Abbynormal Beginnings---

Written in 2006

I first remember being an abbynormal thinker when I was in my mid teen years. For some reason I did not think like everyone else. I did not like material things like your “normal” teen. At about this time I was exposed to the great sport of backpacking. I was so in love with it that I wanted to be in that type of environment all the time. First I started sleeping on top of the blankets and in the wrong direction on my bed. Then I started sleeping in my sleeping bag on top of my bed and if that was not enough to drive my “normal” mother crazy, I started sleeping out on the back patio. I became obsessed with the outdoors. One of my goals was to have everything I own fit in a single trunk and to one day live in a one-room cabin.

Then something happened, I got married! I moved away to California with my new husband and my backpack. My abbynormal behavior infected my husband and soon we had our backpacking tent set up in our master bedroom for sleeping. As my family grew, I knew that my simple way of life would have to allow for the “extras” that a family needs. Yet I never wavered from my way of thinking. Anything new meant getting rid of something old. I “tried” to teach my children the art of living simple. How was it possible for someone like me who was so abbynormal to have normal pack rat kids? I think it drove us all crazy!

Five children, three grandbabies, and many years later I find that I am still an abbynormal thinker. Like what started as a normal wood gathering in the mountains for firewood, turns abbynormal when I spy some long slender poles. My mind says tee-pee out back. Then, I think, tee-pee bed, in my room! My brain reasons that I am alone and I can sleep on what ever I want to. Why not? Therefore, I bring home around a dozen poles on top of my 15-passenger van… Doesn’t everyone want to own a 15-passenger van? Anyway, I proceed to de-bark, sand and finish the logs myself, then cut them to the right length to fit my room. Then with the help of a very patient friend, we assembled the “work of art”. We raised the logs, put in the custom 7ft round mattress, put on the custom tee-pee cover, which included skunk, coyote, goat, and weasel skins. Then we sat inside with our legs crossed and had a good laugh! The things that normal people have to put up with!

My bed seems to be quite the show and tell for my kids whenever they have company. When my oldest granddaughter Awbrey, then almost four, (She is now 14!)came over for the first time to see my bed, I climbed inside and used some matches to make smoke come out of the top. She said “grandma your bed is cool”. Nothing like a little complement to help encourage me in my already abbynormal behavior. Maybe my abbynormal gene skipped a generation!....(Photo is last picture taken before moving from LV. The teen-aged boy of the people who bought my house wanted it, so it stayed. It was the most comfortable bed I ever had.)