I Caved...

I've been hearing chatter on some of my Facebook groups about using a "bullet journal." And recently an "in real life" friend showed me hers. I decided to cave and jump on the bandwagon.

Bullet journaling appeals to me for various reasons. I'm a list maker. I typically have post its and papers everywhere with notes and reminders on them. I liked the idea of having everything in one central location. I wished I was more artistic. One can really get bogged down in looking at others ideas and pages and quickly begin to feel inadequate as well.

However, if you embrace that it is yours and should be your creation and there are no rules to follow - it can be anything - then it releases some of that guilt. At least it did for me.

I did indulge in the journal of choice for a lot of journalers - a Leuchtturm 1917. I mistakenly bought the lined one. I had actually wanted the dotted one, but that's a minor detail. The journal comes with numbered pages and a table of contents area for you to create at the beginning.

I started planning my journal the end of February and began using it on March 1st. So far I am absolutely loving it!

I use it for my daily to-do lists.

I also have monthly calendars created. I do these as I need them, but I really do need to sit down and create more. I have March and April only done. I still do use my Google calendar to manage long-term planning. 

This the bulk of what I use my journal for - daily and monthly planning. I also created a "future log" with small monthly calendars with the big events in each month written out beside the month. I also added family and friend birthdays to this area. For that reason, I'm not going to post it but it's based on an idea I found on Pinterest. My future log takes up the first four pages in my journal and has three months per page.

Then there are things I've learned that are called "collections." These are planning pages for various things. You can see that I have some fancy ones (for me) and some not so fancy ones.

This is my workout schedule for the next two months. It includes the classes I teach (Zumba and Vive) plus the other classes I take. This photo was taken mid-week last week. There are a lot more "x"s on there. 

I'm reading through the book of John during Lent so I created this checklist in my journal. The schedule was posted online and I actually am in an accountability group for this as well. The heart is there because I messed up...in pen, but it works.

This is my tracker for inches lost plus some "fit testing." 

I just went to New York for my sister-in-law's baby shower. I spent six plus hours in the car with my five year old niece on the drive out and the same amount on the drive back. Since my mother-in-law and my niece's mom (my other sister-in-law) get carsick, I was in the backseat with Grace. While we were waiting at one point I taught her how to play the "dot" game (which is when I really regretted not getting the dotted journal!). She enjoyed it a lot and wanted to play over and over. Now I have this page in my journal as a reminder. She even signed it for me. 

And of course...a list of the books I have completed reading so far this year.

I've been using my journal now for almost a month and I love it. I have more pages and collections completed as you can see by my table of contents. It will continue to grow as I use it throughout the year and will end up being a journal of my year.

Some, as I mentioned, get very fancy with their journals. I don't have the ability or time to do that. This is my take on a "minimalist" style and it's definitely working for me.

{Journal Prompt} Music

Not my piano, but my piano was (is) this color!

This past Friday I went to the "big city." Earlier I mentioned I was studying to become a group fitness instructor and my test was scheduled for Friday afternoon. Mother Nature didn't care though and we had another snowstorm raging outside. While the University I was headed to did not shut down, the testing company was notified they "might" shut down so they cancelled my test. While they did notify me by calling my home phone and emailing me, unfortunately, I didn't know that until I had already driven the hour to the city, did some shopping, and arrived to take my test. The silver lining is I now have another week to study as it's now rescheduled for this coming Friday.

While in the city, I spent a gift card to one of my absolutely favorite places to shop - the bookstore! I started picking up books for my kids - like I tend to do. However, this time I decided to get more books for myself since I was spending my birthday gift card. One little gem I picked up was a journal book with 300 writing prompts in it.

I decided that instead of handwriting them, I would periodically take one and use it to write a blog post. So, welcome to my first installment.

Write about an extracurricular activity you did when you were growing up, and how it affects (or does not affect) your life now. 

