Compute This

Back when I was in college, I had to take a course called 'Computer Science.' It consisted of learning FORTRAN, a computer language that at that time, was already a dead language. You had to type lines and lines of data on punch cards. A machine punched holes in the cards and that would be what the computer read. The cards had to be loaded into a reader that entered the data into the computer. The computer filled a large room that had to be kept at a cool temperature and had less memory than a modern day jump drive that's smaller than a stick of gum. Actually, I think some current day car keys have more memory. There was no audio or video, just a huge printout on paper that had a line of holes on either side and folded like an accordion into large stacks, depending on the size of your program. If you got one little period out of place, or one letter, your program would not work and you had to print out your program and look it over, bit by bit and see what you did wrong. This could be very monotonous and time consuming. It was a waste of time for me although later in life, it was somewhat helpful when learning a little html.  I hated it and thought that I would never be any good at computers. Times changed very quickly.

Then, after I got married and moved to Fort Worth, I got a job at Tandy Technical Publications, across the way from Radio Shack Advertising where my husband worked. I would illustrate instruction books for games on Tandy computers. The operating system was called TRSDOS which stands for Tandy Radio Shack Disk Operating System. After the computer was started up, in the middle of a black screen, in plain white letters, it would say TRSDOS Ready. That meant your computer was ready for software. There were a number of programs available for their computers including a few simple games.In order to draw various points in the game, I'd have to load the game and play it to the point that they wanted illustrated. The games came on an audio cassette and had to be loaded into the computer. They were very simple games which had a few black and white pixels. There were the Model 2 and the Model 3 computers and there was a computer that consisted of a keyboard that would be hooked up to a television. There was a word processing program called "SCRIPSIT" that was very basic stuff with green type on a black background. You would print out your stuff on a daisy wheel printer that made quite a racket when it printed out what you wrote. I'm sure our downstairs neighbors were not real thrilled when we printed something out on our daisy wheel printer, it sounded like an old airplane taxiing down the runway, preparing for take-off.

My husband was then doing copy writing on a Model 12 which took 8 1/2 inch floppy discs. I remember when the Model 1000 was going to come out, in my department at work, they'd roll the demo model around on a little cart, covered in a black cloth. I think nowadays, some remote controls have more memory. When the advertising department got new computers, we got to buy the Model 12 for a real cheap price and also bought a daisy wheel printer. We had our first computer. I remember my husband helping a friend of his load a book up to a satellite, then down to another computer. The internet was in it's infancy. I remember my husband getting on something called 'Crysalis.' The name was in multi-color type.

Then, when I was working for JCPenney Catalog as what was called a "keyline artist," I was told my job was ending because they were going to put everything on computer and they didn't need keyline artists any more. I was lucky enough to get a job in the marketing retail area of JCPenney, which was like a whole other company, doing layouts for Sunday newspaper ads. I had to learn the computers. The computers were basic old macs. I wasn't sure how I'd do, but once I started training, it was easy and a lot of fun. I loved doing stuff on the computers. I learned Quark Xpress and  Photoshop. I picked it up quickly and ended up helping my managers with their computer stuff. The only thing was the mac computers crashed a lot and I had to remember to save my work often or I would lose a lot of work due to a sudden crash. A cartoon bomb in a little white box would show up on the screen. It would be very frustrating, especially with large complex ads for kitchen appliances that had a double page spread with a lot of items. I loved Quark X-press, it was so easy to correct the occasional typo. White-out was a thing of the past.

Jump forward a few years and we found out Jeffrey, our son, has dyslexia. The lady who diagnosed it recommended that we get a computer. Steve got our old Model 12 out of the garage and set it up. The fist thing we noticed was that there was no mouse.  We ended up getting an Acer at Comp USA. I was used to working on a mac and found the Windows operating system to be a little more difficult. Then, in 1995, Windows 95 came out and that made working on a PC (Personal Computer) much easier. The internet was developing and we were sending out e-mails and were on mailing lists. Our printer was an ink jet printer, and was much more quiet than that old daisy wheel printer.

Video games were also progressing. We had let Jeffrey use our old Atari and Intellivision on a little black and white TV in his room when he was real little. There was a parachute game he loved, when the parachute guy jumped out of the plane, you would guide him to a safe landing. Jeff liked to watch the guy jump out of the plane and splat on to the ground. Then he would roar with laughter. A few years later, Steve got him his first Nintendo game system, an inexpensive used system, and Jeff started playing games like Donkey Kong. Now, he plays intricate, detailed games such as 'Red Dead Redemption.'

