I am super excited to share the weekends events with you.  I have pictures, too!  Are you ready?  Okay, here we go!

Friday night I spent the whole evening cleaning after L left to go stay with Grandma and Grandpa.  There was no way in hell I was going to let people come into my home and see it as it was.  Oh it was so bad!  (And now people who know me are rolling their eyes and mumbling, "Oh please your house is not dirty, ever.") Anyway, I cleaned and fell into bed exhausted.

Saturday morning I woke up and it was raining its butt off.  :( We had planned to do everything outside that evening because our house can get rather claustrophobic when there are more than five people in it at a time.  Well, when I checked the weather and it didn't look like it was going to let up until way past my bedtime, I just decided we would do everything indoors.

 After making that decision and doing the necessary prep, my best friend showed up to help me prepare for the evening festivities.  She was quite an important part of the little shindig we had.  Not only is she my best friend and I pretty much have to have her present for everything I do, but she brought this:



Uh, yea.  That would be a cake specifically designed and made by her.  For the love of Pete, this girl knows me so well that she even included my favorite kind of cake:  Confetti. (Or as I lovingly call it "Rainbow Cake") If you ever need a cake for a special event and you live in Southeastern Missouri, GET A HOLD OF HER!  She is reasonably priced, efficient, and really knows how to think outside the box for a cake.  I am not just saying all of that because she is my best friend-she's just that  good.  She knows what she is doing!  Seriously.

Then, in typical fashion, we ran off to our favorite store ever:


Because, really, no time together is complete without a trip to Hobby Lobby. She had something she needed to pick up and I had supplies I needed to pick up for a DIY wreath.  We got sidetracked four times going to the check out and then we left to go find some lunch.

We brought lunch back to the house and rested most of the afternoon.  It was nice to just hang out with her. We hadn't gotten to do that in quite some time. We were able to catch up and be our normal, goofy selves.


We got ready for dinner, the hubs came home, and we were off to go meet up with one of my other best friends and his wife.  We had a great time at dinner, ate way too much food, and played catch up with them. Unfortunately, I have no pictures of dinner because, well, I was too busy stuffing my face. :)

We came back to our house after dinner for cake and where several others met us to join in the fun.  I got serenaded by the best man at our wedding.  He sang me Happy Birthday and I seriously almost peed.  Here's proof: (not of the peeing...my reaction...)




It is people like that that make life more fun. :)

We spent the rest of the evening hanging out and getting re-acquainted.  I had a great time and I fell into bed that night completely exhausted, but satisfied.  It was the right way to celebrate turning 30 and I was surrounded by the people who mattered most.

***I swear I will not quote Tim McGraw in this blog post.  Scout's honor. :)***


I have been thirty for a week and, just as I expected, not much has changed.  For the past month, I have been thinking a lot about how others perceive 30 and how some get really bent out of shape about it.  I don't see what the fuss is all about, personally, but I suppose that some people just don't have the outlook I have.  I chose to look at all of this differently.  I chose, a long time ago, to look at my life differently.  I make conscious choices, every day, to view the other side of things.  I stopped concentrating on the "bad" many years ago.  After all, concentrating on all of that just kept me in the hole I was in for even longer.  I had to learn, as we usually do in life, that your outlook is everything.

It is strange to think of myself as 30.  I don't look 30 (good genes), in some instances I don't act 30 (my husband has stories), and I don't feel 30.  People have always commented how I am "wise beyond my years", well, thank you, thought it came with a price; a price that I am glad I paid in hindsight.  I guess a large majority of this strange feeling of being 30 is that I never thought I would be here, breathing, and writing to all of you.  This last week has been surreal.  I have been walking around almost as if I have new eyes.  It is almost as if the being that is the mastermind behind all of this came to me and said, "Here is your next 30, my gift to you.  You earned this."

I earned this.

I don't take gifts lightly.  I take them very seriously.  I hold them very carefully, I cherish them, use them with care, and I only share them with people whom I trust.

It took me a long, long time to get that through my head....

For the rest of my life...

