Okay, first of all, I had no idea what to call my title. Hope the lame factor is set to low on that one.
It’s been a long time since I did much on the Dope, and a longer time still since I wrote an OP here in MPSIMS. Curiosity (and being stuck in a hotel room with sleeping children I dare not allow the TV to awaken) had me perusing back here a few weeks ago, and reading the In Memoriam completely shocked me.
We lost ChiefScott? Lynn Bodoni?? OpalCat?!?
I’ve known them all since the AOL days, and they all had varying degrees of impact on me. While I never met them IRL, I certainly interacted with them, and in the case of Opal, both in live online and voice chat. I was in my mid-twenties, just learning about things internet and message board, and it feels a bit like the SDMB and I grew up together. I shared so much with everyone (more than I would share now :eek: --but I changed my username when the board switched to this format, so OH DARN all that stuff before December 1999 is gone), and they shared so much in return. I really felt a part of the community. I am sipping my afternoon coffee from a mug Opal sent me over a decade ago in their memory.
However, over the last few years, life has happened, and life has happened hard. I drifted away. But reading about losing those people reminded me of how much I loved, love, the Dope, and I wanted to come back.
So, hi! :::waving:::
In short, shit hit the fan with me physically in the last two years. It’s a long, long story, but suffice it to say it culminated in my flying 3000 miles cross country six months ago to have brain surgery for a rare (and worse, misunderstood, so the specialists who’d heard of it thought they knew more than they actually did) malformation that was causing me skull-crushing headaches, balance issue, constant hand tremors, sleep apnea, loss of temperature sensation in the right leg, hazy vision, slurred speech and word selection issues (so please, be gentle if I screw up here–I do it more than I ever did, and it drives this precisionist bonkets)…well, and a whole lot more. Blah blah blah brain stuff blah. Turns out, the brain stem affects a whole freakin’ lot of the body, and it’s really pissy about being touched, squeezed, or compressed. Unforgiving, too, as though the for-me-miraculously surgery ended the headaches and the tremors, many of the other symptoms remain as nerve damage may or may not be permanent.
As a result, I had to take a medical retirement from teaching. That crushed me. I love my kids, love my classroom, love teaching, love learning…it’s still hard to accept the likelihood I will never be able to go back. I like to tell people that if you were to tell me I’d be retiring at age 41, I would have like to have hoped it would be because I won the lottery.
But, it frees me up for my sons. Boy 1.0 is nine now and Boy 2.0 (whose rough pregnancy and colicky ways had me posting here last) is five. The surgery gave the boys enough of their mom back that I can be there for them and with them, and I am truly grateful. I am well enough now that I can take them to school every day, pick them up every day, help with homework, be there with them, which is so very important to me.
DeathLlama is still my husband, and he’s still awesome and amazing and stuff. Nothing like a major health crisis to show the stuff a relationship, a partner, is made of.
Now, I busy myself being a mom and a enjoying our mini-zoo. We have a miniature horse (still, I posted about getting her here over a decade ago), two mini Nubian goats, a dog, two cats, two frogs, an Emperor scorpion, and…uh…11 snakes. Heh. As my health meant my horseback riding and owning days are paused at the least, if not permanently over ( ), I breed exotic cornsnakes now and on occasion, take in the dumped cornsnake that has been neglected and starved (through ignorance or apathy) and rehabilitate them. I have one coming to me later this week, in fact, that is terribly underweight and a bit beat up looking.
So, that’s me. Ruffian. SDMB 99er, former AOLer, checking back in after a long-ass time. How YOU been?
I remember your name, but I don’t think we ever interacted.