At work, we got new macs, something called  a "Quadra" or something like that. It was supposed to be the new mac state-of-the art technology. It was faster and didn't crash as much and was a lot of fun. You could record your own sounds on there and then use them as alert sounds like when the computer didn't like what you were doing. This came in handy because for some reason, a person in my group liked to work on my computer when I was at lunch, I guess he liked the way I had it set-up, or it was just convenient, it was annoying. I did not like him doing this, he would mess with my settings. So I would record a real long sound and set it up so that the computer would make that sound when he made a mistake and he would have to wait for the computer to finish making that sound before he continued. I would find that sound settings different when I came back from lunch.

One thing about macs is that I did not like their mice. They would stick and were often not very responsive. I got to use a wacom pad, which was a drawing pad you'd hook up to the computer and draw with a stylus. The only frustrating thing was that my bosses wanted us to do the layouts the old-fashioned way and to me, that was way too slow. I wanted to use the wacom pads and do all of the layouts using the computer. Eventually, they started doing it that way and these days, drawing the layouts by hand would be archaic. Also, photo shoots were done on film and I remember scanning pictures in for use on layouts. Now everything is done digitally.

Well, our Acer computer was a piece of crap. We took it to get fixed at Comp-USA and they wiped our hard drive clean and we had to start from scratch. Steve had backed-up a bunch of stuff and was able to get us back up and running. My husband was always good with computers and still is. He has saved us many times when we had serious computer problems like viruses or malware.

We got us a Toshiba computer and that was such a workhorse. It just worked, each and every time. It was a great computer and lasted for years. As technology progressed, we had to get a new computer.
We shopped around. We had looked at Gateway computers, but when we went to their store, they said they were out of motherboards, yet they continued putting ads in the paper, promoting their so-called fantastic computers while using cows as part of their logo and ad art. So one day, I took our ad from the Sunday paper and wrote a cartoon balloon over the cow saying, "We're out of motherboards." My husband thought it was real and got a good laugh out of it.

We ended up getting a Dell and it wasn't long before it went belly-up and we had to have someone out to replace the motherboard. To get to that point was a long labor of waiting on the phone for hours, talking to someone in India, getting taken to the next level, only to find out they couldn't help. It was a very frustrating experience. To actually get someone out to fix the computer was like going through labor, it was a hard and arduous journey.

In 2002, when I went to Columbus to see to my mother's affairs after she had gotten sick and passed-away, I was staying in her house. She had been against computers, wouldn't have anything to do with them and was perfectly happy with her electric typewriter. I had to type some stuff out and after having had become used to using Word for Windows, was to the point of screaming when using my mom's typewriter. I told my husband on the phone one day that I was ready to throw that stupid typewriter out the window. He suggested I go at get a laptop computer. After shopping around, I found a Toshiba at Circuit City that was just perfect. It had a pixel out in the middle of the screen and I had to exchange it, but the guys at Circuit City were very helpful in helping me get it exchanged. They were some of the nicest salesmen I had ever dealt with.

I was so happy with my new laptop. I could hook up to aol and instant message with my kids and husband, I could play CDs and movies on it and I could type documents in Word.  My husband even sent me a CD of  music that I like. It was heavy and not as portable as laptops are nowadays, but it still works. Steve had to replace the battery and the hard drive, but it still works, eleven years later. When I was in the market fort a newer laptop, we had thought about getting a Dell, but they kept delaying the order so we canceled and I went to Best Buy and got me a Toshiba, which I am using right now. I still like Toshiba computers.

Now, my daughter has an I-pad and both kids have laptops. They know a lot more stuff about computers than I do. Now, the TV, the DVR, the Blu-ray player and all of the computers and two game systems are hooked up to the internet. Everything seems to have a computer in it, even our washing machine. Software and technology is constantly changing and it is important to stay caught up. We have an account with Lynda.com so that I can catch-up with current software. A lot of my friends have smart phones and do computer stuff like the internet on their phones Smartphones are fragile and expensive, so I use a regular cell phone.  If future generations ever read this, they will probably shake their heads at what they see as low level technology. It keeps changing and evolving like some sort of life form. I wonder what it will be like in another ten or twenty years.

Dan Part 6 - Dan and Our Parents

My Dad Reading to Stacy

Dan is like an adult child in his mind. He lived at home with mom and dad and was like a kid until his world got turned upside down.

Dan lived with my parents and I lived with my nice little family down in Texas. In 1995, we took a trip to Ohio. We had a good time. We visited with my parents and with my mother-in-law. The morning we left to return home to Texas, dad offered to make us breakfast and I took him up on the offer. It was one of the smartest things I ever did because that was the last time I saw him as I knew him. Shortly after that, he was to have surgery for a blocked artery but when pre-surgery blood tests were done, my dad was found to have acute mylogenous leukemia. He had to go into the hospital for chemotherapy. Mom arranged for Dan to go to work while she visited with dad in the hospital. The chemo did a real number on my dad, however he did not loose his hair. He went into remission, but just as soon as he did, the artery that needed surgery released some plaque which caused my dad to have a stroke. It was then that mom called me and asked me to fly to Ohio. Steve made the arrangements, I was in shock. I think Dan was still work when I arrived, but I don't remember now.