Until next time,

Image found here

I have to tell ya, today was great!  I got to spend the day with my husband and our daughter, just hanging out.  I didn't do any housework and I didn't have to cook!  I got several birthday wishes that warmed my heart, an Amazon gift card from my brother (heck ya!), a special gift I sent got received (more on that in a minute), and it has been a nice, relaxing evening. I also got a great idea for a running series on the bloggy blog! I am perfectly content today. :)

I have done one special thing for the past five years or so on my birthday.  It is a tradition that I started and I make sure, every year, it is carried out.  This tradition that I started, and will continue to do for as long as I possibly can, is a way for me to pay homage to someone that makes my special day possible....

Before I dive into this next blog post, I just wanted to thank all of my reader's for yesterday's events.    A Mother in Boston and Dear Martin have received many hits and it is all thanks to you.  You took it upon yourselves to make sure that those two letters were seen by as many people as possible.  By you having faith in my and my words, you gave me the confidence to post and re-post those letters as many times and as many places as I could. I am so grateful for you, my reader's.  You are why I do what I do.  Thank you. 

October 2009 Age:  26

Today is a good day to talk about my twenties since this is the last day I am in my twenties.  Tomorrow, at about mid-morning, I will be 30.  Wow, that last sentence was surreal to write.  I honestly never thought I would be here.  It's strange how life takes us; through its twists and turns and ups and downs.

I look at my twenties in two parts:  before and after.  There was a breaking point, a cusp if you will, that was reached at about my mid-twenties.  To be blunt:  I got tired of the crap.  I was so tired of waking up and feeling the same way every day, dealing with the same things over and over, and seeing certain people that just had no use in my life anymore.  That may sound harsh, but it was all for the better.  All of it.

From the age of 19 until a month before my 22nd birthday, I was in college.  Well, I was enrolled.  I wasn't really trying to get anywhere looking back on it now.  I was more interested in partying and drinking and pushing my limits at that age.  Thursday's, Friday's, and Saturday's were party days.  My friends and I (that term I use loosely because there isn't one person that is still in my life from that time with the exception of my husband and my best friend.  My best friend lived four hours away so it isn't like we were hanging out all the time.)  Anyway, I was  a mess.  I was a drunk.  There, I said it.  I would spike my Diet Coke's with Jack Daniels before I went to class.  (Sorry, Mom...and....everyone else who didn't know that about me...)  Not one of my finer moments.

2007 Age 24

I knew I had a problem.  I knew it.  No one would listen to me when I tried to talk about it.  And by "no one" I mean the people that I thought were my friends.  Sara would get all sappy stupid drunk and go on and on about how horrible her life was, and they would just pour me another drink to shut me up.  I quit college in March of 2005  (ironically, this is the same month I met my husband...at a gas station....in the wee hours of the morning...) and started looking for full time work.  Ha!  Basically what happened was that I got a part time job and my parent's paid for me to live in an apartment two hours from my hometown, in the ghetto, and I just wasted away.

Into nothing.

I was an empty shell.  I couldn't sleep.  I couldn't eat.  I wasn't hungry.  I would chain smoke the hell out of some Camel's, drink my soda, and scrounge up money to go out and party.  Then, I got "smart" and started having house parties.  That just left me with a mess to clean up the next day, totally hungover.  Nice.

I finally had an epiphany (after a night of being completely drunk and thinking about just killing myself...yep, that happened...) and sought out help from a therapist.  I will admit, she was good.  She helped me unravel myself and really helped me to start to see thing's in a new light.  When I came to her, I had what she called "Can't-get-out-of-bed-and-go-to-Wal-Mart" syndrome.  I was paralyzed by the outside world, honestly.  I hated myself, I hated everyone, I just hated.  I allowed things to happen to me that kept me in a hole.  I allowed people to mistreat me and use me and just leave me for dead.  I didn't know how to say no. I just wanted people to like me, to love me, to accept me.  So, I did what I thought would make that happen.

The only bad thing about therapy is that they like to attach drugs to you.  I had drugs to wake me up in the morning, get me through the day, and put me to sleep at night.  Then, I had drugs to counteract some side effects with the original drugs.  So, roughly, I was taking about 7-8 different kids of pills a day.

I couldn't cry.  I couldn't get angry.  I was a zombie.  I would leave my house at 10:30-11 o' clock at night and mosey my way down to the gas station where this really cute boy worked.  I would get me a soda, a pack of smokes, and sit there and talk to him for two or three hours.  Then, I would take my butt back home, take me a little blue pill, and pass out.  (Bear in mind, I had actually stopped drinking at this time because, well, while I may have not been smart about my alcohol intake, I knew that drugs and alcohol DO NOT mix and I was scared.  See, that just shows you...I was too chicken to die.)

