Jeff's Blind Dog Blog

      * As mentioned in part seven, we had maybe 35 people show up for our wedding, most from our families and some friends from work.   My wife's favorite uncle and aunt were there with bells on (the last time I ever saw her Uncle Max alive--a great, great guy). An old friend of mine came all the way from Michigan. A late uncle of mine, 75 at the time, drove down from Wyoming in a truck without air conditioning.  Of the fifteen or so from my old radio career I invited, one showed up. 

      * My youngest niece was going to be flower girl but had a panic attack at the start of the wedding.  She was four, so she was easily forgiven.  I learned later she thought the priest (in his early 70's at the time) looked creepy.  

      * My stepson, all of six, was the ring bearer.  He made it maybe two feet down the aisle with a stately bearing, then saw his best friend from daycare and immediately ran over to say hi and talk about less boring stuff than a wedding in progress.  His friends' parents gently nudged him back in the proper direction.  Later in the wedding, when my bride and I were kneeling before the altar as the priest gave his homily, he thought that looked cool and decided to join us.  He got right in the middle.

      * My stepdaughter was Maid of Honor.  Her dress, which my wife had a friend make, was more expensive than the bride's.  She was 11 pushing 12 and the same height as her mother, and had been getting her figure for the past year.  Everyone wondered who the young woman was.  No one could believe she was only 11.  Until they talked to her for a few minutes, that is. ;-) 

      * In January of 1998, because new ownership of the stations where I worked wanted staff reduced significantly before they took over, I lost my overnight disc jockey job at what was then the local "smooth jazz" station.  This proved to be the end of my radio career as I could find no other station in Kansas City interested in hiring me, and leaving for better opportunities in another place was just out of the question.  No way was I going to put the woman I was engaged to and her children through that!   So, I went back full-time on my manufacturing job (I'd kept it even when radio started looking more promising, but for only 25 hours a week) and looked for other opportunities.  I found one as a "product information specialist" for the same company.   My start date in that new capacity:  August 11, 1998.  We'd also found a house we liked in beautiful Olathe, Kansas.  With my father-in-law's help, we could actually afford it.  Closing date:  August 11, 1998.  Yes--in three days, I got married, started a new job, and closed on a house.   I grew up fast! 

       * We spent the first 75 days of our marriage fixing up our new house.  The original owners apparently weren't happy with how much we paid, so they decided to leave us some wacky presents:  No less than thirty 30-gallon-sized full bags of trash in the garage and broken beer bottles, crushed cans, destroyed toys, a destroyed propane grill, and a destroyed trailer (just the bed, no axle, no wheels) in the back yard.  There had been a storage shed back there.  When looking at the house, I'd asked the owners if they'd leave it.  They said sure.  It was gone.  There was also a swing set.  We asked if they'd leave it too.  They said sure.  It was in a neighbor's back yard when we moved in.  Inside the house, all the bedroom doors had large holes in them, and every single electric outlet was held in by one screw instead of the two one usually finds in electric outlets.  In fact, we found lots of things missing screws.  And everyone, I mean everyone, we had to call to fix anything we couldn't fix ourselves, told us a) they could tell someone had tried to fix it by themselves and b)--their exact words every time--"they did a half-assed job of it."   So we came to call our happy abode The Half-Assed House.  We live in it to this day.  We will never move.  Too much of our blood, tears, toil and sweat are in it, not to mention our money. 

         And that's a good stopping point.  You already know about DiDi--she came along a little over a year after we moved in, just when I'd finally reclaimed the yard from all the exotic varieties of weeds Kansas could throw at it.   The stepdaughter is now 21 pushing 22, the stepson 16.  You don't need to know our ages. 

         Unless my muse inspires me over the next 72 hours, this may be the last entry for a little while.  Memory lane gets a bit weary to travel.