I was involved in so much growing up. I was blessed to land in the fourth spot out of five children. By the time I was in high school, my three older siblings were out of the house, my dad worked at a job that allowed for very flexible hours, and my mom went back to work as well. We had time and money for me to do activities and I certainly did plenty.

I think the thing that affected me the most was music. When I was five years old I apparently asked my mother to learn to play the piano. We had a big old-fashioned upright in my parents bedroom. I liked to go in an plink away on it.

The music teacher for our school district also went to our church and was a family friend. She agreed to teach me. I was pretty happy until I realized how hard it was to learn to play! It was like learning a whole new language!

It wasn't long until my teacher realized I wasn't memorizing the notes, but rather using the fingering numbers to play. This worked great until you started playing higher or lower notes. Then it was blatantly obvious. This was not her first time teaching, so she simply switched me to a book without fingerings. I soon begged my mother to let me quit. And she did. I remember hiding in the bathroom the day Mrs. House came and my mom told her I no longer wanted to play.

Fast forward to fifth grade. I'm not sure if it's like this anymore since my boys are homeschooled, but in fifth grade you could play in the band and start learning an instrument. Our family owned a clarinet so that is what all of us played while we were in fifth grade. It always worked out that when a new sibling was coming in to fifth grade, the older one was stopping band.

Miracles of miracles, I learned how to read music and once again began plinking away on the piano. The only issue? I could only read the treble clef (or right hand) notes and none of the bass notes (or left hand notes). I asked my mom if I could take piano lessons again. She agreed but I had to call Mrs. House and ask.

I was in seventh or eighth grade when this happened. She only had openings for me in the summertime so that is when I took lessons. I was in high school (and probably had showed her I was serious about learning) before she took me on during the school year.

I also continued to play the clarinet in the band. I quit my seventh grade year which actually worked out well. That's when my little sister was in fifth grade so she had a chance to learn to play the clarinet. She decided not to continue though and I went back to it my eighth grade year and continued playing all the way through high school.

My sophomore year I played the trombone for one season of basketball. Our pep band for basketball games was sorely lacking so myself and two friends volunteered to learn enough to play the songs. My arms just simply aren't long enough to hit that last slide position though! I was very happy when the new freshman arrived the next year and had three trombone players among them!

This was probably 1989. 

I'm on the far right almost off the photo.

This was actually chorus but many of us played in band too.

And yes, I also sang in the chorus. I started in fifth grade and went all the way through high school. It wasn't until about 7-8 years ago that I started singing in public again. I've always sung in my car. Just ask my boys. I joined the worship team at my church and soon after that I started singing solos, something I never did in high school.

So how has this affected my life? One is the regret that I didn't continue with music after high school. It wasn't until I had children of my own that I even started thinking again about playing.

When all my boys were old enough, I started them on learning how to play the piano. I found a wonderful homeschool young lady who was willing to take on all four of us. That's right, I started lessons once again. 

My family after my first ever recital.

June 2011

My boys were so little here! My youngest (white shirt in the front) was only seven! My middle son (glasses) was ten and my oldest was 14. My oldest and I took lessons for about 2-1/2 years. I simply lost the time necessary to practice and had refreshed my memory enough to do what I wished - play well enough that I could play on our worship team. I knew I would never be a concert pianist. 

My oldest son, while talented, did not enjoy lessons. Since he was so much older when we started, I allowed him to stop playing. However, my other two boys are still playing and have since added more instruments. My youngest son added the violin this past fall and my middle kiddo just added the drums. No worries though, we're starting out with just a practice pad. My hearing is still intact - for now.

Music enriches my life. It relieves stress. It helps me worship God. I feel incomplete without it. Music has had a profound impact on my life and for that I am very grateful.

In which I meet my hubby....

This is week five of "My Young Adult Years" 
hosted at Mommy's Piggy Tales. 

(I neglected to post week four last week. )

I have been chronicling my young adult years now for a few weeks. If you'd like to catch up, check out my "Recording My Youth" page and scroll to the bottom. 

