First Husband/Mandy the dog /new baby

Well, this is a weird one. Old memories going through the photo albums, and remembering my early years has teared me up when I didn't give a thought to things back then.. High School sweetheart and I broke up, as he dropped out and went to work (later got his GED) and it kind of ruined our relationship, because he was working nights and I was in school during the day.

Graduation came, and my dad gave me the option of going to work or getting out on my own. (Back in the day, the son of the family got the college education - the thought AAAARRRGGHH was that the females would find a man to take care of her and have babies - help me Gloria Steinem!) Funny how my brother, who majored in History at UConn never got the "teacher job" he said he strived for, barely graduated, works low level factory jobs, became an alcoholic and STILL works low paying loser wages. He moved to Vermont ten years ago with his then girlfriend to live the hippie farm life, they broke up, their house was foreclosed, and he continues, at the age of 58, to call my mother of 91 and cry to her about how hard his life is and needs money. My sister gained Power of Attorney after my brother pretty much bilked my mother of over $100,000 in varying installments. And my mother, at her ripe old age, continues to ask my sister to send my brother money because he needs it. She won't do it, thank God - my brother hasn't come to visit my mother in over 10 years. Didn't come down for her 80th, 85th, or 90th birthday parties - what a great guy, huh? But I digress.

I took a job prior to graduation,starting work right after graduation for the City of New Haven, and community college at night, eventually earning my Associates Degree in Accounting. Once I earned my degree, I went to work as a paraprofessional at a CPA firm and worked my way up to office manager, and senior paraprofessional.




I moved out of the house, got an apartment, but I needed a little more dinero to make ends meet. I worked some nights at a dance club as a waitress, had my share of dates, briefly engaged to a nice Jewish boy who, although his family approved of me, insisted that I convert to Judaism. I was against it, agreed though to raise the kids (if any) as Jewish, that wasn't enough, so we broke off the engagement. Then met Dominic, a musician, at my second job, who told me he recently broke up with his girlfriend Terry and asked me out to breakfast after the gig. I did, we got along until he called me one night and asked if I was working, and said we'd go to breakfast afterward. Guess what??? He showed up with Terry!!! That ended that. I did, however, become good friends with Mike, the lead guitarist in the band, and still stay in touch (although not as much, as his wife is very sick with MS.


Met husband #1 through my soon to be brother in law (my sister's fiance) , who worked with him.

This was sometime in '76. His name was Domenic. Seemed nice enough, I kind of liked his "Grizzly Adams" looks, and we hooked up for a date.

Date went well, and we seemed to hit it off. I soon met his family, TOTALLY old school Italian, a culture I was not really familiar with being of Polish descent, although my high school sweetheart 's family was right off the boat and I somewhat had some education. Sunday dinner was ALWAYS at his parent's house, and I was embraced by them, and became good friends with his mother "Tete"real name Annette (who I could discuss things with her that I NEVER could with my own mother, but was totally comfortable with her) and his younger sister, Liz, who became like a sister to me.

We enjoyed our dating time but a few things disturbed me (now I would have known better),,, He asked me a lot about my former boyfriends, and wanted to me to destroy pictures of my high school sweetheart, a few guys who were friends and attended charity functions with me, and ALL the pictures of my former fiance, our trip to Puerto RIco, etc.. He said he burned all of his ex girlfriend Cheryl's picsl I was "allowed" to keep pics of only me during these times, but at that time, I figured it was just the old Italian way of life, and I accepted it. Too bad we didn't have computers then that I could have saved the pics to..... they're gone forever.

Polish people (me) tend to be stoic somewhat. Things just rolled off me and what I wanted to say back then, nobody heard. There was no internet, no way to express my feelings to anyone but my best friend, Sam, who came from a similar descent - Russian. The feeling back then in our small town was that you didn't "Go outside" your descent - NEVER MIND religion... but the rebellious 70's were upon us. I basically kept my feelings to myself, even when I thought something was wrong, because I was raised to be strong - which I was - or thought I was. We became engaged the following fall, during dinner, with his entire family present - a total surprise!


During the summer of our relationship, prior to the engagement, Dom and his best friend Gary went to California to visit Gary's brother, and then on to Vegas for a vacation about a year before our wedding.. When they got back, I was looking through Dom's pics and saw one of a funny sign that said "Sherri's Dude Ranch". When I asked him what it was, he said it was one of the many whore houses along the route they were driving and he just took a pic of it. I believed him - until Gary's girlfriend, who obviously had a more "open" and less serious relationship with Gary, told me that Dom and Gary went there to pay for blow jobs!!!! I confronted him and was LIVID and and told him it was over. He tried to explain his way away by saying it was just a "guy thing" that they wanted to try. I was cold as ice for the next couple of weeks, and he tried his hardest to "get me back". Well, I finally caved, only to find a "Hello" type greeting card from a girl from California who thanked him for their date to see Star Wars #1 (who was supposedly on vacation with her mother) and hoped to hear back from him. It was off again.



