Me By the Numbers

While I am not a big fan of math and numbers, there are some numbers that are significant to me. 

There were only 54 students in my graduating class, but I remember
going outside and tossing our caps!

 The first number that is meaningful to me is the number 13. The number 13 first impacted me when I graduated from high school on Friday the 13th.  When I first heard that I was graduating on Friday the 13th, I was horrified because everyone always said that Friday the 13th was a bad luck day.  While I am not superstitious and I do not believe in luck--I believe in grace and hard work--I still did not like the idea of graduating on Friday the 13th.  

However, during the graduation I learned that I had earned a college scholarship!  My graduation day was very exciting and special, and from that day on I decided that, for me, Friday the 13th would be a good day!

This is not my baby, but she was in an
incubator like this and she wore
pink "sunglasses".

The 13th became even more meaningful to me when my first baby was born.  She was not supposed to be born until late May, but she surprised all of us by deciding to make her grand, although arduous, entrance six weeks early on April 13, 2015.  After waking up at 2:30 a.m. thinking that I had wet the bed, I learned that my water had broken and we needed to make a trip downtown to Henry Ford Hospital.  

Adele, all dressed up to go home!

21 hours of pitocin-induced labor later, my beautiful little girl was with us.  I held her long enough to kiss her and they whisked her away to the neo-natal intensive care (NICU) unit where they kept her for a week until she was healthy enough to come home.  Leaving the hospital without my baby was the hardest thing I ever had to do.  I was joyful when they finally gave us permission to bring my four-pound bundle of delight home!

She didn't weigh 4 pounds for
long!  By July, she was too
chubby for most of her clothes!

Adele at her first Christmas.

13 continued to be a good number for me years later when I married the love of my life in 2013.

On the steps of The Whitney where we had our nuptials.

Our first dance. We took
classes and danced to
Frank Sinatra's
"The Best is Yet
to Come".

 I had given up on love when Chad entered my life and showed me that true love does exist. I learned that love does not happen when you want it to happen, it happens in its own time.  I did not find it as a young person when I wanted it; in fact, I found it when I was ending a bad relationship and did not want it.  Love walked into my life, and the more I protested, the stronger it held its ground, and it is in my life to stay!

A romantic trip to Cancun.

Muffitt Hall, my dormitory for three years.

Another number that is meaningful to me is the number five.  Whenever I get overwhelmed with life, I think back to my junior year of college when I held five jobs simultaneously while taking fifteen credit hours of classes.  My first job was a 24/7 job as the RA of my dorm floor.  My duties ranged from attending meetings, counseling my peers as an unpaid therapist, monitoring my floor, supervising the lounges in the various dorms, killing the wasps that had infested our attic, and generally serving as the go-to mom substitute for the 18 girls on my floor.

  My second job was working in the cafeteria serving dinner five to seven days a week.  I enjoyed seeing everyone each day, but I hated the smell of food that lingered in my hair.  Several evenings a week I worked a third job in the game room, which mainly consisted of trying to ignore the jocks playing foosball and serving as a DJ to keep the party-like atmosphere. 

 Because that was not enough, I took a fourth job working at the local gas station, which introduced me to a different side of life in the small village that housed my college.  I mainly worked the closing shift, so I met a lot of interesting people who were out driving the country roads late at night.  The last official job was highly irregular, but some Saturdays I would help my friend clean houses in the village.  

I vividly remember a woman who commissioned the two of us to clean every inch of her house.  We literally washed every wall and every object on every shelf, counter and in every cupboard.

This is exactly what I did when I gave perms.
I had different color rods for different
sized curls.

80's hair--the bigger, the better!

 She paid us well, so it was worth the labor!  I also hustled for money on the side working as a hair stylist; while this gave me some spending money, I do not count it as an official job.  I cut hair for $2 or $3, and I have perms for $5.  I had repeat customers, so I must not have been that bad!

The number 3 is important to me because my husband and I have three pets. 

Frosty, Sophie and Emerson.

Emerson in his
"Sphinx" pose.

 The oldest one is a magnificent red Maine Coon that I named Ralph Waldo Emerson.  He has the personality and the size to pull off the three names, but I just call him Emerson.  He is a loving guy and he follows me around the house like a puppy dog. 

Emerson has such a
regal profile!

 In accordance with his red fur, he can be very frisky.  His favorite place to hunt is at the top of the stairs, and many times my arm, shoulder, back and head have been attacked as I was walking down the stairs. 

Our middle-child pet is my daughter's cat, an enormous and furry white Maine Coon we named Robert Frost and call Frosty.  He is very sweet and mellow and I will typically find him lolling around on the floor laying on his back, his legs in various relaxed poses.  Frosty's only peccadillo is his irresistible urge to put his paw into water.  The water dish is always dirty and surrounded by a puddle, any water glass that is left unattended will be knocked over, and the Christmas Tree stand has to be covered to keep Frosty's paw out of it.

Frosty lolling on the floor.

 

Sophie when she first
came home.

Notice Sophie napping on
the cat tree with the cats.

The baby of the family is a little white Coton de Tulear puppy we named Sophie.  Sophie thinks she is a cat who can fly.  She loves to climb the cat tree, nap on the cat tree, play with the catnip toys, and leap across the room like she is super dog.  She gets into a lot of mischief, but her adorable face saves her from much discipline.

Sophie playing when she was a puppy.