Marti Lawrence

I was born in St. Louis, Missouri to a rather unique set of parents. My mother was only in her 20's when I was born, and this was her third marriage. My father was in his mid fifties, having lived as a bachelor until meeting my mother.

When I was two, my mother died of cancer. Knowing she was going to die, she made arrangements with her older brother, for he and his wife to raise me, with the stipulation that my biological father could visit regularly. We saw him several times a year, usually at my Grandmother's home on holidays. It was always a bit odd to have a jolly gray-haired fellow show up with a bag of candy and a pocketful of stories. He had always been a bit of a rogue, gambling and drinking, which I suppose, is why the decision was made to pass me on to my aunt and uncle.

I was a rebellious child, never feeling like I fit in, but I suppose every teenager feels that way.

I always did well in school academically, but was frequently in trouble for social issues...everything from passing notes in class to making out on a field trip bus. I played the flute in band, and was active in many clubs and organizations. I gladly painted sets for theatre productions, played in the orchestra for musicals and sold concessions during sports events - anything to get out of the house!

I graduated high school, then attended Central Missouri State University for a year, with dreams of earning a journalism degree.

Then I got real stupid!

I decided rather than return home for the summer between my first and second years of college, that I would get married. Big mistake! The marriage only lasted a year, but I managed to lose all of the grants and scholarships that had funded my education. Broke and alone, I moved back into my parents' home. I was only 20 years old, and at the time (right after the dinosaurs died) a female under the age of 21 was not allowed to purchase an automobile in her own name! My parents agreed to house me, but refused to sign for a car, so I had little choice but to get a low paying office job I could walk to. The day I turned 21 I moved out and bought a car - a Volkswagen Beetle - oh how I loved that car!

Working in a cube farm was horrid. I earned a flat salary of $350 a month, but was expected to work unpaid overtime whenever my boss called for it.

I started dating a man who was an x-ray technician. It was a small hospital in a small town so the techs would rotate being on call to cover the evening and night shifts. I'd tag along if we were out on a date when the beeper went off, and I thought it was a great job. That's how dumb I was. :)

I took some emergency medical technician classes, and met more people from the hospital. Started thinking about going to x-ray school myself. Then I cut my finger off. You'll have to read the book for that story - LOL!

When me and my reattached finger recovered, I DID go to x-ray school. I won first place in the Missouri student essay contest and graduated with honors. I passed the ARRT registry test and got a job working in a children's hospital...and hated it. There ain't nothin' more depressing than sick and dying babies.

But the times, they weren't all bad. I met my soulmate, got pregnant, and had a beautiful baby boy. Then when our beautiful baby boy was six weeks old, he got pneumonia. He stopped breathing and went through three code blues. Yup, that strapping young man who is now over six feet tall, died three times.

My biological father passed away a few days before I discovered I was pregnant, and I saw it as a sign that it was meant to be. We were not married until our son was three years old. This did not endear us to my family.

My not-yet husband also disliked working at the children's hospital, so he got a job with the National Weather Service. You know those weather images you see during the news? He did that.

Then, not-yet-husband (we were living in sin!) got transferred to California. Son was one year old, and we packed up our troubles in our old kit bag and loaded up the Conestoga. Not an actual covered wagon (not this lifetime anyway - LOL) but the worlds largest automobile, a 1972 Chrysler station wagon the size of a battleship.

We moved into an apartment in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco with two gay friends who'd moved out there a few months prior. Talk about culture shock! We left frozen Mazoorah in February and landed in the gay Bay area, where everyone complained that the 60-degree weather was unbearably cold. Where grocery shoppers openly toked a joint while perusing the arugula and every illicit drug and activity was available within walking distance.

Good times.

After a few months, we moved down the peninsula to Redwood City.
"Climate best by government test." And it was. It was heaven. Summer days were 80 degrees, nights were 65. Winter meant 60-degree days and 45-degree nights. No blizzards or tornadoes. Only bad thing was our rent going up a couple of hundred dollars every year. By the time we were facing the third year, we figured we could make a house payment for what it was costing. We could, but we had to move 60 miles away to do it.

See, the further away you got from the Bay area, the cheaper houses got. We had to go 60 miles to find something in our budget.

When we started house hunting, we discovered the pitfalls of an unmarried couple trying to get a mortgage, so we decided to "elope". Didn't tell a soul, just got a babysitter for the not-dead-4-year-old, and told everyone we were going to Reno for the Air Races. Which we did, but we slipped into a chapel and got married while we were there. I even bought a wedding dress. We walked from the hotel to the chapel, holding hands, with my ivory lace gown blowing in the wind, and the biggest grins on our faces.

We moved into a little '50's bungalow that was haunted. Not in a bad way, once you got used to it.

The weather in the Central Valley isn't nearly as lovely as Redwood City. Winter meant endless, gray, drizzly days. Fog so thick the Hiway Patrol cars were equipped with giant fog lights and led caravans of commuters through it at slow speed to avoid ninety car pileups. It was not pleasant. I missed the seasons changing. I worried about my family back in Mazoorah, facing a cancer crisis.

