As a teenager in rural Henry County, Ohio, I couldn’t wait to go to college and get the hell out of that stinkin’ place. 

I even became an exchange student my junior year of high school and spent one amazing year in Denmark. I returned to my hillbilly town a raging socialist. Yeah. That went over well. Senioritis and reverse culture shock made my last year of high school excruciating. 

Needless to say, after graduation I left for college and never looked back.

I  moved around a little spending some time in the Cleveland area and then Los Angeles, but an undiagnosed mental illness brought my life crashing down. I needed treatment and my family’s help, so I moved back to the area. That was twenty years ago.

Today, I live near where I grew up, but in Toledo. I have grown accustomed to all the conveniences of city life, and I love raising my daughter where there’s plenty of diversity and opportunity. 

The strange thing is, I have become more fond of where I grew up as I’ve gotten older. Sure, I wanted to leave, but I can look back at a lot of good memories. Being a country kid was a lot of fun. Fireworks and bonfires. Swimming in the river. Spending hours playing in the woods. Seeing a million stars in the night sky.

My daughter is such a city girl. She will never know what it’s like to live without pizza delivery or not having restaurants and stores within walking distance. Hell, there are four Target stores within twenty minutes of our house. She doesn’t know what it’s like to live somewhere where everyone looks like you.

But then again, my daughter has never seen thousands of lightning bugs blinking and hovering over the alfalfa field behind my childhood home. 

I wouldn’t want to move back to where I grew up, and I certainly wouldn’t want to raise my daughter there, but I’m at a point now where I can look back and say it wasn’t all bad. 

Can you relate? What was it like where you grew up compared to where you live now? Maybe you stayed in the same place or maybe you made some changes like me. Do you look back at your hometown with fond memories…or at least realize that it wasn’t as backward as you thought it was?

We got paid today and on payday, we always go out to eat. Tonight we went to a popular restaurant in Toledo that is supposedly haunted. My daughter didn’t want to go fearing a ghostly encounter, but once we got there and she realized it was just a normal busy restaurant with nothing wrong with it, she was fine.

I used to fear supposedly haunted places, too, and I’ll admit it, I’m still a little afraid of the dark.

But why do kids fear monsters under the bed or in the closet? Why do they have fears that adults know aren’t true?

When I was little I was afraid of tractors and semi-trucks because I thought they had mean faces– especially the green Oliver in my grandpa’s barn. I about shit my pants every time he started the thing. 

Also, growing up out in the middle of nowhere I was certain I was going to get abducted by aliens. I was sure one night I would see their big eyes peering through my bedroom window. It never happened, but it was certainly a big fear of mine– enough to keep me up at night. 

I also assumed every storm would produce a tornado and my big sister thought it was hilarious to sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz every time it stormed to make me cry. 

I’m still afraid of tornados but as an adult that just makes me ultra-prepared. I’ve got my bug-out bag ready to go when it gets bad. My husband is the type that likes to go outside and look when the siren goes off but I’m the one yelling at everyone to get their asses in the basement. 

Obviously, most people grow out of their childhood fears, but what makes children have so many unfounded fears in the first place? Are there just too many unknowns at that age?

What did you fear as a child? Are there any fears you didn’t grow out of?

We are an animal-loving family with five kitties and two guinea pigs. We have a full house and our pets are family. I know people judge us for the amount of pets we have because we don’t have a lot of money. The truth is, they’re a huge monthly expense but we couldn’t imagine life without our animals so we make it work. One thing that has really helped us is we found a nonprofit community vet where the cost of services is a lot lower. I am so grateful that they are making pet ownership more affordable for people in our city. They really saved our butts when one of our kitties needed her leg amputated.

I grew up out in the country with a dog and a million cats. My sister even had a horse for a while. I’ve always been around animals and I can’t imagine life without them.

It’s surprising how expensive guinea pigs are. They eat so goddamn much! In addition to hay and pellet food, they require fresh fruits and veggies daily. Our piggies are particularly fond of carrots with the greens still on them, basil, and yellow bell peppers. Recently we discovered that they also like dandelion and cilantro. Thankfully, we have found a local fruits and veggies store that sells produce really cheap. We can buy a mountain of food there for twenty bucks! Happy piggies!

