I like to start my blogs with a little "get to know me" type of post. This will give you a little bit of background information about me and the things I'll probably be talking about in my blog.
1. I'm the proud mom of two teenage girls: Aubry and Ashlyn. It's...interesting, to say the least. I'm not going to lie, parenting was a lot more *fun* when my kids were little. That said, it's very rewarding now that they're starting to "pave the way" toward their own adult lives. I have some pretty good kids and I love being their mom.
2. I'm also a proud wife. Johnny and I fell in love back in 2005 under very different circumstances. Although we went our separate ways back then, fate brought us back together in August 2012. We were married on our fifth anniversary in 2017 and I couldn't be happier. I love this life that I get to share with my best friend and one true love.
3. My youngest daughter rescued three kittens from an alley in 2016 and they've become my furbabies...Milo, Leo, and Angel. I realized that I'm definitely a cat person! We also brought home two Chihuahua/Pomeranian/Dachshund puppy brothers on April 1, 2019. And Johnny has a chubby Australian Shepherd named Bandit that Johnny got as a puppy in 2010. So yeah...we have a house full of animals!
4. I'm a college graduate. I started community college right after high school but then stopped to have kids. When my oldest started Kindergarten, I thought it'd be a good time for me to go back. I have my AA in Psychology and my BGS in Criminal Justice, Psychology, and Sociology. If it weren't for the scary prospect of massive student loan debt, I'd love to go on to get my Master's and even my Doctorate in Forensic Psychology.
5. I've had a lot of jobs since turning 15: RSA and then CNA at a nursing home, office assistant for the school district office, receptionist at a mortuary, reservation sales agent for a cruise line, data entry for the USPS, bank teller and then item processing at a different bank, and then six years as the office manager for my husband's business until he retired in 2018. I've been working from home as a transcriptionist since October 2018 and I'm really loving it.
6. I'm also a freelance writer and artist. I've written many short stories, but I hope to publish at least one novel someday. I've enjoyed writing and art for as long as I can remember. The artistic mediums I feel most comfortable are sketching pencils, oil paints, and colored pencils. I like drawing pretty much anything but my favorite thing to paint is definitely trees. I also really like doing crafts. Both of my daughters have taken after me as far as enjoying arts and crafts. We've recently discovered diamond painting kits and I'd like to start sculpting with oven-baked clay.
7. I read really fast but I don't usually take the time to read much unless I find a really good book...and then I tend to be the kind of person who starts and finishes it in a day or two. One of my guilty pleasures is young adult dystopian novels. I got a Kindle for Christmas in 2012 and I've found a few self-published novels that turned out to be pretty good. I also like dramas, mysteries, and crime novels. I'm also pretty nerdy and I actually enjoy reading textbooks, self-help books, and other non-fiction works that seem interesting. I love to learn and if I could be a professional student, I totally would!
8. We've been trying to work on the house quite a bit over the past year. We've had a lot of house guests over the years (Johnny's adult children, their kids, Johnny's mother, and all their pets!) until last year when everyone had found their own places. So in August 2018, we started rearranging bedrooms, turning one of them into an office, and repainting them. I really love organizing and my OCD really likes for everything to have a home...so it's been really nice. We had to get a new dishwasher and oven vent hood that we replaced with an over-the-range microwave (and washing machine...because of course everything decides to stop working at the same time), so I rearranged all the cabinets and everything in the kitchen while we were at it. We still have a long way to go to get the rest of the house arranged, painted, and looking the way we want it...but we've made a good start. We also need to sort through all the stuff we've accumulated over the years and have a big garage sale!
9. I've also been doing a lot more cooking since everyone else moved out. I've been making a lot of new casseroles, soups, and other entrees that have made their way into our regular rotation. My grandma gave me her old pressure cooker, stand mixer, and food processor earlier this year, too. I've been loving it! I've found quite a few good recipes for the pressure cooker and it definitely takes a lot less time to make a roast! I also like that I can just take some frozen chicken breasts and dump them in the pot with some other ingredients and dinner is done in less than half an hour without me having to do much more work at all. I've also been doing a lot of baking with the new stand mixer...which is definitely easier on my arms and shoulders.
10. We got rid of cable many years ago. With Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime we still have plenty to watch. We love to watch TV in the evenings before bed. My favorite TV shows tend to go in cycles, but my current favorite is Blacklist. We also watch Designated Survivor, NCIS, Criminal Minds, The Magicians, The 100, and Glitch. I also really like Law & Order SVU and I still watch Grey's Anatomy. There are so many TV shows no longer on that I miss and still watch reruns of: Travelers, Zoo, Burn Notice, Jericho, Revolution, Touch, Heroes, House, Smallville, and CSI Miami. We used to watch Walking Dead, Orange is the New Black, Scandal, and Quantico...but we haven't caught up with the last couple seasons of those.
And with that, welcome to my new bloggy home! :)