon, and her name was Annie. She was such a sweet little girl,....she LOVED my voice and my laugh. She could imitate me so well, that if you were outside or just listening, you couldn't tell if it was me or the bird talking. She would get so excited when I came into the room. We kept her on an open perch with toys, and I spent alot of time with her too. She loved peanut butter, and mashed potatoes. She would whistle for the dogs like I would, and they would come running, looking confused when they couldn't find me. She loved to drop things on the floor, and she would laugh wildly, while you picked it up, and then scream/giggle like an infant when you tried to reprimand her. She loved to sidle up to you and whisper loudly, 'hi' in your ear. She coughed and sneezed when she felt like she wasn't getting enough attention. I always scratched her head, which she loved. She would put her head down, and sigh loudly, like she was saying,'I'm waiting!' The cutest little thing, how I adored her. Then we adopted two blue-n-gold macaws. I think they were abused; and that caused many trips to the vet. One would pull his feathers out, and the other would just rock back-n-forth. One was Fred, and the other was Reena. The were inseparable, and we NEVER separated them. I finally worked with them enough so that I could take them out of the cage and talk to them without them panicking, and cowering. (That killed me. I would cry and cry to the vet everytime I took them.) Finally I taught Fred to roll over and play dead, and what I would call,...'make like an eagle', and he would put his wings out, and bring his head up and out, like he was at attention, and he would stay like that until I said 'okay'. So sweet. Melted my heart. At one point our dog Trucker found, (and almost ate) a tiny pink soft little squirmy thing I found on the ground. I kept him in a shoebox, with a heat lamp on him and a soft little towel that it snuggled up to,...and found out eventually that it was a squirrel. I named him Spunky, and he grew up to be a cute, little guy that loved to run up and down our curtains in the living room playing tag. I would keep him in my shirt pocket, and like Trucker, he went everywhere with me,-poking his little head out to cause a major scene everytime and everywhere! But I eventually had to let him go. My (then) boyfriend built a cage around a huge tree limb around where I found him,(the squirrel,-not my boyfriend.) We kept him in the cage for a little while, and watched as he played, teased and frolicked with other squirrels that would come visit him in the cage. Then we would leave the cage open and kept feeding him, and he would come and go as he pleased, and one day he just never came back. Almost the same exact thing with our racoon,(Rocky,)....I found him on the ground, he was so small, and squirmy,.......and he grew-up to be the cutest little guy,.....until I came home from work one day, and he had taken absolutely every single thing out of our kitchen cabinets, and it was all over the kitchen floor,....and he was running in and out of the cabinets like he was showing off, and saying,'look how much fun I'm having!' I cried and cried when we put him in the already built cage for Spunky, and the same thing happened, and one day he just didn't come back. Broke my heart every time. I should've been a veterinarian. I just hated school so much, it never crossed my mind. (You go to school in South Florida in the early 80's, and see how well you were taught. It sucked. Couldn't have been worse.) So needless to say, I ended up barely getting my GED. Thanks to my parents I did tho. (Thank goodness.) Well, ....enough of memory lane. Just thought it might be interesting.