Opportunity came for Husband to accept a promotion that would take us back to Kansas City. We left the Conestoga to some friends, towed our VW bus behind a U Haul truck, and came home.

On our first week back, Husband had to go out of town for a business conference. I was left to house-hunt. I told the realtor we wanted a place on a hill with some land. They showed me 85 subdivision homes.

I got a new realtor.

We ended up buying this place. It's a nice little farmhouse, around 80 years old. We sit up on top of the biggest hill in the county, and have great views for 10 or 15 miles around. I love it. We had two more children, a boy and a girl, and the five of us lived here happily together for many years. Kids grow up an move on, but I have some very special memories of having all my kids at home with us.

We celebrated out 25th wedding anniversary on September 21, 2006.

Being born in 1953 makes me a "Baby Boomer". I don't hide my age, hell, I'm proud to have lived through all the crazy things I've done in my life! LOL

We were the first generation to be raised with television. When I woke up before anyone else in the house and turned the television set on, I saw what was called a "test pattern", because there was no such thing as 24-hour broadcasting! The test pattern looked like the picture you see to the right.

My family watched Walter Cronkite deliver the evening news, and never missed the Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday nights. We saw Elvis Presley, The Beatles, and the Rolling Stones, who changed the lyrics of their song, "Let's Spend the Night Together" to "Let's Spend Some Time Together" (although Mick Jagger did roll his eyes while performing the altered version.)

Television was even used in school, as public television broadcast classroom lessons. This is how I learned about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. We were gathered in the school auditorium to learn Spanish, and as the televised lesson ended, an announcer broke in with the news. I was 10 years old. I remember the teachers crying. Even Walter Cronkite removed his eyeglasses, as tears welled up in his eyes when he announced,
"From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official (reading AP flash): President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time - 2:00 Eastern Standard Time, [looking off-camera at a clock] some 38 minutes ago."

Then came the coverage of the Vietnam War.

Vietnam was the first "television war". Every evening broadcast included "body count" - how many soldiers had died that day. It brought the "horror of war" into people's living rooms and eventually inspired revulsion and exhaustion. On February 27, 1968, Walter Cronkite closed a news report by expressing his view that the war was unwinnable, and that the United States would have to find a way out. Some of Lyndon Johnson's aides have recalled that the president watched the broadcast and declared that he knew at that moment he would have to change course. A month later Johnson declined to run for reelection and announced that he was seeking a way out of the war; David Halberstam has written that "it was the first time in American history a war had been declared over by an anchorman."

On July 20, 1969, Commander Neil Armstrong became the first man on the moon, and I was glued to the TV.

I'm still a TV junkie, but I'm running out of room here!

Because we have ten acres here, we grow Christmas trees and pumpkins. Haven't had much luck with the trees, as they take 7 - 10 years to be big enough to sell, and face many obstacles on the way to maturity (much like children - LOL). Plus the insurance costs for having a bunch of strangers running around on your property in the snow, carrying saws and sharp objects is prohibitive.

Pumpkins are much easier. Plant the seeds in the spring and pray! Pray for no black rot, moderate temperatures and the proper amount of rain. Come fall, the fields are golden with fruit and autumn leaves. Little children are running though the grass, laughing and lugging a giant gourd half their own size. It is my favorite time of the year.

Here is a picture of our pumpkin patch. You can click on it for a larger version.

For a while I tried to be a professional photographer. I love the beauty of our area, and took lots and lots of nature photos. Friends told me they loved them and I should try to sell them online. Unfortunately, every human being on the planet who owns a digital camera has friends who tell them their pictures are great and they should try to sell them online. The venture was a flop. But I still have a lot of great pictures to enjoy, many of which I've uploaded to Flickr.

I do sell other things online...odds and ends at eBay, used books at Amazon Marketplace, and custom printed t-shirts and housewares at CafePress.

It's fun and makes me a few extra dollars.

Links to each fabulous shopping experience {snicker}are below.

I sell odds and ends on eBay..sometimes Christmas ornaments, sometimes jigsaw puzzles.


My eBay Auctions

My eBay About Page

I have been a writer since pre-school.

Our family has been on the Internet for almost a decade, going clear back to the early days of USENET bulletin boards. I watched Husband and Son foraging excitedly through this new cyber-jungle, and followed along on their safari.

I learned that I could find people who had similar interests. I learned that I could post messages that other people responded to. I found a place to share my crazy ideas and express myself through my humorous writing.

It made me happy.

Eldest Son started blogging and sent me his link. I was fascinated, and played around with several private blogs, learning the ropes.

Then I officially started Digital Doorway: Enter the Laughter in January 2005.

No one came.

It made me sad.

But I am one determined gal, and I learned about traffic exchanges, started commenting at other blogs, and got myself listed in directories.

Readers came, and life was good. I love blogging. I love reading other people's blogs.

I post at my domain, "Enter the Laughter".

And for my pals on MySpace, I am at Enter the Laughter MySpace

And because I LOVE television, I have a blog and a lens called Tel-LOVE-vision.

