October 9, 2002
12:30am

So here's the next part.  While the people I introduced to you below are dear to me and I would love to find them again, I'm currently undergoing a very important search that is thus far, turning up zip.

I need to find a man named Jeffrey Dean Fox.  He'd be about 51 by now, has brown, curly hair, bright blue eyes and freckles.  I know that he grew up in Bowling Green, Kentucky, but also spent time in Decatur, Indiana and Paris, Illinois.  The last time I heard from him, he was in the Navy and (if I remember correctly) was in Tennessee.  This was in 1988.  He was married at that time and had two little boys who would now be probably between 18-22.  Jeff's mother was named Carolyn and his father was named Dean.  He had an uncle named Wayne (both Dean and Wayne are now dead).  He also had a little sister named Becky who was adorable.  

There are about a million Jeff Fox's listed in the US phone books.  I've been all over Yahoo and I'm fairly sure he was NOT the AF LtCol killed in Desert Storm.  I've called as many of the "most likelies" as I can with no luck.  The Navy does not keep records of people who have left the service.  

I can't afford to hire a company to locate him, especially with as little information as I have to go on.  Jeff is Joe's (my 24-year-old) birth father and I didn't expect to ever need to contact him.  As he's gotten older, he's wanting to know more about where the parts of him that aren't from me came from and I want to do everything I can to do help him.  If ANYone knows anything about this person, I'd really appreciate it if you could drop a line to me at katrina@eyeonsoaps.com.  I last saw the man in April of 1978, so it's a pretty cold trail.  In fact, since my daddy had a gun out at the time, Jeff may have run pretty doggone far.  

Hey, it's a long shot, but who knows?  One of you out there might have him for a neighbor.  If one of you out there has him for a husband, please allow me to assure you that I have no interest in rekindling anything.  I'm a happy girl.  I just want to get him in touch with Joe so they can connect before it's too late.

Thanks,

October 9, 2002
10:30am

I've been feeling very nostalgic over the past few days, thinking about people who used to be in my life.  I have been fortunate enough (last year) to reconnect with my best friend from high school, Sandy Cardwell, who is a real gem (still) and my best friend from grade school, Charlene Greer who also became a wonderful adult, I have found.  My mother sent pictures of a small family reunion that she and her living siblings had a few weeks ago and it was so odd to see them all so old.  These are all people that I remember so well from my childhood, but haven't seen in about 14 years or so, since my father's funeral.  My granny always loved both her in-laws and her "outlaws" (her children) equally and most of the outlaws are still on their first marriages to in-laws.  Since my dinky little Earthlink digital camera and my cheap-ass scanner all seem to be working, I'm going to do a picture gallery for you guys as I ramble on through the past for a while.  Just humor me, OK?

Here is a current picture of the living outlaws:

In front, it's my Aunt Ann, Aunt Sue, and Aunt Betty.  Across the back is my Uncle Jimmy, Aunt Pat and my mom, Judy.  My Aunt Ann never had any children, but she had a giant, horse sized german shepherd named Kaiser that my father used to call Hitler.  She lives in Melbourne, Florida.   It was a sad, sad time when she had to get Kaiser put down after years and years and years.  My Aunt Sue is my mom's twin (Julia Sue and Judith Lou) and is really, really cool.  My Aunt Betty is married to my Uncle Delmar, who has been the family patriarch since my Grandpa died in 1967.  They are the parents of the first Delena, who was my soulmate growing up.  My Uncle Jimmy is the only one in the family with more kids than I have.  I think they topped out at 8.  My Aunt Pat is a ton of fun.  She is one of the few who ever divorced, TWICE in fact.  The first one was an abusive alcoholic who serious needed dumping.  The second was a minister in our town who, after years and years of marriage, left her for his cousin (no, it's not normally true...it just was this time).  Since he left, it's like the weight of the world is off her shoulders and she's loving life.  How nice it is when you lose 250 pounds of ugly fat and don't have to diet!!  My mom is smiling in both of her pictures here, which is a new look for her.  Since she moved out of our family home, leaving it to fall down around my brother (the house and my brother deserve one another) and larked out to her own efficiency apartment, she has not been able to get the coathanger out of her mouth to stop smiling.  Here she is again:

She normally does not look, well, quite so manly.  That white streak in her hair is natural and literally appeared in her hair while in the hospital after she gave birth to Allen, my brother:

Allen is what we would call an Odd Duck.  He is very emotionally disturbed and scares the living hell out of me.  He's angry and bitter over godknowswhat and sits around bitching about his lot in life, terrified to do anything about it.  He participates in one of my defining memories of knowing exactly how dysfunctional my birth family is.  Paul and I were visiting in 1985 when he was what?  18, I guess.  Our boys were 7, 5 and 3 at the time and we were coming back from a 3 year stint in England.  Dad had just gotten a new toy, one of those gigantic satellite dishes.  He was trying hard to get it to dial in on some particular spot when Allen snapped, "You blew right past it, hotshot."  Dad froze, looked up and faster than Ricochet Rabbit, reached out and smacked Allen across the face.  Allen grabbed his cheek like a girl, choked by a sob, scampered off to his room and returned with a pistol.  "GUN!!!!" Paul screamed and grabbed me and all three kids on one smooth move and threw us to the floor (I have NEVER seen him move so fast).  Allen was waving the pistol around, babbling about just ending it all (we were never sure if it was his all or our all he was ending and were not willing to take chances).  Dad calmly said, "Pfft, give me that, boy" and took it from him and put it in his pocket, then went back to his satellite tuning as though nothing had happened.  Paul and I did not stay to see what he might bring back to the living room on this trip and in fact, I think that was the last time we ever took the kids to my mom's house.  In fact, I think it was the last time anyone but ME went to my mom's house.  