This is Nugget. He’s the more outgoing one of our two piggies. He has two different colored eyes — one blue and one brown.

I really like talking to our piggies. They make the most interesting sounds. I talk and they squeak back. They stare at me and I really feel a connection with them. It’s so cute!

 

I want to hear about your pets! Are you like us and can’t imagine life without animals around?

If you are in the Northwest Ohio area, my flower finger paintings and drawings are now for sale at The Gilded Exchange in Perrysburg, a local furniture and home decor store and consignment shop. These are the pieces I dropped off yesterday. Fingers crossed I sell some!

It’s really hard to put yourself out there as an artist and so many of you have been really supportive. Thank you for that; I really appreciate it. You’ve given me the strength to keep going! With my current health struggles, sometimes all I can do is hide and paint. My artwork is a way I can still stay connected to the world and that has been really motivating to me. It’s how I’m turning a negative experience into a positive one and I’m so happy you’ve supported my journey.

I apologize for the lack of posts lately. I am dealing with some health issues and have zero energy. What little energy I do have has been given to my memoir and working my part-time job from home.

However, I had a bizarre dream last night and I couldn’t help but post about it. In my dream, I was supposed to attend a dinner party but I had somehow overslept and was still in my nightshirt with messy hair and no makeup. There were other people at my house, people I didn’t recognize, but I was telling everyone that I was dreaming and that’s why I wasn’t ready. I told them to please wake me up so I could get ready for the party.

Did I know that I was dreaming because I told people in my dream that I was dreaming? (Did that make sense?) Is that lucid dreaming? Does anyone have any experience with this?

I occasionally take Klonipin to help me sleep and that sometimes gives me really weird dreams, but I didn’t take any last night. 

Either way, I woke up this morning feeling a little uneasy and disoriented. So weird.

Has this ever happened to you? 

I would love to hear about some weird dreams you guys have had lately. 

I’ve spent the weekend mostly on the couch watching TV since my knee hurts. I feel rather stuck right now.

I watched a series called “Rewind the 90s” which was fun to remember everything they talked about. I grew up in the 90s and I think it was a fun and interesting decade. Seeing how the technology developed during the 90s led to everything we have today was amazing. Do you remember having a Nokia phone? My dad gave me my first cell phone when I started driving and it looked like a big gray brick. I didn’t get a Nokia until college. Do you remember your first cell phone?

This series made me feel a little nostalgic about my childhood, but the decade had its downside, too. Something that sticks out to me about the 90s was homophobia. I don’t know if it’s because I was raised in Middle America, but the way kids talked then is not the way kids talk now. It’s quite incredible the things that came out of our mouths that were considered acceptable, maybe even encouraged. Fast forward ten years and I learned that I had many scared friends and family hiding in the closet in the 90s. I can’t even imagine how horrible that must have felt. I know we still have a long way to go but it’s good to look back and see that progress has been made. 

Argue with me all you want; I still think the 90s was the best decade for music. 

Then after that series, I watched “1989: The Year That Made Us”. I thought this documentary was interesting because the first big news story I remember as a kid was the Berlin Wall coming down. Of course, I was a little kid and didn’t know what it all meant, but I remember watching it on TV. What big news stories do you remember from your childhood? Could you make sense of it?

I like to binge-watch documentaries when I’m not feeling well, especially history and true crime. My husband thinks they’re depressing but sometimes I like it when shows make me emotional. One show that makes me emotional is Intervention. I’ve seen every episode – some of them multiple times. I cry every time but I continue to watch it. Do you ever feel that way? What show gives you the feels?

What are you guys watching this weekend? 

My family went grocery shopping tonight, and as we entered the store, a man approached me and said, “This is for you.” He handed me a forty-dollar gift card for groceries. I just stood there with my mouth open for a second before finally exclaiming, “Thank you!” I had no idea who this guy was. He just smiled and left. My husband and I looked at each other in disbelief. I really wonder what this guy’s story was and why he did it. There’s no way he could have known how much my family has been struggling and how much a gift card for groceries meant to us. It really made our day.

One day, if I ever have enough money, I think I will also pass out gift cards for groceries to random strangers. We all need to eat, so if you want to help people out, that’s a great way to do it.

Have you ever had something like that happen to you? Did it motivate you to want to do the same? Let’s hear some feel-good stories!