I had started college, broke up with a boyfriend, worked a full-time mill job, and went back to college.  Okay, so now you are caught up....

When I went back to college I knew one thing. I wanted to get my degree and begin working in my field. This was one of the major deciding factors as to why I choose a two year degree. All of my classes were mostly related to my major of Health Information Technology (HIT) since all of my other credits had transferred. Those were mostly core classes. I had no say in when my new classes would happen. While I worked very hard my freshman year of college to not have any morning classes, I wasn't so lucky this time around. The schedule was set. Most of my days began at 8am. Even then I was not much of a morning person.

However, those first few weeks of school were really rough. I was still living at home in order to save on expenses. This meant commuting an hour each way to school. I also was working a part-time job at a local gas station/convenience store. I knew that keeping up this schedule and putting 500+ miles on my little car each week would not last - especially once winter weather set in.

I knew that the only way I would be able to move closer to school would be to find affordable housing and a job.

I was doubly motivated. Just after school started I went to spend the night at a friend's.  We had gone to high school together as well as our freshman year of college. In fact, we roomed together during the second semester of college and became really good friends. She had transferred to the school I was now attended and was renting a house with her fiancée and three other house-mates. 


She also was going to Campus Crusade for Christ so she invited me to stay over one night so I could go and meet some other people. I readily agreed. 

She also had an ulterior motive. She wanted me to meet one of her house-mates.  She thought we were "perfect for each other." Turns out - she was right! I remember thinking he was pretty cute (still is 17 years later too!). 


Shortly after this night I was at school one day. Another girl and I headed over to the local McDonald's on our lunch break. While I was officially part of the University of Maine in Orono all my classes were held at University College (yes, I know it's a silly name but there you have it) which was located in Bangor near the airport.

While we were eating I noticed that McD's was hiring. On a whim I inquired at the front about work. A manager came out and interviewed me on the spot with my friend sitting right there. Then she proceeded to hire me on the spot. Because I wanted to move closer I took the job - something I would come to regret. 

Within a week I had moved to Orono and began dating my future hubby.

Back to School

This is week two of "My Young Adult Years" hosted at Mommy's Piggy Tales.

Over the last couple of weeks I have talked about my dreams and goals for college and the next step. Today I'll finally tell you that I did manage to go to college - finally - and complete a degree. However, it was not anything I had ever thought about doing before and, quite honestly, well....I'm jumping ahead.

During the year off from college while I worked in the mill, I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, I would be returning to college. I could not picture myself working in a mill forever. And the mill I was working in was getting ready to move their productions to a town about an hour away. I really had no interest in that.

I still vividly remember this day in my mind. I was still determined to change schools to be near my boyfriend. Oh & one thing I should mention.....during the year I was home working, I broke up with my boyfriend (best thing I EVER did too). I still decided to go to the school I was planning to transfer to since all the plans were in place.

I had ordered a school course catalog and sat down on day in the middle of our living room to look at. Our house was old - the second oldest in our town. A few years before my Dad had refinished the floors to the original wood (so gorgeous) and my Mom had a braided rug on it - one made by a relative.

I flipped through all the different courses and made a list of those that held some interest to me and those I thought I might do well at. I even remember a few that made the list - even though I no longer have the original list.

• Fashion designer. Yeah, well, I can't sew so needless to say that didn't make the final cut. (Um, no pun intended.)
• Journalist. I love to write, but I couldn't see myself doing much with this. Aside from that it would have taken me four years. I was more interested in how fast I could get through!
• Lawyer. Again - it would take too long.
• English. Love to write and love words. But I wasn't sure what I would actually do with that.

Then I spied this one...."Health Information Technology." That one caught my eye for two important reasons...one...it was a two year degree program and I already had most of my core subjects taken care of. Two...they had 100% job placement after graduation. 

So I applied.