Again, I digress... sorry, but these memories come back as I look through these photo albums that I haven't visited in years, and obviously suppressed the memories and lights that should have gone off in my brain! But, I was young, I was naive, and always wanted to believe that most people were good.

The wedding was set for the following May and was beautiful and we had a great honeymoon at Walt Disney World ('78) when Epcot was just under construction.



This is one of the few pictures I have of our wedding - I would not destroy any photos of my mom or dad, regardless of the situation.

We went out to eat almost every Saturday night almost with my MIL, FIL, SIL and BIL at an upscale restaurant, with FIL always picking up the bill. We also loved to entertain our friends at home - I LOVED to cook and entertain!


While settling into our apartment after the wedding, it was a first floor apartment of a three family partly owned by Dom's boss, and we got a great deal on the rent. I was going through a box of assorted stuff of Dom's to either toss or save, and found a letter written to him by Sharon, the married secretary at the place he worked. It was obviously a refusal on her part to meet up with him for some "fun", and that she was sorry, and that while she found him attractive, could never do anything to hurt her husband, Roger, and hoped that he understood. I confronted him with it, and he said it was LONG before we met. Somehow I thought it a lie, even though it didn't have a date on it - but he saved it, for whatever reason. We argued about this on and off and I threw it in the trash, hoping he was telling me the truth.



About a month into our marriage, I started to experience excruciating pain on my lower abdominal right side, especially during sex, (sorry), I went to my GYN and it was discovered that the adhesions from my appendectomy had wrapped so badly arond my ovary and an ovarian cyst that it was not repairable, and the whole ovary had to come out. My GYN said that I also had a cyst on my left ovary, but was not effected yet by the adhesions. His suggestion was that if we wanted to start a family, we should as soon as I was healed.

I relayed the message to Dom and he was all for it, and by October I was pregnant with David. We were both really happy that it worked!



I was so joyous in my pregnancy - I couldn't wait for my child to be born, and Dom seemed to feel the same way. When I suffered morning sickness, he held my head while I barfed my brains out.

Again, I digress... sorry.


Somewhere in my first trimester, Dom wanted a dog, and our landlord allowed pets. We went to the pound, and there was this sweet little yellow lab mix that didn't make a sound compared to the other dogs there. She just came to the front of the cage and put her paw out, stroking both of us. That was it! Mandy was ours!



We got her home and made her first vet appointment. She was about 2 months old, and we had her spayed. She was a challenge to house break, but finally got the hang of it. It was my job to walk her in the morning, because Dom had to be at work before me, and our apartment was conveniently located almost directly across the street from the accounting firm I worked for. Things changed in my first trimester and I would start gagging at the sight of Mandy doing her business, so Dom had to wake up earlier to do the job - he wasn't happy about it.

Mandy turned out to be a wonderful dog. She loved other dogs, loved people, loved company - she was so sweet and perfect. She loved Lady,my future sister and brother in law's dog, who was about the same age, and Tammy, my mother in law's dog.... she got so spoiled going to grandma's on Sunday for dinner, that all we had to say was "Ya wanna go to Grandma's?" and she'd be barking at the door and hopped right into the car.

Lady and Mandy:



Mandy and Tammy

One of her favorite things to do was play fetch with a tennis ball - and we could do this in the apartment, because our large dining room flowed right into a big living room.

I was a little concerned about once David was born and how she would react to him, but she loved him. During David's 3:00 a.m. feedings, Mandy awoke with me, and when I settled into the recliner to give him his bottle, she would sit beside us and just lick his feet and legs.

I can't say the same for Dom. As much as he seemed thrilled that he was a father, when he got home from work and I needed to start dinner, all he did was lay David next to him on the couch and channel flip. Never gave a bottle, never changed a diaper - obviously this was my job, and my job alone.

This was pretty much his idea of parenting.


When company came to see the new baby, I'd always go to the door and call Mandy and ask her to show our company to her new brother. She proudly went right to his room (if he was sleeping) and would sit and wag her tail that she was so proud of him! She slept under his crib every night, and if I didn't hear him at whatever time of night yelling for a feeding, she came to get me and licked my face till I woke up, and then sat with us, licking his feet and legs till he finished his bottle.


When David started crawling, Mandy followed him everywhere to make sure he was safe. He'd lay on top of her, pull her hair, her ears, and although she'd get "snarly face", she NEVER snapped at him. She took it because she loved him.








When David was around six months old, Dom started putting in an awful amount of overtime, due to inventory. One Friday night, he called to say they were doing inventory and the boss was taking them all out when they finished. Well, I think it was around 2:00 a.m. when he finally came home. I scared the crap out of him when I whipped out of bed and asked him where the f*ck he'd been. He said he told me the boss took them out. He was not himself. I didn't know much about cocaine, but learned later that he was high on coke. I know, I digress once again, but as the memories flow back, I'm tellin' em. I told him I would NOT tolerate drug use, and if he continued, I would leave. I didn't understand his fixation with it, as he was always USELESS the next day, usually in bed all day with a wicked sinus headache and feeling just plain horrible.