Dad could only talk in sentences of just a few words, although he understood things just fine. I visited my dad every day. Dan visited dad only once or twice while I was there. I don't know why Dan wasn't there as much, I can't remember now.

Dan had accumulated quite a collection of records and one evening when I was at mom's house, after having visited dad at the hospital, we heard a big crash in Dan's room. He had been using a book shelf - one of those you buy at a discount store and put it together yourself - to store his vast collection of records. The book shelf finally gave away under the weight of the records. Dan reminded me of the guy in the movie, 'Rain Man.' The guy in the movie could find any book in his large collection easily. Dan was like that with his records.  I went upstairs and helped Dan sort out the mess. Fortunately, not many records were broken. We stowed the records in laundry baskets and plastic boxes so we could move what was left of his bookshelf out of there.

I remember telling dad the big news about Dan's record cabinet at the hospital the next day and dad was clearly not happy about it. Even though dad couldn't say much, he expressed himself quite well. That is, until he eventually slipped into a coma later in the week. I talked to him every day, told him what was going on at home and stuff like that. I brought pictures of the kids and showed them to him. He really enjoyed that while he was able to. Dan didn't see him after he slipped into a coma. We figured that would be too upsetting for him.

I spent time with Dan while I was there. I helped him with cleaning his room and we had what we called 'talk sessions' while we worked. The 'talk sessions' included stores about Echo and memories we had of when we were kids.

Our father died about a week after I came to Ohio. At the viewing, Dan stood by dad's casket and talked to him. It was Dan's way of saying 'Goodbye.' Dan held up well during the viewing and the funeral. His world was turned upside down, but he still had mom. I went back to Texas and Dan lived with mom. A few months later, our Grandmother Compton died. She was mom's mother. She lived in Columbus, not far from us and was a big part of our lives. She was always good to Dan. She baked him cookies, like Oatmeal Scottchies, which he liked. . She made him a quilt and curtains when he was little. She was a big part of our lives. She had been living in an assisted care facility called 'The Kensington' and was moved to the nursing home part of it just before she died. Two major people in Dan's life had passed away in just a short time.

Mom made sure that he kept his routine of going to and from work every day. Mom would take Dan to work and pick him up. Dan helped mom around the house quite a bit and I am convinced if it weren't for Dan, mom would have ended up in a nursing home. Mom developed Parkinson's Disease and became more disabled as time went by. She had a chair installed that moved her up and downstairs. It became harder and harder for her to get around and she relied heavily on Dan to lift her out of her bed, to lift her into her lift chair, to lift her in and out of the car. Dan was quite strong and could lift her easily. I couldn't lift her. He also knew how to do it properly, I never could get the hang of it. Dan did all of the kitchen work, laundry and stuff like that.

It got to the point that mom could no longer drive and thank the good Lord that a neighbor who lived across the street from her convinced her of that after an incident where she backed out of the driveway and things went awry. Fortunately, her car was the only vehicle that was damaged and no one was hurt. She wouldn't tell me why there was a fender in the garage, I later learned of the incident from her neighbor. After that, she had to have friends take Dan to and from work. Sometimes his co-workers did that as well. The people he worked with at Bob Evans were very nice to him and gladly helped him out. Mom had a cleaning lady that came out on a regular basis. There were ladies from an organization called 'Heart of Ohio' who came out and took care of her every day.

The chair that got my mom up and downstairs 

When it got to the point that it looked like mom was going downhill, Steve and I taught Dan something very important. We taught him that if he couldn't wake mom, to call 911. Mom had to go to the hospital for a while, and came home after a couple of weeks. She kept going downhill. One morning, Dan couldn't wake her. He called 911. Interestingly enough, the lady from Heart of Ohio was at mom and Dan's house, but was downstairs and it was Dan whot found mom in the state where she couldn't be awakened.  The ambulance came and took mom to the hospital. I flew down from Texas. This was in 2002. When I saw Dan, he was quite overweight. He had been gradually getting heavier but this time, it really hit me just how much weight he'd gained.

I took Dan to visit mom at the hospital. I took care of the household. Dan kept going to and from work for a while with the help of co-workers. When mom got worse, her sister, Aunt Bonnie and Uncle 'Tode' came to visit. I remember the first night they were visiting, they took us out to dinner. We went to Donato's Pizza in Gahanna. My uncle had surprised me by asking if he could get a martini there, we couldn't but I showed him where he could get one. They were very generous, we got a great dinner. The Dan ate and ate and ate. He ate until he was out of breath and I had to tell  him to stop. That's when I realized that the defective judgement center of his brain didn't tell him when to stop eating! I knew that was something I was going to have to watch.