Did I mention I still really had no idea what "Health Information Technology" entailed? In fact, I went to interview with the director of the program and I still had no clue what I was interviewing for? Yeah, that was interesting. Did I mention I wanted to be a lawyer? I was am pretty good at "subterfuge" when need be.

I ended up making it in to the program. 

Oh - so what exactly is "Health Information Technology?" 

Health information technology (HIT) is “the application of information processing involving both computer hardware and software that deals with the storage, retrieval, sharing, and use of health care information, data, and knowledge for communication and decision making” (Brailer, & Thompson, 2004).

Yeah, now you see why I showed up to my interview still not really having a clue about what it was I was going to be doing right? I thought so.

Here are some of the things I studied for during my course work:

• Legal aspects of medical records (releasing to patients, law enforcement, etc.)
• Transcription
• Medical coding/billing
• Statistics
• Human anatomy and physiology
• Medical Terminology
• Statistics (blah!)
• Filing (yup!)
• Managing a record department 

I actually really liked most of my classes. I went to a small branch of the university and liked the atmosphere there.

And just a couple of interesting tidbits...the director of our program taught about half the classes. She was originally from Oregon and was very excited to share how health care worked out west. They had these things called "HMO's" that were the best thing ever and she couldn't wait until she came east. Not so excited about health care now.

Second, I had a research paper I had to write my senior year. It was about "CPR" or "computerized patient records." All of those in the HIT field felt sure the CPR was on the horizon and we should all know what that entailed. Most facilities now use some form of a CPR but I've been out of college now for, well, a really  long time. It didn't happen quite as fast as many thought.

I'm digressing though.....

The only thing I didn't like about going back to school was the hour commute I was making each way to school. I decided that to save money I would continue to live at home with my parents. I was putting 500 miles a week on my car and having to get up early to make it to my 8am classes. Not a lot of fun actually.

After a couple weeks of this my best friend starting talking about the possibility of subletting in the house she lived in. If I managed to find a job down there, I planned to do just that. 

I'll share Part 4 next week and talk about what all that meant for me and my children!

Thanks to Ginny Marie (Lemon Drop Pie) for hosting "My Young Adult Years" at Mommy's Piggy Tales.

New & Scary

Today is the third in a series of twelve (although it's my second time going through this series) that I will be writing in order to capture my childhood memories for my children. Thanks go out to Mommy's Piggy Tales for creating this project and hosting it. 


I have always liked school. I know, it's weird. I liked playing school and I liked doing worksheets and I liked the order of it all. I did have some angst in kindergarten but overall school was fun for me. It certainly helped that I was a compliant child and I was good at school.


There were only a few centrally located kindergarten classrooms at the time when I went to school. Even though I lived in the largest town and the town where the middle and high schools were located, I actually went to kindergarten in the next town over. That meant that I had to start a new school and meet some new people for first grade.


I can still remember walking down the hallway (yes, there was only one) of that school just like it was yesterday. I also remember how nervous and scared I was on that first day. 


There were two sets of kids who attended the school - "walkers" (obviously those who lived close enough to walk to school) and those of us who rode the bus. Hmmm, I don't think we were called "busers" but I can't remember if we had a name or not. 


I really enjoyed the four years I spent at this little school. 


I can still remember the playground and playing "kissing tag" which I'm sure is politically incorrect today. I also remember one time when I fell off the monkey bars and split my lip open. Ouch! 


And kick-ball. We used to have many a kick-ball game on the back field of the school. We would go running out the back door of the school as fast as we were allowed so we'd have as much time as possible to play. There was a little hill that we had to go over to get to that nice flat playing field. 


I had a lot of fun on that playground. 

The Next Step

This is week two of "My Young Adult Years" hosted at Mommy's Piggy Tales.

One thing I didn't share before was that during this time in my life (from the time I was a junior in high school) I had a very serious boyfriend. Really my first. I allowed him to manipulate my life far more than was healthy. At the end of my freshman year of college, I chose to switch schools. If I had instead gone back to that school, even if I didn't go in to teaching, my entire second year would have been paid for via grants and scholarships.

