Years 7-12
Alright, so at this point my parents (from this point as a general rule "my parents" refers to my dad and Marlee), moved us to Panama Nebraska. Population 200+ 15ish miles southeast of Lincoln.
They'd found this 100 year old house that was a real fixer-upper. It was a 5 bedroom 1 1/2 bath that actually had a lot of room. It was situated on 13 acres of land, and there were an additional 10+ acres that were connected to it and the owner had never put up a fence, so we pretty much had complete access to around 25 acres. (click here for my blog on the house.)
It ended up being a great opportunity for unique pets. My parents were pretty brave I guess when it came to the pet department. To be honest I have no idea where they came up with some of their ideas. I'm pretty sure we just started out with dogs, cats, a hamster or 2. It slowly grew to some rabbits. The cute lop eared kind. Some where along the line my parents got into some sort of deal where a sheep owner paid them to let 40 of his sheep pasture on our land. We'd have to give them food, which he bought, keep them from running away and all that, so it was like renting the land out I guess. It did spawn some really fantastic stories.
Sheep Story #1
"One night while having a massive slumber party in which 7 or 8 kids were sleeping in our club house, the sheep broke loose through a fence at around 3 am. As we all start chasing them down in our pjs in the night, my sister Jillian and I get the brilliant idea to ride them. Yeah, uh huh, that's going to be productive. It was a pretty bumpy ride trying to hold on to a fat wool ball."
Some how around the same time or maybe just a little later, my parents started buying goats. Lord only knows what for, they were bizarre animals to have when we weren't really trying to run a farm. We mostly had pygmy goats, you know, the kind you see at the petting zoo. We also had a couple Nubian goats, they're the ones that look like a cross between a goat, a rabbit and a llama. Long legs, long neck, long floppy bunny ears. They're the kind that are used for milking. The milking is another story, but we'll save that one for now.
When I was probably 12 I remember getting sent out in the middle of the night to check on annabelle (yeah, we even gave them hick-goat names). She was pregnant and it looked like she was about to pop. I spent pretty much the whole night out there helping her deliver her triplets. It was pretty wild to see. Boy they sure were cute though (after the slime was cleaned off)
So by this point I'm really not sure what the fascination with animals is. My step-mom just couldn't help herself when it came to buying these things, and if they couldn't buy them, they found some other way to get them. We'd had everything from ducks, chickens, a killer rooster, several dogs, cats, a pig, the rabbits, the sheep, and of course all those goats.
Sometime around when I must have been 10ish we got horses. I'm not really sure which came first, but we did own 2 ponies. A Paint, named Paint (yeah really creative) and a Welsh named Ginger. (Ginger was later bred with a horse and had Joker, a white foal with a black star in his forehead.) In a situation similar to the sheep, we boarded two horses for a guy for several years. Bascar and Fire. Bascar was a really light palomino and I don't recall what breed Fire was. He was a very deep chestnut/sorrel.
Anyway, so we had all these animals, life was interesting to say the least.
We lived in the Norris School District. It was a K-12 school about 9 miles away in the middle of a corn field that took students from the 9 surrounding towns. I started in 2nd grade and graduated from there as well.
The main points of significance in this time are;
A: By the time I was 11 the bone transplant I had received in my middle ear was now failing, quite badly too. I was down to basically a capacity to hear 15% of the frequencies that normal ears should hear. Which pretty much equates to profound deafness. I was scheduled for surgery again, this time it would be to implant some mechanical/bionic 'thingy' which would do the job of the bones. This surgery was not a success unfortunately. We were told that there was no reason for this to not work and at the advice of my specialist, the surgery was performed again the following year, but that time I remained awake during the operation so I could respond to the Dr while he was working inside my head. Yeah, pretty bizarre.
This time the surgery was a success, I came to in the recovery room and with my eyes closed listened to nurses shoes tapping on the floor, hearing it, once again, in stereo. A few minutes passed as I lay there listening to machines beeping, voices booming over intercoms and my own breathing. As I lay there I suddenly felt as if I was going underwater, sounds distorting, fading, becoming muffled, and then silencing completely. What had started out as a success fell quickly into failure as the scarred tissue couldn't continue to hold the mechanics in place. And I was left with nothing but some very expensive equipment to rattle around in my head. (okay, it didn't literally rattle, but it didn't work.)
This time I wouldn't agree to another surgery. Not until some time passed and significant advances were made in the technology that would be required to 'fix' me.
You may only have a 1 in 250,000 chance of dying on the table from the anesthesia alone, (this risk was higher back in the 80's when I was having surgeries) but this risk goes up everytime you have to go under, but other risks are having other complications such as blood pressure drops, irregular heart rhythms, heart attacks and strokes. I guess I'd like to have a better guarantee of success before I undergo surgery again.
Significant point B:
At the age of 12, after last surgery #4, I'd asked my dad if I could live with my mom. He said no, so we went to court.
I think that at different times in my life I have more or less to say about this whole deal, and unfortunately or not, I'm in a stage where I don't have much to say about it. But I will say this; We got the same judge that presided over our case 5-6 years prior when my dad moved out of town and joint custody was no longer possible. The judge ruled that there was no reason for me to leave my dad, that there was nothing circumstantial to make them believe I'd be better off with my mom, and my sister Aspen would not have been willing to go with me and therefore, the judge was not going to allow it because he would not split siblings up, even if one of them did want it. So I stayed.
And in my heart, even though I started it, I was glad I stayed.
What did come out of the deal was a lot more time with my mom, convenient or not (considering the distance), she got one night during the week in addition to her every other weekend.
I can't say I was completely happy with the way things turned out. In a matter of a year I had cost my family a tremendous amount of money; between costs of lawyer fees and the surgeries that seemed like a waste (my dad will say they were worth it, since if it had worked it would have been life changing.) And this became one more thing that Marlee would never let me live down. Although she found very interesting and abusive ways to make me pay for it.
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