After our road trip I moved in with my then-boyfriend, Bill Murphy, a classmate from Grinnell College. We lived in Deerfield, Illinois (north of Chicago) for a year while I did Web Design and we pondered where to jump next. Bill's company headquarters were in Waterloo, Ontario, so I went to the University of Waterloo to get a Master's degree in Systems Engineering, and we lived in Canada for 3 years. Bill and I got married and moved to Michigan (back to Ann Arbor!) in 2001.
The first pet my family picked up (literally, my father picked him up
in a gas station) was more like a
second father to me than a pet. His name was Samuel P. Kitty. He's two and
a half years younger than me and we had him since he looked small sitting
in the palm of my father's hand. In his hey-day, Sam weighed in at around
20 lbs in a short tiger-brown fur coat. After Sarah and I left for school
he got visibly old; his fur was regularly matted, his eyes glowed from
astigmatism, and his ribs were visible at twenty feet. I have a photo of
him in his last month that dad calls Sam With His High-Beams on, because of
the way his eyes lit up from the flash. Having had two TIAs during the
first three months of the year, Samuel's condition deteriorated to where he
needed to be monitored constantly. In the second week of June he suffered
so badly from heat stroke that his eating processes were hindered. it
seemed like he couldn't quite swallow right. Four days later, we let him
go with the help of our family vet, who joined us for the process on our
back deck, in the yard where Sam managed somehow to pass his last couple
hours with dignity despite his wretched condition. He now lies under the
willow tree with Blitz, and will forever be remembered as the most
incredibly patient and noble cat we've ever known.
I wrote a poem dedicated to Sam and our neighbor's cat Orpheus, which is on
my poetry page.
The second pet, not counting gerbils, to enter the household was a friendly little dog named Pepper. He was little as all schnausers are, and he was colored according to his name. He came into our household the year we moved to our 18-month vacation house so we had space to tender to a doggy heart which had grown up with lots of wide open air. He was quite happy while were there and could run loose, but somewhat less so when we moved back into town. Pepper never got along terribly well with the older cats but was sometimes seen to try and play with the youngest, Chester. He went to sleep for a final time in my mother's arms six years ago.
Soon After moving to the 18-month vacation house I cashed in on an old birthday card and brought home a little grey kitten who grew into a sleek silver cat. We often argue over who came up with the name we gave her, Blitz. {I am of course certain it was myself.} She became a great huntress out there in the near-wild, and taught her kittens to be so also as soon as we let her take them outdoors the following spring. By the time we moved back into town most of the seven were given away. Blitz managed to return to just in front of the house after being hit by a car one November night my junior year; she was found and burried with honor and ceremony the following morning.
We did not intend to keep any of the kittens, but the longer we had them the more attached we grew. There was one in particular, a grey long-hair with white paws and a white ruff and white face with a characteristic dark line down the middle of it that we named Chester. After going through good-byes once for a no-show new owner, in fact, our Mother decided she couldn't take a second round of the crying and told the hapless person we were going to keep him after all. After his mother passed on, this loudmouth furball even managed to get the formerly quiet Sam to start talking again. He passed away in the summer of 2001 and my parents have not gotten any new pets.
In the past few years, I have also enjoyed the quiet company of a number of fish, mainly guppies and oscars.
When I was born we lived in the bottom half of a duplex at the bottom of
Edgewood street, in the heart of the Old West Side. There was quite a
community on that street, mostly families with small children. We've kept
in touch with many of them to this day.
Not quite four years later we moved to Sixth Street, only four blocks away.
Our house there was quite charming. With red brick walls, green gables and
white trim, it looks like a little dollhouse. There was a wooden swing on
the front porch, a swingset and the best climbing tree I ever knew in the
back yard. My sister and I shared a bedroom which took up more than half
of the small second story, as did our gerbils and Sam who, so far as I
recall, never threatened to eat them. Our first
school , Bach School, was two blocks NorthEast of us and my
best friends all lived within two blocks of that. Here is a picture of my sister and I sitting on the front
porch swing.
