My Story

I am really enjoying BlogLovin.  I can't even tell you how I've discovered some of the great blogs I've discovered, but one of them has inspired today's post.  The author, Jenni, challenged her fellow bloggers to post every day in May.

Challenge accepted!  

Technically, this post should have gone up yesterday, but I already had A Doggy Walk ready to go.  It felt time sensitive, even though it probably wasn't, so I decided I'd play catch up on the challenge.  Expect two posts today.   

Here goes...my life in 250 words or less. 

I am the oldest of five children.  Two brothers, two sisters.  We grew up in a three bedroom ranch on a back country road surrounded by few neighbors and lots of trees.  The ten acres my dad had bought off my great-grandpa back in the early 70s butted up against State Land.  To say we spent a fair amount of time in the woods and skirting the cattail-ringed ponds would be a gross understatement.  

My parents divorced when I was ten.  Unlike most children of divorce back in those days, we lived with our dad.  Mom moved to what we thought was the big city at that time, but in reality turned out to a be a slightly larger town than the one near our house.  Despite the uncertainty and changes that come with divorce, I think our childhood was actually pretty stable.  We had a center.  Our weekends and summers might have introduced us to new towns and new kids, but we always had our home to come back to when the visits ended.  

This home not only had my dad, but my step-mom, too.  She was the one to introduce me to historical romance novels, pop music, and fashion.  I'm not sure the fashion lessons worked.  In fact, I'm sure my sister would say they had not.  Be that as it may, my step-mom (I called her mom, mind you, and am using step-mom only for clarity's sake) was a huge influence on the person I am today.  She was strong-willed, independent, loving, and full of life.  I like to think I picked up a few of those traits during those very impressionable years.  I know was deeply affected by her never-wavering support of my reading and writing habits. 

As a teenager I also happened to meet and fall in love a boy named Ken.  Six years later were married, buying a house in Flint, and spending our weekends with the same small group of friends.  After high school, we both attended and graduated from the same two-year college.  We worked jobs we loved and jobs we hated before ending up in our current positions at the university.  It was only then that we decided to start our family.  

I was twenty-four when I had my first baby, a boy with a surprising amount of dark brown hair. Going back to work after he entered our lives was one of the hardest things I've ever done.  I so wanted to stay home with him and be a full-time mommy.  The only problem was that I didn't want to raise him in Flint and it would take two incomes to get out of the city and back to our country roots.

It wasn't long after the arrival of our second baby - another boy with a thatch of sandy brown hair - that we could afford to buy some acreage in my old hometown.  By the time this latest addition to the family was a year old, we were ready to move into the two-story Cape Cod my husband had helped build.  We spent a lot of time apart that year - him at the house, me at home in Flint with the two boys.  It was difficult, but well worth the effort. 

It's been twelve years and we're living in the same house.  During those twelve years I've managed to work a full-time job, complete both my Bachelors and Masters programs, and even self-published a paranormal romance novel.  I've made new friends, lost people close to me, and learned how to live with disappointment. Life has not always been easy, but it has been bearable because of the people in it.  Without my husband, my boys, our friends and family, life would not be nearly so good as it is. 

That's more than double the word count needed!  Oh, well.