Wedding number 1 and our first pet.

Where do I even begin when talking about the man who has changed everything in my life? I am humbled and awed by the love I receive from this man. John is everything to me.

When we met I was at a real turning point in my life. I had just about given up on myself. Nothing I did ever seemed to work out the way I wanted or needed it to, and now I was living back at my sisters’ home. In a job I hated and with no car so I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Meeting John changed much of that.

John has no idea of the impact he has on people. My sisters for example have hated EVERY person I ever brought home that was in anyway a love interest. With John they fell immediately in love. I remember Cathy asking me what my intentions were with John, as if she was protecting him from ME. I can laugh about it now but it stung a bit that my sisters had thought I was unworthy of my boyfriend. John’s Father and Brother were VERY hesitant around me and I could understand. My sisters, in fact my whole family, are very loving and accepting but his are a very different breed of people than I was used to. His father hated me like nothing else and Jim was not happy with my being in his brother’s life. He tried to hide it but it’s only recently that I have actually felt welcome and accepted by Jim and his family.

Only a few days after we had met John went away on vacation and I figured I would be fine with him gone, after all we had only just met, but I was a mess without being able to get in touch with him. I think the one point in the first few months that let me know for sure that I was deeply in love was the car accident.

I was driving a delivery truck for an auto-parts store and out on a delivery when an older man pulled into oncoming traffic and slammed into me head on. I almost went through the windshield but the only thought was to contact John, not my sisters, not Eric but John.

After some serious idiocy on the hospitals part I was released unharmed but a bit banged up. John drove the hour and a half to my sisters’ house just to spend a few minutes with me and make sure I was OK.

Eventually the driving got to us even though He bought me a car so I could drive up to him and save him the 3 hour round trip. I moved into his home above his stereo store in Shillington PA. It was a very strange experience at first as he had a water bed and I was unable to sleep on it, plus I would toss and turn all the time and literally flush John out of the bed. Eventually we got a regular mattress and solved some of that problem. I was working at Boscov’s in their auto department and looking at getting back into the Ren Faire game, when John asked me to marry him.

It was so nonchalant, that I almost missed it. He just started asking me what I wanted to do for the wedding and I asked him, “Are you asking me to marry you?” He smiled and said I thought that's where we were going with this.

So we decided we would get married one year from the day we met April 8^th 1994, but the Minister was busy that weekend so we got married on April 15^th 1995 yes we got married on Tax Day here in the USA. The wedding was wonderful and we went to Key West for our honeymoon. While we were there we picked up our first pet. While walking down a street we happened upon a little black ball of fur that had run out into the street and right up to me. I picked the puppy up and was fully enraptured by the puppy licks when John asked if we wanted one. There were 2 pups but only the brindled on was for sale. I turned to him and said I would have to think about it. John knew I had grown up in a small zoo. My sister Cathy rescued animals and nursed them back to health then kept them. We actually had well over a hundred animals at one point living inside and outside the house so he knew I was not inclined to have animals, but he also knew I missed having a dog.

Well we talked about it over dinner and decided that the puppy was ours. I named him Key Wester or Keyster for short. John instantly heard Keister and thought it was a butt joke. Let me tell you he was the best behaved puppy I ever saw. And I adored him from the first. He was a Chow/Akita mix and bright as a button. When the lady who was selling him found out we lived in PA she just gave him to us. She wanted him out of the heat of the Keys. Because we drove to Key West we didn’t have to worry about taking him on a plane and so we drove home stopping every few hours for walkies. Oh god I miss Keyster some times. He was such a great dog. He died from cancer only a year after we moved to Philly.