Instead, I ended up taking a year off from college. I didn't decide to switch schools until May - when school was ending. It was too late to apply for student loans and all of my grants and scholarships were based on me still attending the first school. 

From February until I finished my first year of college, I was working on finding a summer job. In the town I grew up in there were three mills. One manufactured wooden medical products (tongue depressors and the like), one did fabrics (lots of wool) and the other was known for its golf tees (and other products). I would call the HR guy every month or so and ask about working there that summer. I wanted to work there for a couple of reasons. The first being the pay. It was far better than any other summer job I would find in that area. Secondly, I had an "in." My boyfriend's mother worked there and had for about 15 or so years (if not longer).

Photo from Guilford, Maine website

It worked. I started working at Pride Manufacturing that summer. Welcome to mill life. Now, let me preface this by saying something. Mill work is good money. There are a lot of towns that have mills and they are the lifeblood of the town. I don't mean to sound disrespectful to those who chose to work their all their life (or who have that choice forced on them for lack of other employment opportunities). However, mill life was not for me. 

That summer I worked in the paint shop.  It was a converted garage. I worked with two men and another woman. My job....sorting painted wood dowels. Have you ever seen these toys?

Yup, I sorted the straight dowels used for making them. The two guys I worked with painted them (they were mixed in large drums) and dried them (again large drums) and the other lady (who didn't work there full-time - I did) sorted them. Boring? Absolutely.

Thankfully I worked with some fun people and it made the time pass pretty fast. Added to that, did I mention I worked in a converted garage? Every so often I would be working and all of the sudden I would have a huge hairy spider drop down in front of me. Yikes! Of course, that would be an understatement!

Then half-way through the summer I found out I wasn't going back to school. I asked to stay on at the mill. Again, good money. I needed to save up for college. I had no plans to make working at this mill my life's work - no matter how good the money. As for how good the people were that I worked with - they threw me a little "going away" party since I would be moving to the main mill. My cake? It had a huge spider and spider web on it. One of the men made it for me.

I was granted the opportunity to stay, but once the summer was over, I was moved to third shift. That meant working Sunday night 10pm until 6am and Monday-Thursday  night 11pm until 6am. It was a very long year. I worked on a two-person team. We ran two different sizes of saws. One cut smaller lengths of dowels that were about 4-5 inches in diameter. They were about three feet in length. One of us would load the saw and the other would sit and sort what came off the saw for quality. We filled up burlap bags with the cut pieces. We took turns loading the saw and sorting. Some nights we ran a saw that the did the same thing, but the lengths of the wood were about six feet instead.

I very much disliked the work and the hours, but it was excellent motivation for sending me back to school.

The summer before I returned to school I was again moved to a different job at the mill. As I mentioned, this mill made golf tees. That was (and is) their biggest industry. I spent the summer sorting more dowels as they came off a different type of saw. I worked with a girl I knew from high school. We sat side-by-side and sorted (she was to catch what I missed). I still worked third shift. In order to stay awake we spent the summer playing 20 Questions. Try doing that while wearing ear plugs in a mill with lots of different saws running - it was interesting - but certainly fun.

I was very ready to head back to college in the fall. As for my major....I'll let you know next week what I ended up choosing.

Thanks to Ginny Marie (Lemon Drop Pie) for hosting "My Young Adult Years" at Mommy's Piggy Tales.

Today is the second in a series of twelve that I will be writing in order to capture my childhood memories for my children. Thanks go out to Mommy's Piggy Tales for creating this project and hosting it. 


Last week I shared about how I was very ill as an infant. The doctors chose to give me a new antibiotic called tetracycline. So what happened after this wonderful new drug apparently saved my life?

Simply put...it ruined my teeth.

