Hi. I'm Denise.

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.