These folks are, hands down, the best looking people in our family.  On the right is Randy, son of Uncle Delmar and Aunt Betty, brother to Delena.  On the left is his wife, Sherry.  I barely know Sherry, only having seen her twice in my life that I can remember, but I love her dearly because of all the people I know, Sherry just does not give a fuck.  She's who she is without remorse, explanation or justification.  She's totally unaware that she's drop dead gorgeous and she is a fantastic mom to her three kids.  She takes no crap off of anyone in the family, which is a very precious quality that endears her greatly to me.  My cousin, Randy, has always been a cutie.  I remember when Delena got pissed at her mom for not letting her come over to visit me and smacked Randy right in the sucker stick, which poked the back of his throat and made him hurt for a week or so.  We both felt bad for that one.  Sorry, Randy.

This is my Aunt Sue and her niece (my cousin), Donna.  Donna is the daughter of one of the outlaws who has gone on to either his heavenly reward or his hellish justice, not sure which, my Uncle Lindley.  Uncle Lindley looked like Jackson from AMC (when Jackson was not a blonde).

Besides my Uncle Delmar, this is my favorite uncle, Uncle Willie.  Uncle Willie is Aunt Sue's husband and was always totally fascinating to me because he is the only one in our giant family with even an ounce of musical ability.  It probably helps that he's my uncle by marriage and not by blood.  Uncle Willie plays the banjo and the guitar and writes gospel songs.  He knows a lot of gospel performers (not Sister Vestal, unfortunately) and was part of a group for a while.  He used to own a dairy farm in Greensburg.

Getting away from the family for a while, here, in nor order of importance, are some of my friends I miss and a few I don't.

This is me in 1996 with by beautiful friend, Cathey.  She was one of the best High Priestesses I ever met and we were definitely spiritual sisters.  Situations came up that separated us, then she moved and I moved and if either of us ever did want to reconnect, I don't know if we could or should.  I have so many wonderful, wonderful memories of her and miss her every day.  Like most High Priestess seem to do, she married a young man:

Jon, who is an osteopath, from what I recall.  He was finished with his internship and ready to go into practice when Cathey and I last spoke, which was a couple of years ago, so I hope they are doing well.  Cathey taught me so many wonderful, fundamental things about Craft leadership and I'm eternally grateful to her for those as well as the fantastic memories.  

This beautiful young woman is my friend, Rajshemah, who I lost through a series of relocations on both parts.  That smile would knock you dead.  :)  I'd always hoped to fix her up with one of my sons so I could have her in my life forever.  I miss her tremendously.

This is another picture of Cathey (Doesn't she look so gorgeous??), from above, with Michael, who is my daughter, Delena's biological father.  He was tall and gorgeous and had this devil-may-care attitude of total selfishness that I greatly admired.  Alas, it was not meant to be, but there are some very fond memories amidst the madness that my life was when we met and were together.

Now, here's what's eerie.  Look at the top picture of Michael, then look at this picture of Curtis.  Scary, isn't it? Meet Renn Faire Bunny #2, rebound from the second divorce. The situations were so parallel it was frightening.  The good news is that in one of those above mentioned freaky moments of clarity (Dr Phil summed it up yesterday when he said, "I believe there are moments in time where, if you seize them, you can make everything that's wrong right again and change your life forever"), I was able to see that I was living the same life all over again and recognize it as an opportunity to go back to the worst time of my life and make new choices.  What looked like the horrible punishment of having to experience the EXACT set of circumstances with the EXACT same type of person was really the gift of a second chance.  I seized it and really did make things right and I changed my life forever.  Curtis introduced me to this guy:

who stole my heart and years later, still has it stuck in his hip pocket somewhere (right next to that fine ass).  I moved to California which I LOVE from Idaho which I HATED and overall, life is great!!  (But isn't it freaky how much RFB1 & 2 look alike??  Now, I can identify "that type" all the time.  There's one that has a kid in Dylan's class at school and I'll guarantee, he's a Gemini)  

This is an interesting picture of us in England, not only because it's of me, Paul and the boys when they were little (this would have been 1983), but because in the background (actually across the street, but it's hard to tell that in this picture) is Richard Rothery's House.  The road between our houses is the one I used to stumble to and from the pub on, as well as the one Harry Green used to walk to Somersham (pub is to the left, .26 miles).

This is the beautiful fireplace inside Maltings House, where we lived in England and this is Steve and Bonita McNeill, more friends that I lost track of and miss very much.  They are holding their children, Carrie and Eric and my sons, Joe and David are to the right (Joe and David are now 24 and 22).  Steve and Bonita are one of the many couples and friends that we lost through Air Force moves, like Pam and Bobby Buckholtz and James and Nancy Uhrenik.   :(  I'm happy that I've known so many incredible people, but sad that through moving around so much, I've lost most of them!  Steve and Bonita spent many wine imbibed evenings at our place playing cards and laughing.  It was great.  Bonita could always make me laugh.  We even forgave Steve the Amway thing.

Continued

Love,

  
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