So, I spent the next couple of years straightening my head out.  Eric made me flush the pills, said I didn't need them.  I do believe his exact words were, "You don't need that shit.  You do it on your own.  Flush them."  I don't think I hesitated for more than five seconds.  It just shows.....I knew I didn't need them.

2006 was a bad year.  I got sick.  I was diagnosed with endometriosis and spent most of my day's on the couch in a different apartment, in a different part of the city, still in the ghetto, still pissed off at the world.  There aren't really any pictures from that time because I look like I was dying.  No, really, I do.  My mom has a picture of me from Christmas and I look like I am ready to just be buried.  No color to my skin, dark circles under my eyes, rapidly losing weight.  It was a nightmare.  That was a time in my life where I wished to die.  I was in so much pain for so long, I just wanted to go to sleep and not wake up anymore.

2007 and 2008 were actually when my life started to turn around.  I got back into school.  I had a new zest for life.  I kept to myself and my very close friends.  I had managed to get rid of a whole bunch of "friends" when I dropped out of college-go figure! I took things one step at a time.  I really thought about things and I concentrated on my part time job and my school.

2009 was hard. Eric went back to IL earlier in that year and we were sorting things out between us.  I spent a lot of time reading and crying and writing after he left, trying to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do.  Sometimes I think two people can't figure things out when the other is in their face all the time.  I think sometimes two people just need to breathe in their own space for a while.  That time was dark, but it helped.  Sometimes, you just need to do you for awhile.

March 2010 Age 26 (almost 27)

The last half of 2009 until the summer of 2011 (a month before Lynzi was born to be exact)  I lived with a girl from my partying days and was finishing school.  I had a job that I clocked in 25-30 hours a week and full course loads.  I was busy.  I was up to my eyeballs in school.  I LOVED IT!  I was enjoying life so much for the first time in I think ever.  I felt like I could BREATHE!  It was nice to be able to enjoy things and be comfortable in my own skin.  Eric had proposed, we were doing great, school was great, and I had learned to deal with set backs calmly and rationally instead of trying to find the answers at the bottom of a bottle or in a pill or in people.

I got pregnant in October of 2010 with Lynzi and while Eric and I were happy, scared, freaked out, etc. my roommate decided to be less than happy.  That "friendship"  (To this day, I don't even think we ever had one.) quickly deteriorated and June of 2011 I moved out of that apartment, in with Eric to a new apartment (yea, I moved A LOT) and Lynzi came in July of 2011.  We got married in April of 2012 and the rest is history.

April 2013 Age: 29

I did a lot of work in my twenties to get me to where I am today.  The first half was kind of crappy, but I believe I needed to go through all of that to be where I am today.  I like myself today.  I can deal with things today that I wouldn't have been able to deal with ten years ago.  I have my moments, but I can quickly assess things and get back on track.

I never gave up.  I always dug down deep and pushed.  I would find that little part of me that isn't a quitter and I would bring her to the surface and she would help me through.

Thank God for that little part that did so much.

I am ripping a Band-Aide off today, a Band-Aide that I strategically placed years ago.  As I began contemplating how I was going to go about writing about these years, that's what I determined it would feel like.  It is safe to say that I spent the first half of my twenties recovering from my teenage years (Or, well, trying to recover) and I never really got the hang of it until a few years ago.  There are going to be things written here that are very real and will probably throw some of you for a loop.  I have not always been sunshine and roses (Okay, so, sometimes I'm still not, and that's okay.) and some of you are going to read the following and say, "I had no idea!"  The vast majority of you that will say that probably are who I graduated from high school with.  My teenage years and my twenties are how I became.  It is how we all become.  I have no shame and I am real.  I am real because of my story.

As I said last week, I always knew I was different.  This really didn't start bothering me until I hit my teens.  I was awkward.  I was a mess on the inside.  I spent most of my days trying to just get through them.  As I started nearing my high school graduation, I couldn't wait to get out of the town I grew up in.  I had a small handful of friends and they helped, but I knew I didn't belong where I was.  I felt that there was something greater for me out there.  I wasn't sure what, and, if I would have known then what I know now, I would have cooled my jets and hung around for a while longer.  However, the flip side of that is, I probably wouldn't be married to E or have L so, it is safe to say, the road I took is the road I was meant to take.  Remember: all signs along the way point to your destination.  You just have to know how to interpret them and how to survive them.