Mom passed away soon afterwards. It was the second time I'd ever seen someone die, the first had been my father. The hardest thing was when I had to go home and tell Dan. I took him upstairs and into his room. I told him as gently as I could that mom had died. Of course he cried.

My aunt helped me arrange mom's viewing and funeral. It was a heavy burden, dealing with the loss of my mother and the sudden responsibility of her estate and my brother.Steve and the kids flew up to Ohio to help me and go to mom's funeral. They stayed with my mother-in-law. One of the kids said it was like an Ohio trip in the fall. They helped clean out mom's basement which, due to a cat that made a big mess. The cat died about a year earlier, but the mess was still there.

Dan and I with our aunt and uncle and Stacy 

 At our mom's viewing, Dan stood besides her casket and talked to her just like he had talked to our father at his viewing. It was Dan's way of saying 'Goodbye.' I remember when arranging her funeral, I was afraid I wouldn't have any pallbearers, but thanks to help from her church friends, there were a lot of pallbearers including a man that was a fireman. Mom's funeral was the day before the one year anniversary of 911. I had mom dressed tastefully in red white and blue.  At the burial, we were seated in front of her casket, waiting for the service to begin. There was a pile of flowers on top of the casket. One of the flowers fell off of the casket and landed at my daughter's feet, like mom was giving her a flower.

Dan at his and mom's house in Gahanna

After that came the cleaning out of mom's house, going through her's, dad's and grandma's stuff as well as helping Dan go through his stuff. My family had to get back to Texas so the kids could get back to school and Steve could get back to work. My aunt and family had to get back home to their lives. Other than Dan, I had no family close by that could help. My mom went to a wonderful church and she had a whole lot of wonderful church friends that went out of their way to help Dan and I. We literally couldn't have done it without their help. Mom had a lot of stuff.

Dan sitting with some of his toys when we were going through mom's house.

I had to help Dan go through all of his stuff. Dan had to come and live with us. We lived in a small 1100 square foot house. We had to whittle Dan's stuff down quite a bit.  Dan had a massive collection of around several hundred records.He also had several large boxes of parts of electronic stuff that had been discarded. Dan had the turntable from mom and dad's old console stereo. He had a washing machine pump. He had various parts from record players, I'm not sure what all it was, but we couldn't take it to Texas.

Dan checks out my computer. 

Dan couldn't put together moving the mouse and the cursor on the screen. He could type in 'Word.'

Dan standing next to the dishwasher he worked on at Bob Evans

He had to quit his job there. He loved that job.

I had to make arrangements for an auction to get rid of the massive amount of stuff that mom had amassed from her garage sales.

Some of mom's jewelry

Some of mom's ceramic collection

Some of mom's jewelry collection

Some of mom's glassware

More of mom's glassware

Mom's little glass paperweights. I thought these were cool.

Dan's records.

The blue foil bathroom they had at their house. 

All packed up

Mom and Dad's living room

Dan's room

 My husband told Dan he could keep a certain number of records and had to auction off the rest of them. Dan picked out the records he liked the most and put the rest of them with the stuff in the garage to be auctioned off. I think we had to throw out most of the electronic parts he had collected.

Auction at mom's house.

Mom's friends helped go through the vast number of things she had. They helped me get a Realtor to sell mom's house. What was cool was when the Realtor came to evaluate mom's house, she wanted to know how old stuff was. Dan knew the dates we got the stove, dishwasher and when the sump pump was replaced, when the roof was replaced and stuff like that. Dan, with his ability to remember dates, was a valuable help with this. They helped me get the auction guy. A couple of ladies even brought lunch for us and invited Dan and I to dinner a couple of times. For that period of time, her church friends became my family.

It was hard for both Dan and I seeing stuff we'd grown up with auctioned off. We made arrangements with a moving company to move Dan's furniture, and the stuff of mom's , dad's photographs and slides and family heirlooms shipped to Texas. We made an arrangement with a storage place to keep this stuff until we could make living arrangements.

Dan on the plane, on the way to Texas

Dan arrives in Texas and meets Peppermint and Kandy

Like my husband said in his blog, I would like to say that we welcomed Dan with open arms, but to be quite honest, it was hard for us. It had just been the four of us in our little yellow house in Arlington, Texas. Our daughter, Stacy, gave up her room so that Dan could stay in there. Stacy stayed on the sleeper sofa in the living room.

Dan stands by the two grills we had, we brought one from mom and dad's house and we had our old one which was really getting rusty.