The following Sunday, he took a shower (remember we always went to his parent's for Sunday dinner) and said he had to go finish a couple of inventory things, and would be home in a couple of hours. I thought it was odd that he would take a shower if he were counting dirty parts in dirty part bins, but what did I know? When he wasn't home in a "couple of hours" I tried to call him at work, but there was no answer. I called Lisa, a college student who lived next door to us and baby sat for David frequently, to see if she could come over while I ran out for maybe an hour. She came right over. I hopped in the car and drove the two miles to his place of employment. Yep, his car was there, and so was the new secretary, Kathy's car!! Note: Kathy was engaged to her boyfriend Billy. The front door was locked and I kicked and kicked and kicked till I thought it was going to break. Dom showed up at the door after about 20 minutes, looking disheveled and not quite tucked in, if ya know what I mean. I busted in the door, and said "where is she?" He tried to hold me back, pulling me by my pocketbook strap, which broke. I started running up to the conference room upstairs, where I was met by Kathy buttoning her blouse and shaking like a leaf. After confronting her and asking her to call Billy to come down, she begged me to PLEASE not do that, it's not what I think. Really??? I demanded Dom to drop his pants, where he had fresh rug burns on his knees. I informed him that when he got home, all of his belongings would be out in the driveway, I was calling his parents to expect him, and I told Kathy that I'd be placing a call to her parents as well.

When I got home, I threw all of his clothes out in the driveway, then called his dad to relay what had conspired. I then called Kathy's dad and related the whole story to him, told him his daughter was nothing but a whore, and that he should have a talk with her and Billy.


When Dom came home, I deadbolted and chained the door and told him to go to his parent's house, it was OVER - and that they knew everything. Well, Dom's dad had a long talk with him and basically told him the typical Italian cheater mantra - do what you gotta do, but don't hurt your wife. He was out of the house for three weeks before I would even talk to him. Every time he called, I just hung up on him. I was totally prepared to divorce him and pack up myself and David, and go back to my mother's and father's house.

Well, Dom's dad finally arranged a family meeting, and pretty much told Dom he would not tolerate his behavior. I agreed to let him come home, David was asking for da-da and it broke my heart. Somehow, Lord knows where I got the strength, we got through this. There was a company function not soon after this where I was invited (it was a dinner) and Kathy had the balls to show up. I met up with her in the ladies room at one point, where she was snorting coke right on the vanity and told her if she EVER laid a hand on my husband again, I would FIND Billy and tell him just what a whore she was. Dom and I eventually patched things up, and started to look for a house. When David turned a year old, we finally found a nice little 50's style ranch in a nice neighborhood, in our price range, with a nice big fully fenced in back yard and a 24" above ground pool to boot.
Mandy LOVED her yard, being leash free, and was so happy to go out any time she wanted. When I had David outside with me, she watched him like a hawk. I bought one of those swimmy seats for him so that we could enjoy the pool together, and she would not leave the deck until we came out of the pool.

When David was about 4, we went to Caldor one night, and there was a family with a box of black, chocolate, and yellow lab puppies, free to good homes. David immediately picked up the Chocolate Lab, and said "oh mommy please can we have him for a friend for Mandy?" He was loaded with fleas, I folded, bought flea bath and we walked out of Caldor with him. I figured what's one more? We had enough room, the big back yard, and thought Mandy would love to have a canine companion of her own.



Things did not go well when we got home. Mandy was so happy and immediately assumed "mommy roll" with her new pup. First words out of Dom's mouth were "he's not staying", at which point David became hysterical. I said we'll talk about this out of David's presence. I gave him a flea bath first off, because I didn't want to deal with that issue.


Fortunately, my mother in law was a HUGE dog lover and shamed her son into keeping the pup, who David named Carlo - I have no idea where he thought of that name!






Mandy and Carlo became inseparable, playing together till they dropped. They even slept together at night, side by side in the kitchen.



Carlo was turning into quite a handsome dog by the summer....


By the spring of '84, Carlo was a very handsome "man" and David truly loved him, as he did Mandy.

At some point after Carlo turned a year, Carlo KNEW that Dom hated him and Dom demanded we get rid of him, because he interfered in a play session between Mandy and Carlo with his leg, because he felt that Mandy was being hurt - she wasn't - they were just playing, and Carlo bit Dom right on the leg (good doggie!) Mandy wanted to continue to play, but Dom punished Carlo by putting Mandy in the house and making Carlo stay out. He whined on one side of the door, Mandy on the other side. I couldn't understand how he could be so heartless, but there was no arguing it - he said if we didn't get rid of him, HE would leave - I should have let him if I knew what as to come!

David's heart was broken, and so was mine. We put an ad in the paper for a free Chocolate Lab, and a nice couple who were Yale students from Iowa adopted him. Mandy was devastated as well as I was.

This ends part 1 - part 2's gonna be a doozie compared to this one!!