Cat's Litterbox

Steve Aimee & Amy Beckie Me and Scott Kate Jess/Shannon/Krissy Lndsay

My Friends
I want to pay tribute to some of my really good friends. Some of you know them and some of you don't. I think anyone that knows me can say that friendship is something that really means a lot to me. I've been through enough ups and downs in my 29 years to know that when you have friends you're blessed.

While in college at EMU I joined a coed honors fraternity named Phi Sigma Pi. I loved being apart of an organization and I made friends very quickly. My big brother's name was Steve Shiner and he was (and to this day still is) the craziest person that I'd ever met. Steve and I were paired up at my first rush date and he had ducktape on his Adidas sandal. I picked his nasty shoe at random and instantly a friendship blossomed. Steve ended up being my big brother and we were always together. I also became really good friends with my initiate historian, Scott Mayer. Scott was older and wiser and always cracked me up. He took the history of the fraternity as seriously as I did and we instantly became friends. Scott was probably the person in the fraternity that I cared the most about. I became Initiate Advisor and held the position for a year and then Scott nominated me (much to my and everyone else's surprise) for President of the chapter. I was elected and served for two terms. I would have NEVER thought I could have done the job but Scott believed in me and with his help I led the chapter to a great place. Kate was also a member of PSP but transferred to EMU from CMU. I didn't like her very much at first, but after a while I began to really enjoy her friendship. Kate was also a member of Alpha Gamma Delta sorority while at CMU and she introduced me to Shauna, the recruitment chair for the AGD chapter at Eastern.

I started dating my ex-husband when I was 15 and we were together for 10 years before getting married and after a year he decided that he didn't want to be married anymore. He was the person I trusted more than anyone else and in the end he screwed me over like no other. He was very against me joining a sorority and often would say, "You're paying for your friends." After going through the worse time in my life, the amount of money paid to belong to my sorority is insignificant compared to the benefits of having people there for me through the darkest of days. There's no amount that can be placed on the heads of the people I call my friends and they're priceless. So the minor amount that I paid in dues is nothing compared to the rewards I've received from having them in my life.

I became suddenly single after being with someone for more than 10 years. To say that things were a little weird and strange is a HUGE understatement. My mom was there for me as a mother should and came over and held me while I cried and grieved the loss of my marriage. I was living alone, and at the time I was miserabe. I soon came to enjoy being alone and making my own schedule and doing what I wanted to do. I was fortunate to have some very good friends help keep me busy and be there to share in my trials and tribulations as I entered the unknown world of dating. Aimee, Amy, Beckie, Jess, Krissy, and Shannon were there for me and always made sure a smile was on my face. It was hard to go to work after an evening with the ladies, but they always had my best interest at heart and did all that they could to make me smile and grow.

I joined many online dating sites, e-harmony.com, yahoo personals, match.com, and love.com. After a while meeting people online became a scary thing and I decided to give it a rest. I was seeing a guy who was much younger than I was and I knew that he wasn't the person that I'd be marrying, but he was a lot of fun to be with. I was very open about my feelings for him and told him honestly that when the right guy came along I would have to go with my instincts. Well... about a month into my relationship with him I got a set of matches from love.com. Usually when I would get matches, I'd look and see who was on there, if someone was interesting I would check out their profile, and usually NOTHING came of it. I got the matches, looked at them and there was the cutest guy as a match. His profile header was "Are You Looking For Your Prince?" I sent him a wink and said, "I'm looking for a prince. You've got a great smile." Within a week I got an e-mail back from him and we started e-mailing back and forth. We e-mailed for about a month and then we decided to meet. Our first date was Saturday, March 6, 2004 and we met at 4:00 and went to 4:30 mass together. It was so awesome that he was Catholic and wanted to celebrate his faith with me! We then went to the grocery store and came back to his apartment and made dinner together. We've been together since!

Steve is the best thing that's ever happened to me. Beckie and I lived together in 1021 #3 while I was starting my romance with Steve and she is the only person that can really appreciate all that I've been through and all that Steve means to me. Steve is an environmental engineer and works for Federal-Mogual corportation. He got his BS from the University of Dayton and then earned his MS in Environmental Management from the University of Findlay. Steve's from Ohio and came to Michigan on a promotion from Dayton. He was married and unfortunately, his ex-wife was about as loving as my ex-husband. Being divorced is the one thing that I love about him because he can understand my feelings about marriage and relationships and share the same passion and emotion as I do. He and his ex never lived together and when they married in the Catholic church, she decided that she didn't want to be married anymore. When he took the promotion and moved to Michigan, she said she was going to come too and never did.

Lindsay is another good friend of mine. If you're ever down and want to go out and have a great time, Lindsay is the girl to call. She's absolutely hilarious, always makes me laugh, and can tear up a dancefloor like no one else!!

Well that's enough for now. I'm going to include some pictures on here to that everyone can see who these people are that I have been talking about!!

Have a great night!
C@