We had looked into the possibility of a group home for Dan, but there were none. There were a few for severely disabled people, but they were in Dallas, which was too far away. It's just as well, my parents didn't want him in a group home anyway. Dan living in an apartment by himself was out of the question, he would always need supervision. I took Dan to a government place to get tested. They were trying to tell me that Dan wasn't retarded that maybe he was just a little slow. After growing up with Dan, that struck a chord with me and I blew up. My husband was right when he said that the government was trying to save money. They tested him and the test results proved what I was trying to tell them that he is RETARDED. The next step in the process was to get Dan a job, but first we had to work out the living arrangements.

We couldn't stay in our little yellow house unless we added on to it. We decided it would be better to move. We decided that since Steve worked in Plano, that we should move closer to there. Thus started the long process of getting our little yellow house ready to sell and the search for a house that would comfortably fit all 5 of us and the animals.

I hate to say it, but I was upset that because of our responsibilities to Dan, we had to say goodbye to our little yellow house, our neighbor friends and our life in Arlington. I had to quit the job I had at Hobby Lobby, cutting fabric and working in needle crafts. I liked that job, I had a lot of friends there. There were a lot of changes taking place and I wasn't ready for it.  Having Dan around was like having another child, only he was an adult, but still a child, and he wasn't my child, he was my sibling. My kids were growing up fast and they were more mature than Dan ever will be. This was a tough adjustment for all of us.

The first birthday Dan had with us while living in Texas

Dan at Medieval Times

We hired a wonderful handyman named Bruce who did major work on our house and did a beautiful job in getting it ready to sell. Steve and Stacy painted the inside and outside of the house. This was a tough time for Dan too because he has always been one who relies on routine and anything out of that routine messes his thinking up. His routine had been disrupted when we packed up mom's house and packed him up and took him to Texas and now we were packing him up again. He loved going over to the storage place to visit his stuff. I would take boxes of stuff we packed up at the house to the storage place and he would come with me and help unload the boxes.

Our Little Yellow House in Arlington

Stacy help tremendously with fixing up the house.

Steve painting the skylight area in our house in Arlington

After an exhausting search, we finally found a 2-story 4-bedroom house in McKinney. After we got the keys to the house, I drove Dan to McKinney to see the new house. Moving day came a little too quickly. Dan says we moved July 15, 2003. Every year on July 15th, Dan will tell us how many years we lived in the house. Now Dan had his own room with his own stuff and Stacy had her own room. There was still a lot of adjusting to do.

New House in McKinney, 2003

Jeff tries out the stairway and the balcony

Dan in his new room before we moved in.

The story continues in 'Dan Part 7.' Stay tuned.

21 Years Ago

A recent photo of Stacy holding a cake she made.

Stacy, 21 years ago, with her grandpa, Steve's dad, Ray Burrell

Twenty-one years ago today, our daughter, Stacy Marie Burrell came into the world at 2:17 PM on Wednesday April 17th, 1991 at All Saint's Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, during a big thunderstorm. Thankfully, Stacy was in perfect health, she was perfect in every way, ten fingers, ten toes and everything working perfectly. I remember her looking up with her big, beautiful brown eyes, right after she was born.  We knew nothing of the thunderstorm that day until later on because the birth area of that hospital was underground. I didn't find out until I was brought up to my room and there was news about the weather on TV. Steve had to go home, pick up Jeff from daycare and feed the cats. Later that evening, Steve brought Jeff to the hospital to meet his new sister.

Stacy on the day she was born, being held by her dad

A later photo taken of Jeff and Stacy

The thunderstorms that occurred that day were pretty bad. The house of our neighbor across the street got badly flooded that afternoon. Fortunately, our house had no problems. We had no idea of the impending weather when we left for the hospital that morning, it was bright and sunny. Stacy was due April 23rd, but the OB doctor was going out of town, so he arranged for her to be born a few days early. He had given me a shot a few days prior to induce labor and said if they baby hadn't been born by the 17th, to come into the hospital that morning. I hadn't had much in the way of contractions, until we got in a great big traffic jam in the mix-master in Fort Worth on the way to the hospital, then I had a humdinger of a contraction. Having been through the birth of Jeffrey a few years earlier, I knew it was only the beginning and didn't say a word of it to Steve, who was driving. It's just as well that I didn't say anything because when we got to the hospital, the contractions stopped. We relaxed and hung out in labor and delivery and the hospital staff said if things hadn't started after lunch, they would get things going with a little pitocin. My body was ready for it, but Stacy was content to stay put. After the shot, things got going and it wasn't long until Stacy came into the world. I had a lot of asthma during the delivery, this was in the days before 'Advair Diskus.' Despite the asthma, the delivery was normal. She didn't come into the world screaming, she was very quiet at first. She made up for it later, especially several years later when she won a screaming contest between her and two neighbor girls.