Many people talk about their first memory. For most it is typically around ages 4 or up. However, mine is from age two. Yes, two years old. Obviously it was a strong memory.

Tetracycline, while a drug that did save me from whatever infection I was fighting, also attached my growing teeth. This is fairly common with young children who take this drug - or so I have always been told.

My memory consists of crying....a lot. My teeth were coming in "rotten." They were very painful and my two front teeth had to be pulled because of the extensive damage to them. I remember standing in our living room by a rocking chair we had crying because my teeth hurt.

Sadly I was sick a lot even after this.

Another strong memory I have is from about the age of three. I had croup. I'm sure most parents have experienced this at least once with their own children. I did with my oldest son when he was about 18 months old.

On this particular night I remember laying on the couch struggling to breath. My parents took the ironing board and set it up above me and draped blankets over it. On the floor was a big pan of very hot water putting out steam. When that didn't work, I can remember my mother bringing  me in the bathroom and running the hot water to create a very steamy bathroom. Sadly, that didn't work either.

My parents ended up bringing me to the local hospital. I remember sitting in my Dad's lap in a rocking chair while they prepared my room. I seem to recall saying something like, "Well, that's the way the cookie crumbles" about our late night foray to the hospital.  I was soon set up in an oxygen tent.

I'm unsure how many days I stayed. I do know that my parents did not stay over night with me. I remember going to the window and watching them drive away one afternoon.

One of my mom's friends brought her little boy in one day to visit and play with me. They brought me a coloring book and some crayons as well as a little Clifford the Big Red Dog doll. Yes, they had Clifford even way back then.

I did spend a lot of my childhood ill and seemingly in and out of the hospital. However, after my mom fought to have my tonsils taken out (that story was covered in the last round) I was never that sick again.

Dreams and Goals

This is week one of "My Young Adult Years" hosted at Mommy's Piggy Tales.

For as long as I can remember, I knew I was going to be a teacher someday. Growing up I would play school and typically force my younger sister to be my student. I loved spending summers with my aunt, a fourth grade teacher, who would give me old worksheets to use. I loved to learn. I loved going to school myself. I thrived in that type of setting. I just assumed that some day I would grow up to be a teacher as well.

At the start of my freshman year in high school, I had even figured out my plan. I was going to attend Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia and study sign language. I aspired to be a teacher for the deaf - like Annie Sullivan. Sign language has held me captivated since fifth grade. My next step was to go on to Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. to get my master's degree.

I had it all figured out or so I thought.

I did graduate high school and entered an elementary education program....in Maine. I never left the state to get my degree. I never worked with deaf students. I never did become a public school teacher.

I only did one year in the elementary education program. It was there I discovered I wasn't cut as well for teaching as I had first thought. My personality made teaching children tough (yes, I know I am now a homeschooling mom - my life is certainly ironic!). I felt that if my lesson plan wasn't followed to the letter, it was a failure. I probably could have learned to adapt to this, but at the time, I just decide to change majors.

I'll save what came next for next Monday.

Choices, choices, choices

I am back for a second round of Mommy's Piggy Tales - Recording My Youth. I think recording your memories for your children is one of the most important things you can do for them. That's one reason I decided to join Jana for a second round.

While I blogged in detail about why my parents chose my name and the details I know about my birth story, I did leave out a few things out so I'll share those things today.

As I mentioned previously, my parents had moved to Maine far from everything they knew and far from their family. Both had grown up near each other and met while in high school after my mother's family moved. She was a junior in high school at the time and moved from a very small town to a large city. There were 300+ kids in my parents graduating class. There had been that many just in my mom's previous high school. To say the least, she was not very happy about the move at all. Obviously though, she would never had met my Dad so it all worked out in the end.

All of their family lived at least a six hour drive south in Massachusetts then. After all, there really was no direct route. While I-95 now exists and cuts that drive to about four hours, in the early 1970s it was not the nicely paved route it is now.

