travelling circus fair of random events and life lessons

Can I name my book that? is it too long of a title? do you really need a title before you start to write? If you put all my journals and essays together, I have written roughly 20 million books. Yes, 20 million. No exaggeration. I would like to edit those 20 million, throw out the crap and make what is left into one book. I know, no big news. I have mentioned this countless times before. But I feel newly inspired. Why you ask? Because over the course of the last 4 days I have had 7 people tell me that I should write a book. All of those 7 people are quite intelligent. I respect what they say because I know were they have come from. They are not the “Joey’s” of the world who consider a good read to be the back of a cereal box. So I figure maybe it’s worth a shot. Not that I am a big ‘signs’ person, but I think I’ll take this as a sign.

I have also been told recently that my blog is a bit abstract; that there is not enough mention about who I am, background etc… So if that is the case, and my emails seem to indicate it is, I suppose there are a few things that must be said. I love anything fried, I prefer beaches to mountains every time and I love airport food. I would rather run 200 miles through the desert than be a millionaire in a place without sunshine. I want a Weimaraner for a pet, I would like to have a goldfish called Taco that lives in a non working blender in the kitchen and more than most things in life, I want a 1996 black, hard top Defender 90. I once challenged two 300 plus pound men to an eating contest that consisted of a roll, side salad, mashed potatoes and a 72 oz. steak. I lost. Oh, and I hate to lose.

I was born on a warm, sunny day in April. The last day to be specific. Perhaps that is why I love April and dread May. May is a blah month. Aside from school graduations, nothing exciting ever happens in May. (Sorry if you were born in May, nothing personal.) From that day in April until I went away to university, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Middle America was what I considered to be my hometown. I suppose it will always be my ‘hometown’ but I since 2000 I have claimed a variety of cities as home…Tulsa not included. I have a dad, a mom and a brother. I have always, and will always think my family is the best family in the world. Collectively they are smarter, funnier, more attractive and better adjusted than any other family in the whole world. Fact. As a warning, if you disagree with this position, I will not listen to you. You are wrong. In addition to my mom, dad and brother, I also grew up with 2 Chihuahua’s and a Golden Retriever. Tasha, Blackie and Winchester respectively. I loved each and every one of those animals. I loved that Blackie was always a bit fat and had to take pills because she had asthma; I loved that Tasha lived for 18 human years, lost all her teeth and had a giant tongue that constantly hung out of her mouth; I loved that Winchester was so strong he walked you around the block and I loved that he was the sweetest dog ever created! And although I never really loved Tulsa, I loved everything that my life had whilst in Tulsa.

But it was a nice place to grow up and I did enjoyed most things about my childhood. In fact there are few things about my younger years which I remember negatively. Once, when I was about 8 I followed my brother over to our neighbours house. They had a rottweiler. We were all playing in the back yard and I wandered over to their tree house (read: small, wooden fort, not in a tree but instead propped up by poles about two feet off the ground) My brother and the neighbour boy went inside and I was left alone, in the tree house, with the dog. The dog was on the ground, but he was so ginoroums that his head was sticking up through the fort opening. He could sense my fear. He was snarling and barking and no matter how far I backed in the opposite corner, I could still feel his hot breath on my legs. I could only focus on his razor sharp teeth, moist and glistening with dog food and saliva as they prepared to cut through my innocent, frail, shaking 8 year old limbs. This was a dog that played with a bowling ball as a toy for crying out loud! I was screaming and sobbing and since I was only on the other side of the fence to my backyard, my mom could hear me. She kept asking where I was but all I could say was that I was scared. My brother insisted that I was not in the neighbour’s backyard so no one even look for me there. Finally, after what must have been 5 hours (ok, more like 30 minutes) the neighbour recognised my cries as coming from their backyard and rescued me from the giant, ravenous, child eating monster that they called a pet. It was traumatizing. The family later had to put the dog down as it viciously attacked another neighbour. See!? It was not just my childish imagination; that dog would have swallowed me whole! That is probably the most significant negative memory of childhood, but like I said. Those experiences are few and far between.

Still it is those experiences from birth to university that shape us into the self-sufficient, well adjusted, even keeled adults we are all when we finish high school and pack off to college, right? The later part of that sentence is probably very questionable, but it is those early experiences that mould us. They build the foundation, stone by stone, friend by friend, experience by experience, onto which all other life experiences will be based. The foundation we build, and that others build into us, has a large part in determining what we do next. And I suppose it is my background, upbringing and early experiences that make me the brilliant, grounded, genius of a person that I am today. (people, sense the sarcasm here) My enjoyable childhood, supportive parents and middle-America upbringing have made me who I am today. (granted in those parts of the world I am a crazy liberal....) So there you go. I hope that satisfies everyone. A bit of background and radom-ness regarding me.