: About Me

Wow, there is no ticker on the bottom of this so I guess I could go on and on without penalty. On second thought, that would give me nothing to write about anywhere else so I guess I'll keep it as brief as possible.

So here they are, just the facts for anyone who cares to read them. I was born on the Cape (to anyone not from New England, that would be Cape Cod, or the little flexing arm that sticks out over there on the east coast of the US). I really can never remember the town. Sometimes I say Bourne, sometimes Barnstable. I know one of those is the county and one the town, but I couldn't swear to which was which in court. I was adopted at the ripe old age of one month, giving me gobs of memories and information about my birthparents. About all I know is that I am definitely half Irish. This is probably a good thing because my adopted family is Irish, so I fit right in, at least when we drink.

I was raised in the suburban dream right smack dab between Boston and Providence. My childhood was pretty much uneventful. I had a younger sister and brother. We played, we fought, torture occasionally happened. Of course the definition of that word is up for debate at even the highest levels.

I can't honestly say what I really wanted for myself growing up. I was berated regularly by family to decide on a vocation. At the age of five I became sick of attempting to think of truly fun things to do with the rest of my life and decided that doctor was an answer everyone would be happy with. You see my previous attempts at starting down the career path to Ice Cream Taster and Donut Inspector were just met with patronizing laughter and I hated that. To my dismay I later learned that these were actually jobs. Damn my family.

Indecision was not something the family in general looked kindly upon. Having decided that doctor was a safe bet, I had locked myself into a rewarding career in the medical field. Luckily everyone agreed that was a nice safe job to decide on and I was commended for my level-headedness. The world would always need doctors. Luckily I was intensely interested in syringes. I don't know why. Needles never bothered me, but even without the needle, the actual concept and sight of a syringe fascinated me. Needless to say physics and engineering were never quite my calling.

Schoolwork was never an issue for me. A teacher in kindergarten had squealed to my parents that I was a bright child. From then on only A's and B's were acceptable grades. Luckily I tested well and had an amazingly easy time with writing assignments, so this was not a difficult achievement. I am not claiming any rights on genius or anything like that. Please note the wording "tested well". I could pass most tests without even reviewing the material. If you just look at the way they are written, most answer themselves. As for the writing part, I had a large vocabulary. Somehow teachers would morph this into me knowing what I was talking about.

Socially I was somewhere in the middle. I was not popular. I was not really a geek. I was somewhere in between. I was pretty shy and not very sure of myself so I didn't have too many close friends. The group that I mingled had minor dealings at both ends of the social spectrum. I was also fat. Ok, at least really chubby. I could wear the fattest clothes at the stores for skinny people or the skinniest clothes at the stores for fat people. Neither set really ever fit. I think that may have had something to do with my social status.

At the age of thirteen I learned the quantity of schooling required to be a doctor and the hours required following school. I greatly enjoyed sleeping and was very difficult to wake up. It was necessary to completely strip my bed to get me to leave it and no alarm clock invented at the time would work on me. The concept of a beeper waking me up from a deep sleep was hilarious. For this reason I made the switch from doctor to nurse. I kept the field the same, just slightly downgraded myself. My family was marginally accepting of this. Eventually they gave in, somebody had the novel idea that the world would always need nurses.

After high school I went to the college my parents had chosen for me. They were paying so they had the majority of the say. They decided a small school close to home would be best. I was seventeen and on my own, well at least kind of. I at least had the illusion of being on my own. This illusion was burst when I got a minor ankle infection that took me to the ER at 2 am and the admitting clerk called my dad for permission to treat me. Technically speaking I was still a minor. I also had to beg people to buy me cigarettes. But this was only for the first semester. Luckily somebody was usually going to the store anyway.

I partied in college and continued on automatic pilot through my classes. Now there are small colleges and then there was my college. There was frequent beer consumption and ingestion of the occasional illicit substance. By the standards of most other college students, that's about the only claim I have to the party life. But hey, mom and dad picked the school, what do you expect.

After college I began my nursing career. I can go into pages on this later, but this is my bio and its already too long. I worked in Portland, Maine for almost a year and then began what was supposed to be a whirlwind tour of the US as a travel nurse. I started with six months actually living in Boston and then planned my way to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Unfortunately I dated my calendar wrong and ended up in Virginia for the event. That is where I met my husband. That is also the extent of my whirlwind US tour.

I married into the Army. I will be going into detail on this somewhere else. I continued to work. My husband went to Kuwait in 2004. Three months after his return I was knocked up. Nine months later I had my son. Five months later we moved to Hawaii. Eight months later I was knocked up again. Nine months later I had my daughter. Within that extremely brief outline I learned all about single parenthood and the trials and tribulations of attempting to work twelve hour shifts with limited daycare.

Six months after my daughter was born we moved back to Virginia. My husband works on boats for the army, so Hawaii and Virginia are the extent of our rotation. During the time surrounding the move we incurred a bit of debt while waiting for some indication of what kind of home life we would have, thus cluing me into what kind of hours I would be able to work. Unfortunately "we should know in a couple weeks" turned into six months, and the credit card debt accumulated. With only one measly paycheck to live off, I decided to leave and move up to where my husband's family lives to take advantage of a babysitting pool. And that is my life in a nutshell

My passion is ...

It's cheesy and cliche, but it would have to be my kids

I know too much about ...

bodily fluids and functions

My parents always told me ...

to take my shoes off when I came in the house

My childhood ambition ...

I don't really think I had an actual ambition, I just needed an answer to the "what do you want to be when you grow up" question

My favorite memory ...

my first night in my own apartment, with no roomates

Why I write ...

to keep from officially going insane and pretend I have another adult to talk to

What I am reading/watching/listening to ...

Flogging Molly

My first job ...

bagging groceries at Roche Bros.

My best moment ...

still waiting on that one

My inspiration ...

anyone I meet that gives me the illussion that they have everything together

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