What amazes me is this...my mom's parents (the only set of grandparents I had while growing up) came to Maine when I was born...in December and again when my younger sister was born about two years later...in January. In good weather I'm sure the drive wasn't all that bad, but who knows what it would have been like in Maine in those months. It changes rather quickly!

I was also very ill as an infant and young child. In fact, my mother has shared a story from when I was an infant and very ill with some sort of infection. In fact, so ill they were afraid I would die. None of the antibiotics at the time were helping. However, there was a new one on the market and they felt it would work and was their last chance. It was tetracycline. The doctors used it and it did work. The only problem...it's not designed for children under the age of 12 - something they did not know (or didn't really care about) at that time.

So what happened? I'll share that next week.

Recording My Youth

It's Thursday so normally I would be writing a post about my younger days for Mommy's Piggy Tales. However, I finished the fifteen week series started back in July last week. In fact, you can see all the links on this page.

I have always been interested in the past. Genealogy has always been of particular interest to me. However, I never fully delved in to because I have lot of family members who had already done so...way back before the internet made it even easier to locate one's family line.

What has always interested me though are the stories. What was Uncle Jay like as a baby? What did my Mom like to do as a girl? What was it like growing up in the 1930s during the Depression?  That is what has always interested me.

Sadly, all of my grandparents are gone and my mom is now gone as well. There is a popular quote that says:

When an old man dies, a library is lost.

I have had far too many libraries burn down in my life.

Thankfully I was able to save some memories. About eight years ago I sat down with my grandfather and his older sister and just talked to them about what it was like growing up - their strongest memories. At the time she was over 90 years old and my grandfather was fast approaching that age. I brought along a mini-cassette recorder and taped our entire conversation.

I used to work as a medical transcriptionist at home and had a tape transcribing machine. I typed the entire conversation up and included some photos that I had scanned. I treasure those memories.

Since I never took the time to do this with any of my other grandparents (although, my paternal grandfather died before I was born) or my mother, I don't want to loose the opportunity to pass my life story along to my sons.

Family stories help you to know where you come from. They give you a connection to your family and help build relationships. They make you feel special.

I'll be joining Mommy's Piggy Tales when the next session begins on October 7th. This session will only be 12 weeks instead of 15. There is also a session starting on October 11th for six weeks to record the "young adult years." I'll be joining that one too. If you think you'd like to join, you need to email Janna: jannajoy25 (at) hotmail (dot) com.

Recording my memories for my children is just something I need to do. I know that someday they will appreciate it.

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.

******************************

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.

Senior Year

Nothing huge jumps out to me about my senior year of high school. I do know that I was very happy to be done with high school. For some reason I thought that I was now an adult and could get on with living my life. Ha!

I attended my senior prom with my boyfriend. I had picked out the perfect dress back in February. My mom hired a photographer to come out to the house (she had done my senior photos that fall) to take pictures of us in our finery. My younger sister was there with her date as well as a couple of my friends.



Speaking of my senior photos. Here is the one of the ones I liked best. I had a similar pose put in the yearbook. (Please note the popped collar. Was I cool or what?)



However, my mom did not like my hair. So she booked a second session with the photographer to come to our house (she was a semi-professional just starting out). Then she took me to the hairdresser and had my hair done the way she liked. This is the one she had enlarged and hung on our wall.



I do remember the party my parents threw for me after graduation. Our woodstove in the kitchen was covered with presents. It turns out they had gone to a warehouse store (those were just starting then) and bought me a ton of school supplies so I would be ready for college.

The last thing I opened was an envelope that started me on a scavenger hunt to find this…..

 
It was a balloon filled with one hundred one dollar bills. That was a huge blessing and surprise. Although, one of the clues was hidden in my niece’s diaper. I remember not getting that one and making my sister-in-law pull that one out.

Strike up the Band!

With the exception of seventh grade, I was part of the school band from fifth grade on. I started out playing the clarinet – our “family” instrument. It was the one we owned so all of us played it at one point or another. In fact, this clarinet is still in my closet.