We hadn't settled on a name for her, we had two names in mind, 'Stacy' and 'Patricia.' We hadn't really worked out a boy's name. I had a feeling it would be a girl and the nurses said that often, the mother's feelings about whether her baby will be a boy or a girl are surprisingly accurate. These days, future parents know the baby's gender long before the baby is born, but back then, it wasn't an exact science and we didn't want to know ahead of time, we wanted it to be a surprise. Jeffrey used to say that I was going to have a boy and his name was going to be 'Kevin.' I remember telling him that I thought it was going to be a girl. Anyway, after Stacy was born, the feelings of everybody in the delivery room were unanimous, that she looked like a 'Stacy.' Years later, Stacy told us that she was glad that we didn't name her 'Patricia.'

In those days, it was uncommon for people to own a computer. Cell phones were uncommon and mostly used by the rich. You made calls from your house, your friend's house, your office or a pay-phone. Video cameras, thankfully, were not a common thing for the delivery room. Video cameras in those days were bulky things that got heavy on your shoulders. We do have videos of just after Stacy was born, in the hospital room.  Digital cameras hadn't come along yet, we used film cameras and sent the pictures out to be developed. I took pictures of her with a 35mm film camera we had gotten at Sears. It was a great camera, I have some wonderful pictures taken of her.

 Video games back then were very basic, shapes and pixels that looked like little people moving around on the screen. Jeff had our old Intellivison in his room, hooked up to a little black and white TV. There was a parachute game he liked. The parachuting person that was a couple of squares with a parachute would jump out of the plane and you would work the joystick and make sure he had a safe landing, only Jeffrey liked to watch him splat onto the ground. I remember hearing the plane noise, the splat and then wild laughter coming from his room. I think that was a few years before Stacy came along, but it was around that time. Jeffrey also entertained himself playing Super Mario Bros on his old basic Nintendo game. Most of the music I remember from those days are the tunes from the games he played.

We drove a white 1990 Mazda 323 hatchback. It had a standard transmission and amazing pick-up. I remember when I was at the hospital to have Stacy, I could see, from my room window, a whole fleet of the same kind of car, parked in the hospital parking lot. Our other car was an old tan 1980 Chrysler Lebaron that was always breaking down. Every time we took it to get inspected it needed a new muffler. It had a carburetor and always stalled out at intersections when it was rainy. It was a real money pit and it didn't even have 80,000 miles on it. When I was 7 months pregnant with Stacy, it broke down on me on my way to work on 408 early one morning. Normally, Steve and I went to work together, but he had stayed home to take Jeffrey to the doctor that day.The old Lebaron just slowed down and stopped. I could see that it wasn't going to work much longer, pulled off the highway and walked to a gas station, which fortunately, was not far away and call AAA. When I called them, they were annoyed with me that I didn't know the exact location (this was in the days before GPS), until I told them that I was 7 months pregnant and would have known if I had far to walk. After that, they were real nice to me. Looking back, I think it was the fuel pump that went out. It was always something with that car. After that, we stopped driving that old car and it sat in our driveway for about a year, until we gave it to a neighbor who gave it to somebody who fixed cars and could fix it without breaking the bank.

Back then, we watched TV off the air without any cable, satellite or anything. We lived near some seriously large TV towers and got a good signal with our outdoor antenna. We kept it that way until I had to be on bed rest  due to complications in my pregnancy in February of that year. Then Steve got cable and we got free HBO for a while, so I watched 'Driving Miss Daisy' and 'Christmas Vacation' a lot.  I remember there was a show called 'Arsenio Hall' that was on late at night, right when Stacy liked to dig her head into my back, so I would stay up a lot and watched that occasionally.

The cats we had back then were  Natira, Bo and Princess. Natira sat with me a lot when I was on bed rest. We called her our 'nurse cat' because when someone was under the weather, in bed, she would sit with them and keep them company. Princess was a long-haired Turkish Angora mix who had bathroom issues and Bo was a part-blue-point Siamese who was occasionally a little psycho.

We lived in our little yellow house on Sedaila in Arlington, Texas. We had real nice neighbors, it was a real nice neighborhood back then. Unfortunately, years later, that neighborhood went downhill, but at the time, it was a great place to raise kids.I remember my one neighbor, Tina, her daughter had a baby boy just a couple of months before I had Stacy. Tina also had a big dog named 'Silver' who was part German Shepherd and part Husky. He had one yellow eye and one blue eye. When I went outside, he'd keep me company, looking over from Tina's yard by standing on her air-conditioner and wanting to be petted.  He  knew Stacy since she was born and was very protective of her.

