"little Rachel" runs into brick chimney (literally)

I want to put a face and personality behind the face that paints a true and accurate picture of whom I am and who I was growing up.  I also think having the ability to laugh at one’s self is a very important in life and helps you get through the hard times.  So, at my expense, in this blog we all will get to laugh a little about me.

My hand and eye coordination is not the best to say the least especially in sports.  I never played sports unless you want to count 4^th string flag football in 5^th grade.  That is far as my sports career went in school.  Music was big in my family and playing in the band was in my future.

However, I always like that word however, people use it when saying I like what you did and then they slide in however or but and you know something is coming in the very next sentence.  However, when I was very young my eye and hand coordination came into play when running in the family yard.  I was probably 5-8 years old and remember the event because it was pretty dramatic since it involved my face ending up against our brick chimney.  I was running very fast from another child in a game in all likelihood. When all of sudden I turned around and my face slammed into our rock solid brick chimney.  I remember running in the house and crying to my mother and she said what happened to you. I told her and she said “watch where you are going. “  I can guess that is what she said because I heard that a lot from her growing up.

There also was an event which demonstrated to my grandfather I might be different.  The blonde, my friend from college, found this one so funny we still laugh about it today. I did not think it was that funny but they did.  I was trying to earn extra money in between tours in the marines and I was mowing my grandparents grass.  In their front law they had a nice row of hedge bushes and notice how I said had.  I mowed the back lawn then finally got around to the front and had to mow in between the hedge bushes and I accidentally clipped some of one of hedge bushes so I tried to even it out. But, by the time I was done I had gotten so frustrated I said what the hell and trimmed it to the ground. My grandfather did notice this and said, “Donnie what the hell you do to my bushes?”  I tried to explain and he just shaked his head in amazement or lack there of.

Over the years I twisted my ankles walking across the yard and you think as my mother would say, “watch where you going.” But, no I have not out grown this part of my life.  Thank god I have one resilient body and is like the energizer bunny and never misses a beat.  Whether, walking on a marine base, Penn state campus or in Portland I can twist my ankles and my body bounces back like when I was 20 years old.

Most recently, late last year I had just run six miles from downtown Portland to the Portland VA which is my normal distance. and was walking through a parking lot later that day when I was not “watching where I was going and when it happened again.  My left ankle gave out due to landing it in a pot hole then my scoped left knee gave out and lastly my right ankle gave out and I landed hard on the pavement.  Except now I was crying because I was worried I tore my dress and once I saw my dress was ok I did notice there was some blood running down my knee which had collided with the pavement.  But at the time I did not care about my body just if I had ripped my dress.

Times had changed but not really my body can take a beating and keep on ticking but who I am has changed dramatically over the last year.  I have my dream life after so many years of struggling but I could not have it all unless I had a great gene pool and body that could with stand hormone replacement therapy at 52 years old.  Recently, I went to the Portland VA for a stress test and my resting pulse which usually is 60 beats per min was ridiculously low at 48 beats per minute. My normal blood pressure is 110/60. 

I truly believe attitude and our ability to laugh at ourselves plays a very important role in our health and well being and glad I made this far and I am looking for what the future holds for me.

Now, this is the easy things to talk about and in the next blog I am going to dive into the hot topics that really cuts at the heart of what some like to call “transitioning” and much more and this includes the taboo topic of masturbation.