Life B.C.

This is my final installment in this round of recording my youth as party of Mommy's Piggy Tales. I have so enjoyed doing this and do plan to gather all the stories and have them printed for my boys. If you have thought of doing the same for your family, Janna is going to be hosting another round starting on October 7th. Be sure to head over to her blog for contact information to sign up (you need to e-mail her to be assigned a group). I plan to join the "occasional" group to fill in more memories that I didn't blog about on this round.

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I have blogged before about how I met my hubby (and again here) and our wedding and some random things about him. What I have never shared is what life was like B.C. or "before children."

As I mentioned before, hubby & I married while we were still in college. He was in the engineering program and I was coming back to college to complete the two year degree in Health Information Technology. I'll share another time how I ended up picking that degree. 

We had discussed waiting to have children in order to finish school and find work. (One of those "I-wish-I-knew-then-what-I-know-now-moments, but I'll save that for another time too.) I wanted a couple years with just my hubby & I to enjoy before we added children to the mix.

This was the house we lived in while we were in college. 

We had three other housemates & we are all still friends to this day.

I graduated from college in May of 1994. I was working at one of the local hospitals at the time in their medical record department part-time doing medical coding (one of the things my degree covered). However, I didn't see any potential for job growth so when an employer I had done part of my clinical with offered me a full-time job, I took it. I began working for the Bangor Area Visiting Nurses in their medical record department. I would put new charts together, file, and do general office work. I eventually took over as receptionist and even was able to do some coding there. I really enjoyed my job. I worked in downtown Bangor and finally felt like an adult.

Hubby took an extra semester to graduate (a bit too much partying freshman year, ahem....) and finally earned his engineering degree in December of 1994. We had talked and decided to wait a year for him to find work in that field before looking out of state. Engineering jobs in Maine are a bit few and far between. In the meantime he worked as a pizza delivery guy (we lived in a college town - tips were good especially when there was a home hockey game and it was snowing!) plus he worked for a mapping company in the next town from where we lived.

We were poor college students trying to make up for a lot of poor financial decisions we made while going to school. It was a long rough road (it took almost ten years!) to get out of that area of our lives, but I'm happy to say it's nice to finally have things looking far better than they did then. 

Over the course of that year it didn't look like hubby would find a job in Maine. He had sent out dozens of resumes but rarely heard back or if he did, the company wasn't hiring. In fact (this was long before the Internet was so common - we didn't even own a computer. I know!) we had subscribed to a newspaper from Montana. That was where we were looking to move to if he didn't find work in Maine.

During this time I worked one winter season at a Carlton Card shop in the mall (very similar to Hallmark). I loved it. I worked full-time at the visiting nurses during the day & then worked part-time on nights and weekends at the card shop. I had so much fun. All of our Christmas gifts were bought from here since they had employee appreciation days during the holiday season where we received a deep discount on products (I think it was 40%).

It was during these two years after college that we started talking about a family but the time never seemed quite right. We even had our names all picked out - one for a boy and one for a girl. Life was coming at us fast and we were just trying to keep our heads above water.

Then my hubby received a call. One he had been waiting for. He had a job interview for a company two hours south of where we were living but still in Maine. He started the interview process and was soon offered a job. We were even able to get money for moving expenses. And the Saturday after Thanksgiving in 1995 we moved to "the big city." Okay, well, it's the second biggest city in Maine but it was big. 

Hubby was starting his first engineering job - shirts and ties and cubbies. Oh my! I was also starting a new job. I was able to get a job as a receptionist for a physician billing company. There were definitely a lot of changes going on in our lives and it all happened pretty fast.

It was about a month after we had moved when I realized something was missing from my life. Actually, something new was starting. In December of 1995 I realized I was pregnant with our first child. I ended up quitting my job soon after sharing that news (for reasons I won't go in to publicly but it wasn't pleasant) and worked for Kelly Temp Services for the remainder of my pregnancy. 

I loved working for Kelly and only had two placements for the six months I worked there. One was for a business that gave all their secretaries the day off for Secretaries Day. I was told to bring a book and plan to sit and answer phones all day. So I did just that. My second (and last) placement was for the local PBS station helping in their office. I enjoyed my time there and had a lot of fun. 

I only had two more jobs out of the home after this point, but since this post is suppose to be about my life before children I'll end here. I plan to share more in the next round of Mommy's Piggy Tales.