Twenty-one years ago, it was a different world. It was before 9-11. The World Trade Center was part of the New York City skyline. Texting was not a verb, it wasn't even a word. Text was copy in a book or in an ad or in the newspaper. Photoshopping was also not a verb, there was no Photoshop. This was before I-phones, I-pods, I-pads and mac computers. When you thought of androids, you thought of little robots like R2-D2. I think this Apple computers were boxy little things with less memory than my smallest jump drive. They didn't have jump drives  back then either. Data was stored on floppy disks and they didn't hold much either. We had an old Tandy model 12 computer that was in the garage. It used 8 inch floppy discs. When you turned it on it said 'TRSDOS ready' and didn't even have a mouse. I was a 'Keyline' artist at JCPenney Catalog and pasted corrections manually on pasteboards for catalog pages. Type was set on a typesetting machine.  Word processing was in its infancy with programs such as Tandy's 'SCRIPSIT.'

Twenty-one years ago, it didn't even occur to us that JCPenney would some day decide to eliminate Steve's position. He wasn't worried about his job there back then. There were sample room sales when you worked there and you could get really great stuff dirt cheap. We got Stacy's crib at a sample room sale. I got my big furry coat with the leopard spots at a sample room sale. They don't have sample room sales any more. Steve doesn't work there anymore, he works at Southwest Re now. The thought of ageism didn't even enter our minds. We were only in our mid-thirties. Twenty-one years ago, I didn't have to dye my hair every few weeks, it was naturally dark brown.. I also couldn't sit back with a computer on my lap, typing a blog and getting on facebook. There was no facebook or any social network back then. Your social network was when you were in the front yard, chatting with your neighbors or at work between cubicles.

Twenty-one years ago, most of the people I work with at Kroger these days either hadn't been born yet, or were just kids. Twenty-one years ago, a lot of the people out in the working world who are the ones most wanted for jobs today were watching Sesame Street and playing with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures or Barbie dolls.George Herbert Walker Bush (the older one) was president. Gas in April of 1991 was $1.10 per gallon. The only thing I could really find that happened in the news on that day was that the Dow Jones closed above 3000, it was apparently a slow news day. Movies that came out that year include 'Terminator 2, Judgement Day', 'Beauty and the Beast' and 'Hook.'

Things have changed a lot since our daughter was born. She loves animals, especially sharks and lobsters, she's going to Collin College and loves to bake. She's a special, smart and beautiful young lady.We are really lucky to have her. She may be all grown-up in a different world, but she'll always be our 'little girl.'

A Zorse is a Zorse Of Course, Of Course...

Today, I met a 'zorse.' A zorse is a hybrid between a zebra and a horse. There is also a 'zee-donk' which is a hybrid mix of a donkey and a zebra. We went to Sharkarosa Wildlife Ranch out in Pilot Point, Texas, which is not far from Denton. We had been wanting to go there for years, but the opportunity never came up until now. Either I was working, or it was too hot, or something else was going on, but today was the perfect opportunity. I was off of work and the weather was supposed to be in the mid-70's.

A 'Zorse' at Sharkarosa Wildlife Ranch

Several years ago, the Heard had a few of their animals on exhibit on the animal trail. Jeffrey and I helped with the care of them. As I recall, there were 2 African Crested Porcupines, 2 Patagonian Cavies 2 Capybaras, 2 kinkajous, two brown lemurs, Tippy and 'Pogo', 2 Ring-Tailed lemurs  and several wallabies who were from Sharkarosa.  I got attached to all of them as I usually do with animals. I had become especially fond of Pogo and of the Kinkajous. One of the Kinkajous had a baby and I just loved that mother and baby. Actually, I'm not sure if the Kinkajous belonged to Snake Farm or Sharkarosa, but the lady at Sharkarosa took care of the baby after it left the Heard and she took excellent care of her.  The animals had to be returned to Sharkarosa and it broke my heart to say goodbye to them. Fortunately, the lady in charge of the animals at our museum at the time worked like crazy and got us more animals in a short amount of time. I stayed in contact with a lady at Sharkarosa and she sent me photos of the baby kinkajou, named 'Roxie', all grown up.

Here's a Drawing of Roxie, the Baby Kinkajou drawn from a photo that was sent to me.

This is Roxie All Grown Up

I remember that Roxie's mom loved purple grapes and I always made sure to have some when I went to look after her. She would take them from my hands. Those kinkajous are so sweet. They're still wild animals who can deliver a bite if they see fit, but they are really cute. I didn't get to see Kinkajous at Sharkarosa, they had gone with their human, to Houston. Still, I was glad to hear that they were doing so well. One of them had some health problem but is hanging in there. After the animals that belonged to Sharkarosa went back home, we had planned for a long, long time to go there and to Snake Farm, where some of the animals that belonged to them went. We visited Snake Farm in 2009, but hadn't visited Sharkarosa until today.

