Susan Prentice:  

Life's rarely prefect, but even the imperfections add zest. Like you, I've had an abundance of ups & downs, tons of wild, weird & wonderful adventures & perhaps a smattering of perfect days. And God knows, I'm not done. These days I have a little internet business like everyone else on the planet & it keeps me blissfully busy. I just opened my 4th store, which has given me tons of new things to do and learn. Anyhow, I spent the first 15+ years after college as a newspaper reporter (my beloved Citizen-Journal), freelance writer, ghost author of 5 books & private investigator with my own agency. (PI for Prentice Investigations worked out so well on the logo! Thanks Daddy!) I ultimately sold my agency, but I continue to write as opportunities present. While I enjoyed my work with the Columbus Literacy Council and Meals on Wheels, I spent most days resting on my dwindling, moldy laurels. In the mid-'90s I lost both parents in less than a year, so I decided it was time to grow up, to take stock of my self-involved complacence & do something that mattered. I started teaching elementary school in the inner city, including the infamous Uzi Alley, and I ended up learning so much from children whose home lives few of us could fathom. I also worked part time as a fitness trainer. Between the two jobs, that's a lot of exercise! A severe spinal cord injury interrupted things for awhile, including my marriage, but everything in life has its day. After 2 neck surgeries, doctors predicted I'd be paralyzed from the neck down at worst, wheelchair-bound at best. But I've always had a real aversion to people telling me I "can't" do something, so I fought as hard as I could, learned to walk again, and refused to believe the docs. For now, for RIGHT now, I can do most everything I did before, if a bit more slowly, a bit more clumsily. (And let's face facts, folks - I was never exactly Miss Graceful, to start!) I can't walk the dog EVERY day, but every other day is just fine with me. And with her! I may not turn a great cartwheel, but hey, I was never any good at those anyway. While I initially lost 90% of spinal cord function, the doctors were able to restore me to a level of quadriparesis rather than the projected quadriplegia, so how could I be anything bu...Expand for more