Hi there. So here I
am writing my very first blog post. I’ve
always wanted to start a blog but felt intimidated by it. Not sure why because I really don’t mind
sharing my thoughts with people but a blog just seemed so much more formal. I like to use Facebook because it seems like a
more casual atmosphere to communicate and I can put small thoughts down as they
come rather than writing a whole page’s worth of thoughts. But alas, it seems I have a lot of thoughts
right now so a blog post it is!
So, for starters, let
me tell you a little bit about me. I
will be 42 years old in January so I guess I am officially “Over the Hill”
now. It’s weird because I would swear I
was more like 30 years old but the calendar and my birth certificate seem to
prove otherwise. Anyway, 41 isn’t
bad. As a matter of fact, it’s pretty
great. Life is good.
I was born in Boston, MA all those years ago and I lived in
Acton, MA as a child until I was 5 years old.
My parents then moved to northern Indiana because the cost of living was
so much less there. I hated it. I always wanted to move back to
Massachusetts. My grandparents on my
mom’s side still lived there and so we would visit them every so often and I
yearned to stay there and told myself I would move back there when I grew
up. Indiana was boring and ugly and I
don’t know why…but I just never liked it there.
Well, I never did move back to Boston but I did move. I had met my now ex husband, Chris, on a
blind date when I was 18 years old and we fell in love. He was 2 years older than me and in
college. I had always planned on going
to college but it didn’t end up happening for various reasons. So we dated for 2 years until Chris graduated
from college and then I moved to Virginia Beach, VA with him when he got his
first job out of college as a stock broker.
We lived together for 2 more years and then got married in 1994. We spent our honeymoon in Cape Cod, MA at a
family owned cottage that my great uncle had built and we did go to Boston
while we were there. The stock broker
job didn’t work out so well so he left that job and ended up getting into the
collections industry, first on the credit card side of things and then later
moved into the mortgage collections side and is still in that field today. We lived in Virginia Beach for 5 years, had
our son, Austin, there, and then moved to Chicago. Austin was 10 months old when we moved. We wanted to be closer to family now that we
had a child so that was the reason for the move. Chris was able to transfer with his company
so it worked out well. We got to Chicago
(suburbs) and hated it. We lived there
for 10 months and moved again. This time
it was Indianapolis, IN. We were still
close to family (within 2 hours) so that was nice and we liked Indianapolis a
lot better than Chicago…but it was Indiana.
Boring and ugly. But I ended up
liking it there ok and we bought our first house and had our second child,
Alexia, after living there for 2 years. Then,
Chris lost his job when his company was bought and that’s how we ended up in
Texas. He had a friend who was in Texas
that he used to work with and so he ended up getting a job through that guy and
we moved once again. Alexia was 5 months
old and Austin was 4 years old at the time of that move. We moved to Flower Mound, Tx, (about 20
minutes north of Dallas) July 3, 2000, and have been here ever
since.
I have really liked living in Texas for the past 13
years. I like the warm weather and don’t
miss the harsher winters but it’s not a very pretty place. We don’t have any fall foliage at all. It’s just green and then it’s brown and
bare. There is no in between. We don’t have oceans or mountains and really
don’t even have much to speak of for lakes.
But it’s still a nice place to live.
I have made some great friends here and my town is a nice safe place to
raise a family.
So life was going pretty good. I had no big complaints. Then January 1, 2013, my husband told me out
of the blue that he wanted a divorce.
Our marriage hadn’t been perfect but whose marriage is? We had discussed some problems in our
marriage before but none of those discussions ever involved the idea that a
divorce was being considered or even a passing thought. I never thought of it as being a
possibility. Chris was my best
friend. We did everything together. Our interests weren’t always the same but we
had enough common interests to have fun together often and we chose to spend
our time with each other much more often than outside friends. So when he said he wanted a divorce, I was
shocked to say the least. My heart was
pounding fast, my stomach in knots and my head spinning. I had no idea where this came from and I
literally thought that my husband must have lost his mind. He needed help. He needed to see a doctor. My mom and I even discussed what medicine he
might be taking and how maybe that was affecting him mentally. It just didn’t make sense. He said we weren’t compatible. What?
After 23 years together, we were suddenly not compatible? What does that even mean? Well, long story short, he wasn’t backing
down. He didn’t want to go to counseling
and his mind was made up. He had the
papers drawn up 3 days later. There was
no time to discuss, no time to adjust.
It was happening. So I rode that
awful rollercoaster for the next 8 months until the divorce was final on August
29, 2013. I will write more about the
divorce another time but for now, I will just say that although it wasn’t what
I wanted at the time, it has turned out to be one of the greatest gifts I’ve
ever been given. There have been so many
blessings that have come from it and through it that I wouldn’t change any of
it now. As my friend, Tom Ryan, always
says, “I am right where I am suppose to be.”
And I really believe that.
So now I live in a little rental house, still in Flower
Mound, Tx with my two kids who are now teenagers, 17 and 13 years old and my
two miniature schnauzers, Ciara and Maui.
I love my little house. It has a
great backyard full of trees and is right next to the walking trail that is
very pretty to walk along. It feels much
more private than my last house and I like that. My work friends bought me a hammock for a
house warming gift after hearing me talk about wanting one and it has been the
best gift. I am in it nearly every day. As a matter of fact, I’m in it right
now. It is so relaxing and it is located
at the back of my yard so it feels private even when the kids are home. It’s a very nice getaway after a long day at
work.
Speaking of work, I haven’t told you what I do. I am a computer technician for the local
school district. I am primarily assigned
to two campuses and so it is my job to be sure all the technology is properly
working on those two campuses. But while
those are my primary campuses, I can be pulled to help any other campus in the
district and during the summer we work in groups and are all over the place
setting things up for the next school year.
Previously, I have been an assistant branch manager at different banks
in the various places we’ve lived and after that I had operated my own home
daycare business for 7 years.
So, that’s a little bit, or a lot, about me. Now that the introductions are done, I look
forward to writing about all my adventures and sharing my thoughts. Stay tuned.
