Just Beth

I thought this might be a fun writing exercise for me… writing a bit about each of the ‘main characters’ in my life.  This first page is the quick list, but if you hover over ‘Cast Of Characters’ on the main page, you can get to the individual pages.

Main Characters:

Me: Author, mother, Procrastinator Extraordinaire.

Andy: My husband, poker player, King of Comfort and father to my two youngest children, Sally and Bobby.

E:  Our eldest child from my first marriage.  He looks twenty, is actually  fourteen, and still plays and has the naivete of a ten year old.  He is full of angst and insight and loving empathy and is already haunted and wounded but healing like only a child can.  I hope.

Sally:  Daughter, at three and a half, she’s thirty five pounds of imperial spice and generosity.  She is sensitive and demanding and intelligent and so beautiful she makes my heart stop.  Being her mother is terrifying in its enormity.   I feel the responsibility of helping her grow up safe and unmolested and strong, and the fact that she is beautiful, breathtakingly beautiful, frightens the daylights out of me.

Bobby: AKA; Wayne, Sunny, Chunk, and the latest and most apt; ‘Havoc’.  He is nearly two years old, just twenty months his sisters junior and the only person she truly loves.  That’s a joke.  Kinda.  Everyone loves him, though… because he IS sunny, with the easiest and most laid back characteristics of Andy and me, in a chunky, delicious, eat-him-alive, bowlegged, HEAVY and short package.  He’s irresistible.

Then there are the lads, The Boys, my Saint Bernard, ‘Thor’s Mount Kilimanjaro’ or… you know… ‘Jaro’ for short.  What.  I came up with the name and the dream of having a Saint Bernard when I was THIRTEEN and fullfilled it.  Have you done that?  Hmmm?  I’m going to get a horse next, DON’T DOUBT IT.  Anyway, and ‘Mount Kilimanjaro’s Big Thunder Mountain’, or ‘Big’, who is obviously Jaro’s son.  Big’s mother was a German Shepherd/Border Collie mix and HER mother was a three legged whore from the wrong side of the airport in Seattle.   Juno, Big’s mother, is now living with a family who can handle a crazy intense BAD dog.  I am ashamed to admit that I could NOT.  Especially with a nineteen month old daughter and being eight months pregnant.  With an estranged son I worried about constantly.  I still apologize, Juno, for letting you get pregnant.  I’m glad you’re with a family who can handle you, and thanks for Big.  He’s awesome.  Naughty, but nice.

I just wrote more about my dogs than I did about my kids.  I’m not sure what to do with that…

Then, the cats; Nina Simone and Billie The Kid(dy cat).  I don’t really like cats all that much, and right now they are really pissing me off.  So, they’ll just have to effing WAIT for their paragraph.

I guess that would be the ‘main characters’ of my personal story.  Nice to meetcha.

xo

b.