Steve, she was a friend of mine

January 1998, i spent my 25th birthday in Las Vegas with a bunch of friends and family and the next day was married at the Candle Light Wedding Chapel to Matt Wirman. An impulsive move, as always, it was my crazy living n LA days. What does that have to do with this trip and my dog? Getting to that. about a month and a half after our wedding, just as we were settling into married life, as much as you can when living the lifestyle we were in LA, Matthew's father died of a heart attack. it sent matt into a bedridden depression. i could write a book about that whole situation. his dad had been a pathologist, had a stroke and almost died while matt was in high school, that took its toll then etc........ so, my husband depressed and in bed, i went about my days and was at my manager Susanna's house for my weekly meeting. she worked out of an office at her beautiful home. her husband kurt was rob zombie's head sound guy and did sound engineering for lots of rock acts, so it was a fun place to be. long story short, she was not only my manager at this point, but a good friend, and she knew what was going on with matt. her husky Willy had just been hit by a car and died and kurt bought her a new puppy, a siberian husky named Lilly. kurt and susanna also had a huge yellow lab named Cutter. Well, they never had Cutter fixed and before lilly made it to the vet for surgery, cutter got busy one afternoon. Then on May 1, 1998, 6 of the most beautiful little creatures came into this world. little yellow puff balls with bright blue eyes. susanna and i thought it would be good to give matt a dog. something positive to put his energies and love into. get him out of his depression. the one boy pup was promised to someone else, so we took a girl pup and i named her Steve. and that is a story for another post. a story from college. but it is Steve, not Stevie or Stevie Nicks. Just Steve, my dog. and she was the best dog in the whole world. i wish i had pics on my computer of those early days, but they are all at home on film. but we started raising our little pooch with the fuzzy paws and blue eyes and pink tongue. she slept with us and and went everywhere with me. auditions, the store, shopping with my friends, anywhere i could take her. And the dog beach in Ventura county. this beach is right at the county line sign above malibu on the PCH. it is hidden, and you take this ancient staircase made of concrete down a cliff to get to it. but you can take your dog and let her run and swim and spend the day secluded and hang out with friends or by yourself and be. and we took steve there a lot her first year and a half of life and she loved it. i think it was my friends magan and matt who first found the beach to take their dog Bea.

well, it had been a long time since i had been there. i have visited LA many times over the years since i moved, but haven't gone up to the dog beach. memories are funny things after awhile they don't seem real anymore and you think they are something you read about or someone elses's life. walking up to the entrance of that staircase was like a time capsule cracking wide open. a life so long ago, it doesn't seem like mine. but it was mine, it is mine, and i came here to put my dog to rest, to put my past to rest, to share it with my sons and make some sort peace with it all.

The pics are of the beach and the total hour we spent there. enough to soak up some sun, put my dog in the ocean and try to remember the person that i was. the one who wasn't afraid to literally drive over mountains in the snow, who was fearless and didn't let anything stop her, who was crazy and nuts, but didn't let it stop her. the girl who ran on that beach with her puppy, would she have ever believed this is where she would end up?

Well this is where i am. and i am going forward. johnhenry and atticus loved the beach. johnhenry and talked at length about steve. johnhenry didn't know life without steve. he kept trying to tell me he remembered coming there. i told him that would be difficult since he hadn't been born yet, but who am i to say, maybe an earlier life or inutero memories? atticus found a bunch of great sticks to be wands. he thinks he is all the Harry Potter characters wrapped in to one and even though i have bought countless official Harry Potter wands, Atticus only likes wands he makes himself. kids are cool that way, you buy them all this stuff and they just want an old stick.

Goodbye Steve. You are still a friend of mine.