The spring before I turned ten we moved to what we
called our 18-month vacation house, on the outskirts of the city. We
called it this because it was a house we could not have ordinarily
afforded; it was a huge house, with an adjoining acre of land. The owners
had an agreement to sell in 18 months, so that was our alloted time. I
enojyed the field and the sandbox and the trees and the creek around the
yard, the spring that fed into the creek, the swamp to one side of
that, the horse pasture to the other side and the pine trees beyond, all
to the fullest extent possible. I also got some mice from a neighbor and
took them into school; Timidear and Frederick produced generations of mice
in that 4th and 5th grade classroom and Frederick outlived them all.
Sarah and I had to take the Junior High School bus every day while we were
out there, and the house was really too big to be cozy, so at the end of
our stay we were fairly
happy to move into a place in town, three blocks away from our school of the
time, a ranch house with a semi-finished basement. There was one very
important thing about this house: we were buying it! It had a fenced-in
backyard for Pepper, complete with dog house, and a two-and-a-half car
garage perfect for storing the old car of mom's we take turns promising to
fix up. This is where my parents still live. It's changed a lot over the
years... We re-shingled the roof and built a gable to replace the covering
we tore off of the deck and repainted the house and garage. The deck, as a
matter of fact, was torn down completely and replaced with
a new one. The backyard also changed, under the dedicated guidance of
my mother. Many trees came down and some were planted. Here's a picture
my dad took of me in the backyard in the summer of 1995. During my last
year in college they knocked down the wall between the living and dining
rooms and made it into a lovely arch.
In 2000 my parents purchased a new house, just three blocks away from the last one!
I've never really lived there, though we do enjoy regular visits. It is in a
quieter neighborhood and they get more birds nesting and stopping there,
which my father encourages at every turn.
The typical story I would tell at this point is how I never went to
kindergarten and thus became young for my class, but I'll just say that I
entered First grade at the afore-mentioned Bach School and stayed there
through the Second grade. For Third grade I entered a mixed class of
Second and Third-graders under Ms. Phyllis Faunce-Jones, whom we swiftly
nick-named "Fauncy". There I established my love for reading, started
learning "new math", and got to know my first guinea pigs.
This was in the North-western branch of an experimental "alternative"
schooling program, housed in Wines elementary school. I was at Wines
through Sixth grade.
For Junior High I moved exactly one block over, to the Middle Years
Alternative (MYA) program housed in Forsythe (that junior high whose bus we
used to ride). I attended MYA's version of
Science, Math, English and Social Studies for 7th and 8th grade, while
taking Art, Choir, Home Ec, Spanish, Health, Etc, with the rest of the
normal Forsythe Students. The only "normal" class I never took was Gym; I
was by this time in the Little Caesar's League of Girls' Travel Soccer
teams, and involved in many other sports.
Round about 9th grade I followed in my sister's footsteps to
Community
High School. I was never in any doubt about going to "Commie High", a
public school of choice situated near the heart of downtown Ann Arbor. At
the time I entered it, Community's enrollment was 360 students. I
graduated in a class of 78, every member of which was technically the
valadictorian, seeing as how the graduation ceremony gave us each a chance
to address the assembly. In between I was an active member of the student
polity {hiring teachers, recycling committee, PTSO, etc.}. I remember feeling
like I was a happy and successful student.
[Netmouse Home]
Houses
Growing up, I always lived in Ann Arbor, with the same phone number (neat,
eh?), but in a variety of houses. Schools
I have graduated from my sixth school. It turned out to be a Canadian University. In June 2002 I completed my Master's degree in Systems Design Engineering. Before that I took a BA in History from
Grinnell College. You can see the courses I took at both schools over in
my portfolio.
Authors
Roughly in order of the age at which I first read them, My Favorite
Books and Authors:
last updated July 25, 2004
[Latest News]
[About Me]
[Friends]
[Hobbies]
[Portfolio]