Once I reached high school we also added in “Pep Band” where we played at the basketball games as well as “Jazz Band” which did more “funky” music at concerts. This was aside from being in “regular band.”
Part of band was also marching in parades. We usually did three parades on Memorial Day. Since we were a district high school, we marched in parades in three of the towns. Typically it would be hot and someone would always become a bit faint.

In my junior year (I think – it may have been my sophomore year), we had a lack of trombones. Our band director asked if anyone was willing to learn since we needed them for parades and pep band. I volunteered along with two friends. One friend typically played percussion and one played the flute. I loved the trombone. It was a lot of fun, but I was not very good at it. My arms were too short as well so it was hard to hit that last slide position.

My Mom was part of the “band boosters” and they worked very hard to get us new uniforms. Here I am modeling the new uniform that was worn for parades:



And when we had concerts, we added a lovely (note the sarcasm even today…) ruffle on our shirt with a black suit coat and blue bow tie and cummerbund. 



To this day, I still despise our Pep Band shirts. Yes, our school colors are blue and gold (ugh!), but really, you have to check this out….


….hideous color.   Of course, I can’t remember who was sitting behind me, but they didn’t want their photo taken that’s for sure.

A few more parade photos:


  
I am in the middle of the front row. The only clarinet amongst flutes. No, I don’t remember why Mr. Bouchard (our band director) placed me there, but I’m sure he had a reason.


These were our old uniforms. They were about 10 or so years old and we didn’t have enough pants for everyone so a lot had to wear jeans and some even wore just white shirts. The need for conformity got us the snazzy new ones above.

I truly loved band. I had a fantastic time. I played clarinet in regular band and pep band, trombone for a short time in pep band, and piano in jazz band. I miss music and I am very happy to report that I start taking piano lessons (along with my boys) this week. I couldn’t be more happy.



This is my 13th post out of a series of 15 for the Mommy's Piggy Tales project. If you'd like to join in saving your memories for your family, Janna will be starting a new session on October 7th.

10th Grade – Life Changing

I am working to catch up on my Mommy’s Piggy Tales posts. Today I will be discussing 10th grade.

I grew up in rural Maine. I went to a small school that covered five different towns. All of the students in my class had generally been together since fifth grade when we began attending the combined middle school. So there was history. It was also a very small school. I had about 70 students in my class. There were only about 350 in our entire high school.

This background will help in establishing why the following event made such a big impact not only on my class, but our entire school as well as the entire community we lived in.

********************************************

We were sitting in our biology final during the last week of school. Before class had started we realized one of our classmates wasn’t there. This was really unusual. Someone then commented that they had heard mention of his address on the scanner that morning. Due to the talk that was occurring between some of his closer friends, I thought something might be wrong although some were thinking it might have been his Grandmother.

About twenty minutes before the class ended the door opened. In walked our principal, guidance counselor, gym teachers, and some other adults. It was then that we all realized something had happened. Something we didn’t want to hear.

Many were still working on their tests, but we finally just stopped and asked them to please tell us what was wrong.

Aaron – frozen in time at age 16

Our classmate, Aaron, had chosen to end his life that very morning. And even here 20 years after the fact, I can still remember all of those emotions that flooded through that room and myself that day.

This was the first time I had ever had to deal with the death of someone I knew. It was a defining moment of not only my life but also for my class.

We were asked to stay at the end of the school where we had our test (the science wing) until the rest of the school could be told. All remaining finals were cancelled and we were all given passing grades on those we had taken (I’m pretty sure it’s the only reason I passed math this year).

This incident changed a lot of us. There are still many things I remember about this time, but one thing that I still continue to think about from time to time over 20 years later is simply this….time passes and things change. Aaron never got to grow up or have a family. He left behind his parents and sister because he felt the pain was too great to bear. I wish he had chosen instead to hang on and to see what life would have been like the next day and the next.