Some of you may know me in real life, or as an "invisible friend." You may know me as Melissa, or Missy, or, if you knew me prior to 1983, Ish. But if you don't know me, an introduction is in order.
I'm a reporter by training and temperament, but not by trade anymore. I spent 10 years as a sportswriter, first in my native Connecticut then in upstate New York, picking up a few nice awards along the way, before moving to the sports copy desk and moving to Cleveland almost 10 years ago. The sports desk job was all right, but I missed writing and wanted to do something new. I'd always loved home stuff, decorating and design, largely due to the influence of my sister, Deborah, who is an interior designer. So when the Plain Dealer launced a weekly home/garden section, Inside & Out, in 2002, I moved over there to become the homes reporter. Those were some good years, as the advertising came in and we did lots of great stuff like the old Sophisticated Home magazine. Then the economy changed, the industry changed, and the axes started to fall. In December, the ax fell on me and 26 other good, talented people.
While it hasn't been easy, there have been some good things to come out of the last six months. The best one was getting married to John on April 16. This is us with my parents, Bob and Ellie, after the ceremony:
We'd been together since 2004 and engaged since 2007. But outside circumstances had us putting off definite wedding plans. Then, last fall, John was moved from contract to permanent employee at American Greetings, where he's a Linux administrator for their online division, which includes e-greetings.com, Blue Mountain, Photoworks, Webshots and Kiwee. We started making tentative wedding plans when the announcement came at the PD that there'd be buyouts and layoffs. We put things on hold again. After the ax fell, we decided that a small wedding was best, so we had it on a Thursday afternoon at Bender's Tavern in Canton with just our close family there. My former boss and dear friend, Susan Love, threw us a whiz-bang party two days later at a lovely lakefront building in Lakewood, where our families mixed with friends and former PD co-workers.
I'm also learning again to share my space, something I haven't done since I last had roommates 20 years ago in Connecticut. As a happy spinster, I could let the dishes go, do the laundry on my own time, let the magazines pile up by the couch. Now, I have to take the needs and feelings of a slightly OCD husband into account. It hasn't always been easy, but it's slowly coming together.
We're not just responsible for ourselves, but for our pets. Until
three years ago, I hadn't had a pet since my cat Sabrina went to the Great Nova Trunk in the Sky (that's a story for another time) in 1988. But, three years ago, an emaciated black cat half-walked, half-crawled into the back yard. Working with Love-A-Stray,
we got her to a vet, figuring we'd either be there for her if she was
too sick to save, or foster her until Love-A-Stray could find her a
home. Even though John was never a cat person before, he took to her
and she stayed. We named her Lenny, after Jerry Orbach's Lennie Briscoe
on "Law & Order," because she poked her nose into everything and,
like Lennie Briscoe, always had something to say. Three years later,
she's still here. She's not happy about getting pilled twice a day for her extreme hyperthyroid, which is common in geriatric cats. We guess her age at anywhere between 13 and 18 years old, but, since we can't cut her open and count the rings, it's just a guess. Lenny loves wet food, drinking from the bathroom faucet, kneading biscuits on my belly, and sleeping on the guest room bed.
John came into the marriage with a menagerie that took some getting adjusted to. I knew what I was getting into when his online dating profile was titled "Iguana Guy." Yep, he had an iguana. And a bearded dragon. And an aquatic Florida red-bellied turtle. On our first date, he said, explaining the scratch marks and scars on his forearm, "In case you're wondering, I don't cut myself. They're from the iguana." He asked if I'd mind dating someone with an iguana and I replied, "No, but if he bites me, he's a wallet." That started our still-running joke of referring to Buckwheat as "Mommy's Little Wallet," or saying, "He's such a lovely sandal." And when an old neighbor of his told John that iguanas are to Latin America what squirrels are to Appalachia -- namely, dinner -- that started off a whole new line of humor. I sing as a lullaby to Buckwheat that line from Wall of Voodoo's "Mexican Radio": "I wish I was in Tijuana, eating barbecued iguana."
Mr. Bighead, the bearded dragon, is a pretty low-maintenance pet. He mostly sits in his cage, eating a bit of the greens we leave for him. Sadly, he's reaching the upper limits of a beardie's life span (10-12 years), and it's starting to show. He has occasional tremors in his limbs, his appetite's gone way down (he's not even tempted sometimes by the dried worms John puts on the greens as a treat) and he's more lethargic. I don't know how much longer he'll be with us.
Mackenzie is the turtle. I have a hard time with the name, because my niece is named Mackenzie and the turtle is a male, which can lead to mixing up the pronouns. I solved that by nicknaming him Soup. He's a voracious eater, and is shameless about begging for his fishsticks or dried worms every time I walk past his tank during the day. He's about the size of a cake/dessert plate now, but could reach the size of a dinner plate in his lifetime, which could be 40 or 50 years. The little beast could outlive us. Anyone want to be in our will?
John and I and the pets all live in the house I bought almost four years ago. It's a cozy ranch house in what's called a "cottage neighborhood" of mostly mid-20th-century capes, bungalows and ranches, some of which were originally built as summer homes for Cleveland families. It has three bedrooms and two baths. Our efforts here will provide much fodder for the blog, as we're slowly making updates. John was never "handy," or so he thought. But he's logical, likes to read directions, and can handle light home stuff better than he believed he could. I wish I'd taken the time to learn more from my dad, a Mr. Fixit both out of necessity and because he likes it, when I was young. But it's good to know he's just a phone call away when I'm perplexed.
Homes seem to be the family business, in a way. Dad did most of the work around the house. Usually, the only outside help was when Mr. Belval came over for two-man jobs. Since Dad retired, he volunteers once a week for Habitat for Humanity. Mom was a role model of an organized, efficient homemaker as she took care of a husband, three kids, three cats, a dog, 36 chickens, seven ducks and a goat (I remember Great-Grandma Urban coming to visit and saying it reminded her of her childhood farm back in Czechoslovakia). Deb went into interior design, and now has her own business, Paradise Hill Design, back home in Southbury. Her husband, Marty, is a painter and carpenter. My brother, Jeff, has his own business installing tile and stone, and opened a showroom in Waterbury. Then I wrote about homes for all those years. The family will also be finding their way into these entries, I'm sure.
All right, that's long enough. I have to save something for future entries!
