It came to my mind the other day that in all the years of my blogging, I've never written a blog post detailing some of the highlights of my life. I'll try to keep this post from sounding like a book report or a personals ad. But I make no promises. Here it goes:

I was born in 1976 in Colorado Springs. My father was a pilot in the Air Force. My mother had her teaching degree, but she didn't work while my sister and I were growing up. I'm the youngest of two girls. My sister is four years older than I am and still lives in the city we grew up in, Tacoma, Washington.

Most families with parents in the military have to move every few years as they get new station assignments. Because I had neurological and orthopedic conditions requiring regular medical intervention and surgeries my father was able to remain stationed in Tacoma for the bulk of his 20-year service career.

Many an internet meme exist educating today's youth of things they have no understanding of: Phone books, card catalogs, rotary telephones, VHS machines, the Walkman.... As a child of the 80s it still gives me pause to know I had to learn how to do school research in World Book Encyclopedias while today's version is simply called Wikipedia.

Other relics of my middle-class suburbia youth include Cabbage Patch Kids, Pound Puppies, charm bracelets, sleepovers, Trapper Keeper notebooks, passing notes in class, playing MASH on recces and later in junior high, obsessing over NKOTB, (Truth be told, I was never a huge New Kids fan. I loved Janet, LL Cool J (yes, he IS that old) and George Michael.

My parents divorced when I was in the ninth grade. It sucked, but I survived. I chose to live with my mom and we remained in my childhood home. My dad moved just a bit south to Olympia. I worked really hard academically in junior high and high school, which helped blunt many of the cruel realities of adolescence. By my senior year I was high school year book editor, on the student council and taking courses at the local community college. I couldn't wait to graduate and go off to college.

I enrolled in Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington. After just three quarters of general education requirements I knew that Journalism was the major I wanted to pursue. I minored in English Creative Writing. Again, in school, I focused heavily on academics and was extremely efficient with my time (and parents money). With no wasted credits or failed classes, I graduated with my BA in three years.

After college I relocated to Minneapolis, MN of all all places! Most all of my extended families live in Minnesota. I'd go to visit there at least once a year when growing up. Itching to get out of Washington and spread my wings a bit, going to my "home away from home" seemed like a good idea.

And it was. I lived there for three years, doing temp and administrative work. And learning how to be an adult. I know this is going to sound silly, but even when I was majoring in journalism, I didn't have a passion to be a reporter. I was so sick of writing by the time I graduated, all I wanted to do was anything but, even if a paycheck was involved.

Over the course of the next six years I changed jobs, moved around which involved several state border crossings, suffered a major health crisis (recovered, thankfully) and then moved in with one of my best friends, Robyn, in Aiken, South Carolina.

In Aiken I found the perfect job. I got hired into a newsroom as an editorial assistant. I did everything BUT report. I answered phones, wrote news briefs and obituaries, and copy-edited community columns. And most important, clocked out at the end of the day with no worry that my editor was going to be calling me into work with "breaking news."

The Aiken years of my life were some of the best I've ever had. The friends I met and the memories I made were the perfect prequel to what would be the next best phase of my life: meeting my future husband and settling into a life I am so blessed to live here in Silicon Valley, California.

I moved to San Jose in the Fall of 2005. Andrew and I were married two years later, in October 2007. I wish my mom would have been alive to see us get married. She did get to meet Drew and she loved him as much as I do. She passed away unexpectedly in the Fall of 2006. Fall is an odd season for me. It marks both the saddest and happiest days of my life. That could be a whole separate blog post. And it probably will be someday.

I haven't worked full time for years. After three separate attempts, each ending in me developing cardiac failure, I realized I simply can't put my body through the stress of a full-time work schedule. Today, the flexibility of my freelancing and volunteering schedule keeps me busy, but let's me prioritize my health above everything else.

I just turned 42 in February. I still can't tell if 42 feels old or young. In many ways 42 just feels like a number. I know there is a lot I have accomplished in my life so far, yet, as cliche as it sounds, there is so much more I want to do. Andrew works full-time in tech. We are only now beginning to think about what will be our next decade of adventures. What we know for sure is we both still want to be active and healthy enough to enjoy retirement.

In the meantime though, I'm going to continue to pursue my creative and volunteering aspirations, try to keep my house organized, stay healthy, and spoil my golden retriever fur son, Alton.

It's unrealistic to think I could write my whole life into a few hundred words. But I hope you enjoyed these chosen few hundred. Oh, but wait! How could I forget these crucial details?!? I love chocolate, have very little patience for children, prefer Coke over Pepsi, love laughing, hate scary movies, and can find a reason to shop just about anywhere.

Any questions that you have that I didn't cover feel free to ask in the comments below. I'm happy to share more.