Sharkarosa is an exotic wildlife facility that is acreage with a wide variety of animals including zorses, zebras, Clydesdale horses, capybaras, African Crested Porcupines, a variety of lemurs, camels, a wide variety of deer, 2 macaws, Kangaroos, wallabies and 2 bears. The animals are very well cared for. The ring-tailed lemurs have a huge, amazing enclosure. Sharkarosa has a tractor-pulled ride that takes you through their property and allows you to get a better view of the horses, zorses, 'zee-donks'. deer, goats and camels. You even get to pet the zorses and the camels. The people who work there are all really nice. Sharkarosa was on an episode of 'Dirty Jobs' in 2010 when they had a tiger-lion hybrid - called a 'liger' or 'li-tiger' -named 'Coby.'

The African Crested Porcupines when they were at the Heard

The same two porcupines at Sharkarosa Wildlife Ranch - They still like carrots.

When we got there, I started asking around about 'Pogo', a brown lemur who endeared himself to me when he stayed at the Heard Museum. A couple of people said that he was still there, but when I looked at the lemurs, I didn't see him. They said he was a brown lemur but I think he was a mix of a white-fronted lemur and a brown lemur. I saw lots of precious lemurs, including several with little babies.

Brown lemur and White fronted lemur at Sharkarosa Wildlife Ranch

Pogo -This was taken a few years ago.

Later, I learned the lady who worked with Pogo had gone to Houston with Pogo. I was glad to hear that he is doing well. The lady who replaced her was standing in an alcove holding a lemur and letting people pet his tail. He was only ten months old and doing real well.

Most of this blog is going to be of photos because that's the best way to describe Sharkarosa.

Here are some more pictures taken at Sharkarosa wildlife Ranch:

A mother Clydsdale horse with her baby.

The little colt gets a drink at the milk bar.

A very sweet dog who had a part in a movie called 'Adventures of Bailey: The Lost Puppy'  that was filmed at Sharkarosa. This dog took quite a liking to Stacy. 

A deer who lives at Sharkarosa. Part of his mouth protrudes due to an injury he sustained a long time ago, I think before he arrived at Sharkarosa, but he's able to eat and function just fine.

Miguel, a Capuchin monkey who lives with his mate, Michelle at Sharkarosa. Capuchin monkeys are some of the most intelligent monkeys and are often used in movies such as 'Night At The Museum' because they are so smart. These monkeys at Sharkarosa will sometimes clap their hands if you clap your hands, although they were not in the mood to clap when we were there. There was another Capuchin monkey there, in another area away from Miguel and Michelle.

Steve, Stacy and Jeff watching the ring-tailed lemurs.

Another look at the zorse. There was a big Clydesdale that was a little bossy and pushing him to the next bucket of food that they had hanging on the ride to make the animals want to come over to us.

There's a zee-donk also, but he was on the other side of the ride.

 

Steve pets a zorse.

A deer who is native to China

A goat up in a tree.

A zebra and the guy he's next to looks like a llama, but is actually a type of camel.

A pot-bellied pig who hangs out with the zebras and goats.

Macaws at Sharkarosa

Snack time.

'Thirsty' the painted camel. He's the only male in their camel herd. Male camels can be very territorial, so they just have one guy and he is surrounded by lots of females.

Camels following the ride. There were buckets of food hanging from the ride.

I think this one's Michelle. 

The other Capuchin monkey that was there who was separated from Miguel and Michelle..

Friends

Alexis with lemur, I think the lemur's name was 'Skitzo.'

Jeffrey with baby camel. This little baby camel is a male and since they don't have more than one male, this little guy will have his permanent home somewhere other than Sharkarosa.

Baby camels.

This is Pistachio, a real sweetheart.

Another photo of Pistachio.

Dinner time.

Look at the brown lemur on the left, she has a little baby on her. A lot of the lemurs at Sharkarosa have little babies.

A sloth who lives at Sharkarosa.

A ring-tail lemur in the lemur enclosure.

Jeffrey and the porcupines he used to help care for at the museum.

We had a really good time, the weather was ideal. It was also a good day for taking pictures because it was slightly overcast. If you are looking for a great place to spend an afternoon on a pretty day, this is a reallyl nice place to go.

That day, we also went to a town called 'Sanger' and had dinner at their local 'Babes.' Here are some photos of Sanger.

A real pretty lamp at Babes.

Steve, Stacy and Jeff. 

A beautiful purple iris in the downtown square in Sanger.

A cool old house in Sanger.

Walking through Sanger.

We also shopped in a little art store called 'The Dragonfly' that was closing. Sanger is a nice little town, not far from Sharkarosa Wildlife Ranch. We had a really nice day.