Chapter 2

My childhood spearheaded by a mother obsessed with visual perfection had baptized me for this life; but my present reality was not a contrived plan. I had no intention of marrying. None at all. After two failed marriages before the age of twenty-five and one child out of my youthful carelessness, I was single for life. My gifted son had finally flown the nest and as a celebration of my new found independence I relinquished the responsibility of yard maintenance and purchased a townhome. Unknowingly, with one stroke of a pen I surrendered my life to the ravages of toxic black mold.

Chapter 4

And there it is, like a serial killer with a knife stabbing us over and over again. We want to scream, "I'm dead already. Stop!" But we don't. We don't because we know we screwed up. We know we deserve to feel this horrible shameful guilt because our child is the only ten-year-old in the entire fifth grade class who didn't turn in one red cent for the Christmas drive.

Chapter 5

Truthfully, my sad little co-dependent self seemed unable to say no as long as I was living with someone else; as a single mother this was a dilemma of the highest magnitude. No matter how much I practiced the "no" word, yes always emerged from my lips. My reputation preceded me everywhere I went.

Chapter 6

My mental health wouldn’t allow such sound decisions. I, the product of a dysfunctional alcoholic family, was anything but daddy’s little girl. I was the spit in his eye, the stone in his shoe, the child he tried hard to wipe from the face of the earth every chance he got. In short, my inner child desperately needed to feel loved and wanted - just once in her life.

Chapter 8

My anit-dates would be all gussied up, shinning like a new penny with broad non-chemically treated smiles, clearly excited about the evening they mistakenly believed awaited them. I'd open the door and say, "What are you (emphasize, you) doing here?" Their explanation followed. These were nice guys, the kind of guys I didn’t like.

Chapter 13

I can’t put all the blame on my parents or my nose for my enormous inferiority complex; my hip played a big role. Having been born without a right hip bone made me a little bit of a freak from the get-go. My early years were spent in pillow splint braces that pulled my feet together and pushed my knees out. Sitting Indian style is still a synch for me, even at my age. My mother, God bless her, had been raised Methodist. The Methodist aren’t big on the whole miracle thing unless it is to explain all the stuff that Jesus did in the Bible. But my mother was an out of the box thinker and all those years I couldn’t walk and sat on the floor in those big ugly metal leg braces, my scrawny little knees poking out to the side like a frog, she just kept praying. Sure enough God grew me a hip bone and by the time I was three I was able to walk.