I never fit in.  I know most teenagers say that, but I really didn't.  I was so much more than I appeared to be and I stifled it.  I forced it down and away.  If I were to have been the real me, I wouldn't have survived.  However, even this didn't save me from the name-calling, the teasing, the whispers behind my back.  I learned later in life that your enemies can see right through you.  They know what to do, they know what to say, and all you have to do is just exist.  That is what I did:  I existed.  I stayed very close to my group of friends (who were classified as outcasts just like I was) and I waded the water's of high school with them.  They were my solace and my comfort.  I knew they all had my back and they did, just like I had theirs.

I would lie awake in bed at night and pray the morning wouldn't come.  I didn't actually want to die, I just wanted to sleep until college.  However, the morning would come and I would go back to school and sit in class and will the hours away until I could go to work or go home.  I could never get out of the door's fast enough at the end of the day.  (Who am I kidding, no one could wait, but I was rushing off for different reasons.)  I felt suffocated.  I couldn't breathe in that building.  It was so much work to be someone other than myself.  No one made me do it.  It was my choice.  I suffered greatly for it.

The only people I could be myself around was my close knit group of friends.  They are still my friends today if that tells you anything.  Through all of things that I have been through, they remained, like a heartbeat. I could hear it in the distance when I was drowning in my own life.  I would crawl towards that sound, always.  It never failed me.

I had a couple of boyfriends during high school and I am not entirely sure they even knew who I was.  I mean, I didn't, how could they? The relationship would go on for awhile and then it would be over.  I would be devastated and crawl into a hole inside of myself and blame myself for everything.  It was the only way I could make sense of things.  My mantra was (and this was for almost ten years I heard this every day in my head):  "It is your fault.  You aren't good enough.  Look at what you did.  You are a sorry excuse for a human being."

I graduated high school (finally!) and started the local junior college in the fall. Late that summer, I plunged head first into an abyss that took me over half of my twenties to resurface from.

August 19, 2001.

I lost a friend.  I lost a friend five minutes from my house.  Although, I don't think she realized she was five minutes from my house.  I have often asked myself what would be different now if she would have showed up in my driveway instead of being involved in an accident that took her life.

This friend dated a friend of mine and they were on the outs.  She was genuine.  She was a genuine and good person.  Her and I had several conversations about life and what-not.  She used to come into where I worked.  She would shop, I would work, and we would talk.  The night before she died, she wanted to spend the night with me because she didn't want to be alone.  I had to work the next day at 5am so I told her that the next night, the night she died, she could.

I blamed myself for her death for eight years.  She reached out to me and I turned her away and she died.  At least, that's how the series of thoughts went in my head for eight years.

The cliff that I had been teetering on for five years got stepped off of that day.  I gave in.  I dove into an abyss that would swallow me and not let me go for eight years.

I just couldn't cope.  No one knew how to help me cope.  I pushed people away.  I wanted to get away, disappear, forget, get lost somewhere else other than where I was at.  It was too much to be in that town.  It was too much to drive on that road.  It was too much of everything all at once and not knowing what to do about any of it.

After a year and a half of feeling like I was living in my own personal hell, I left.  I packed my stuff up out of my bedroom at my parent's and left.  At the time, I thought it was the right thing to do.  I wanted to start over where no one knew who I was, where no one knew what I had been through.

I transferred to a university in St. Louis and began attending college there in January of 2003 where I spent the vast majority of my time still drowning, still lost, and still hopeless.


And that, my readers, is my teens.  My friends know of my struggles and always commented on how, to the naked eye, you couldn't tell by looking at me that anything was wrong.  No, you couldn't.  As I sat going through photos the other day for this blog post, I was astounded at the smile on my face in most of the photos.  A smile is easy to do, it's the eyes that tell a person's story; they hold all of the emotion, the soul, of a person.  I may have been having a grand time at the moment the photo was snapped, but my eyes don't match the expression on my face most of the time.