All the feeds are shown below. Come on over, door's always open.

Twitter is a fun and fast way to stay in touch with friends. It is a social networking and microblogging service utilizing instant messaging, SMS or a web interface. I love it!

follow Marti_L at http://twitter.com

LinkedIn is an online network of more than 13 million experienced professionals from around the world, representing 150 industries.

You can find Marti HERE

Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them.People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.

Find Marti HERE

Social Networking News and Conglomeration

Find Marti HERE

This is a role I'd rather not have, because it means people I love are in poor health.

My mother-in-law suffers from Parkinson's disease, and is often unable to take care of herself or drive, so I am with her almost every day. She also falls a lot...she suffered 7 fractures in 2008! My caregiving for her comes from love, but I wish she didn't suffer from the disease at all.

In May 2008, my husband suffered a massive stroke which paralyzed his left arm and leg. He was hospitalized for a month. He returned to work and received physical and occupational therapy, and graduated from the wheelchair, to a walker, to a cane, and can now walk unassisted, but still has a bit of a limp. The arm is slower to recover, and has limited mobility.

Unfortunately, he can no longer receive therapy, as his company had massive layoffs in October, 2008 and he is now unemployed. We lost our insurance, so we are not able to afford the therapy. His therapists were great, and gave him many exercises to continue working on into the future, and we're hoping he will find a job with medical coverage. He needs help with a lot of daily tasks and with his therapeutic movements. We are hopeful that someday he will fully recover.

I provide care and comfort to my family members who are suffering from these medical conditions because I want their lives to be as comfortable as possible. It's not always easy, but I do it because I love them.

I've always loved writing. My first published works were in my high school newspaper. When I broke my leg in 2004, life was pretty rough for us, so I decided to lighten things up by writing humorous newspaper columns about the event. Those columns, along with several blog posts became incorporated into a book of humor essays, "Queen Klutz: The Misadventures of a Very Clumsy Woman".

I enjoyed the process of writing the book, so I decided to strive for another goal - to write a novel. "River of Possibilities" was the result - a paranormal mystery story with broad strokes of humor.

I have lenses about both books, shown below.

This is a collection of essays about my misadventures. I write humorously about bad luck, being a klutz, cars that hate me, life, love and family. I've broken both ankles twice, amputated my right index finger and had it reattached. I've had the transmission fall out of a Dodge van while driving down the interstate. My teenage son wrecked my car, resulting in an E-Bay auction for the $2,000 French Fry, which caused the wreck. If I couldn't write about this stuff being funny, I'd be in a rubber room.

The lens has reviews and links relating to the book.

QUEEN KLUTZ LENS

Elizabeth Cunningham watched her parents applaud and smile as she graduated college. Two months later she watched their caskets being lowered into the ground. She is left to wonder - why had their new car plunged into a ravine? Why had her father recently updated his Will, adding a strange postscript that directed her to move to the city? The codicil includes a note saying she will, "find the truth".

Liz discovers nothing she was certain of is true. Her family was not the strong, loyal unit she thought she knew. Both of her best friends have been hiding things from her. A respected businessman is involved in nefarious activities, and planning to destroy her business strategy. Dirty politics, the CIA, and giant corporate interests could end her dreams and put her life and the lives of her friends and family in danger.

Worst of all, her parents' deaths may not have been an accident.

Her beliefs will be assaulted when she has an encounter with a ghost, a mysterious Tarot reading, and discovers her father's connections to the paranormal. She must unravel the mystery of the nightmares that have terrorized her since childhood, horrifying dreams she wakes up screaming from, yet cannot remember. She will meet a handsome new neighbor, but wonders if he is he friend or foe.

The lens has reviews and links relating to the book.

RIVER OF POSSIBILITIES LENS

Are you FUGGDUP? Forgetting, Underestimating, Gratifying, Grieving, Deceiving, Undermining and Procrastinating are some of the most common problems that cause your life to be screwed up. Is this scenario familiar?

You forgot to pay a bill or buy supplies. You underestimated preparation, so you were late and lousy. You gratified yourself to, "feel better" over being late and lousy, so you ate, drank, and spent.

You grieved over being fat, drunk and broke, by saying it's because of that thing that happened long ago. You deceived everyone, including yourself, about why it was late and lousy. You undermined yourself with negative thoughts that you're not smart or good enough. You procrastinated, avoided, put things off until it was too late.

Is it easy to fix? No. Is it possible to fix? YES!

You need to recognize the reasons for your behavior and find some simple, honest solutions. Each chapter of this book will discuss one of the aspects of screwing up. I will help you understand why you screw things up and offer practical ways you can unscrew them.

7 WAYS YOU SCREW UP YOUR LIFE LENS

I worked as a freelancer for Squidoo, as a Citizen Squid. Now I am an alumni!

Squidizens build sample lenses, test new programs in Beta, and answer questions at the Lensmasters Lounge.

I love Squidoo and I loved being a Citizen Squid.

You can see all of my lenses HERE

Peace and joy to all!

This lens was selected Lens of the Day on April 19, 2007! Woo-hoo!