My awkwardness, my vulnerability, my inner mantra from my teenage years; they all went with me into my twenties, along with a lot of other baggage, and not to mention all the baggage I picked up along the way to my mid-twenties.    It is my twenties that I am most proud of surviving.  As the years go on, it will be my twenties that I will always reflect on and use to teach my daughter right from wrong and good from bad.

Thank you for reading.

Until next time,

Welcome to week two of The Month of 30 Series!  If you are a first time visitor, go here to find out more about the series.  If you missed last week, you can catch up here!

For a very long time, I didn't really laugh.  I was a very serious person for various reasons.

It took me a long time (and much work from my husband-thanks babe) to get me to loosen up. Someone once said not to take life too seriously, you won't get out alive anyway.  It took me year's to wrap my head around that.  Life was going to go on, regardless of my state of mind, and I needed to make the best of it.  Once I got my head around that, it all started to get a little better.  The best parenting advice I ever got was not to lose my sense of humor, I was going to need it.  We are almost two years in to parenthood and, let me tell you, laughter has helped immensely.

This week I have broken up certain aspects of the past thirty years and categorized them.  There are still thirty things, but they are more like short blips, stories, etc. that I find humorous or that happened and I can laugh about it now.  Get comfortable and get ready to laugh.  (And go ahead and laugh at my expense-it's okay. Some of these are kind of embarrassing to admit, but they are funny nonetheless.)

Parenthood

1.  I cannot count how many times my child has pooped, peed, and thrown up on me.  One time in particular was when she was still "new" (probably not even six weeks old) and she had a poopy diaper.  I went to change her, of course.  Well, she wasn't done.  At all.  I will spare you the details. I got the short end of the deal on that one. :-/  She also ruined one of my shirts.

2.  When L gets mad, it's kind of hard to keep a straight face.  This seriously may be a parenting fail, but the kid is so darn cute when she does her "open mouth, silent cry" that I have to stifle my laughter when I comfort her. Sometimes I ask her in the middle of her open mouth, silent cry if she is mad.  It usually comes out like this:  "*big deep breath*  YEEEAAAAAAAAAA!"

3.  I forgot to put a diaper on L after I changed her once in the middle of the night.  I took the old one off, cleaned her up, buttoned her sleeper back up, and put her back to bed.  Yea, she woke up twenty minutes later and that resulted in new bedding, a new sleeper, and this time, a DIAPER.

4.  Taking a shower with a toddler present in the bathroom results in three cats, a toddler, and every dry surface in the bathroom to be soaked by the time the shower is done.

5.  My daughter likes to yank my shirt down in various stores.  I'm sure the loss prevention people love seeing me come in the store with my kid. *sigh*

6.  The doctor that delivered L wore a gold chain and smelled of Old Spice.  (Trust me, that wasn't my normal doctor.) I now have an aversion to Old Spice.  And gold chains.

L Antics

1.  L has an obsession with putting skirts, pants, and shorts on her head.  Sometimes she just wears them around her neck, other times she wears them like a hat.  Yes, I have pictures.

2.  When L gets really excited about something, her mouth makes the perfect O shape and she says, "Oooooo WHAT IS DAT!?"

3.  She could mosh with the best of them.  That's what her dancing looks like.

4.  She used to always fill her diaper on the way to Wal-Mart, forcing Mommy to make a beeline for the bathroom to clean her up and change her outfit.  And sometime's Mommy's shirt. :-/

5.  L is never allowed to have honey ever again.  She had croup at one point and I had read that if you give a teaspoon of honey to a toddler, that it would help coat their throat, thus suppressing the coughing so she could get some relief.  Well, I gave her a half a teaspoon and she bounced off the walls for three hours.  NEVER. AGAIN.

Driving

1.  The first day I got my driver's license, I ditched my car, and did $1500 worth of damage.  To only the underside of the car.  Making a left turn.  In a 1994 Mercury Topaz.  I was going to visit a boy that I liked.  Oh, did I mention I ditched it right in front of his driveway? :)

2.  I backed into a pole I didn't see.  A huge pole.  Like, I can't believe I missed that.  I gave myself whiplash.  Thankfully, L wasn't with me.  My car now has a huge black patch on my red bumper. :-/

3.  I totaled a car by simply deploying the air bags.  (I rear ended a car in front of me and it hit the sensors on the front of my car just right that it deployed the air bags.  That was the only thing wrong with it.  No major damage.  It was a 1999 Grand Am.....My wreck was in 2012....My parents bought the car for 1500 bucks.....deployed air bags=totaled car )

4.  Every time I get a new car, I do what I call the "Cup Holder Test".  If I can fit a 44 oz. fountain soda in the cup holder, it's a good car.  If I can't, I hate the car and I wish I never would have bought it.  (I have since learned to bring a 44 oz. fountain soda with me when I test drive.)

5.  The first new car I ever bought myself was a 2005 Chevy Cobalt.  It was red and her name was Mia.  I bought her because of the commercial they used to advertise it.  Yea, not one of my finer moments.

6.  I sing and dance in the car.  I don't try to hide it either.  My favorite place to do it is stuck in traffic.  If people notice, the crazier I get with it.

Household

1.  I am forbidden to use anything but a butter knife or steak knife in the house.  I slit my palm open several years ago on a butcher knife and scared the crap out of E.  He banned my usage of knives after that and I abide by that rule.

2.  I have to climb on top of our counters to get into our cabinets.  Yes, I have a step stool.  I am not allowed to use it if E isn't home.  I fall off of them when unsupervised.

3.  I killed a Peace Lily.  That we got when E's grandmother died.  Peace Lily's are almost indestructible plants.  I watered it too much. When I want to plant something or buy flower's for the front porch, E just says, "Peace Lily", and I abruptly shut up.

4.  We have what we call "Kitty NASCAR" every night at about 11pm.  Our three cats chase each other in a circle starting from the living room, into the kitchen, down the short hall, and back into the living room.  They do it for an hour.

5.  I can't work a recliner.  Seriously.  I get stuck in them and end up just climbing out of it without putting the leg rest down.  I can't operate the handle most of the time.

6.  I will bust out into random dance moves all over this house.  My favorite place is at the kitchen sink doing dishes.  I always have a song in my head.

7.  Our bed is too tall for me.  I pretty much have to launch myself into bed at night.  I won't let E buy me steps or a stool because I will feel like I am a dog.

Random

1.  I always sing, in my head, "Fat guuuy in a little coooaat" when I put on my coat.  I sing it just like Chris Farley, too.

2.  This video.

3.  This website.

4.  I have a friend that threatens to put on a cow suit and come dance outside my window when I am having a bad day.  That's a friend right there.

5.  There were a lot of nights I don't remember from my early 20s, but I do remember having a party at my apartment one night and a police helicopter flying over and spotlighting the woods behind the complex.  I got so freaked out (which was probably the stupid amounts of alcohol in my system) that I curled in a ball on the couch and was trying to think of what to tell my parents when I had to call them from jail.  Sidenote:  They weren't after me.  They were looking for a burglary suspect.  Also not one of my finer moments.

6.  When I was in college and a summer RA (Resident Assistant) I, and a couple other's, would sneak over the fence to the pool and go for late night swim's.  One time I misjudged my landing and I rolled my ankle.  We walked to the pool.  It was on the other side of campus. :-/  I also had to file an accident report with the university since I was on call. :-/ Sidenote:  My boss was pretty cool about it.  She thought the pain of a rolled ankle would be enough to make sure it never happened again.  It didn't.

Alright folks, there you have it!  I hope I at least made some of you laugh, smile, and/or reminisce about some of the things that have make you laugh over the years.  Stay tuned later this week when I share my teenage year's with you.

Until next time,

Hello and welcome to the first week of The Month of 30 series!  I am so glad you are interested in who I really am, where I have been, where I want to go, and how I got to be where I am today.  If you are a first time visitor to the blog, please go here to find out what all of this is about!

Today, we are going to talk about things I love.  Some of the following are obvious, but there are some that really make me me and, if what I have been told is correct, they are some of things that people love the most about me.  So, grab a cup of your drink of choice, settle in, and let's get to it!
These are in no particular order:

1.  (This one is a given) My daughter, who wasn't supposed to be here.  You can read more about that here.

2.  My husband.  I think I got pretty darn lucky if ya ask me.  Actually, I am one of the luckiest girls on the planet.  :)  He's my best friend, my biggest fan (next to my mom, of course), and still thinks I'm pretty after a really long day with our daughter. Ha! You will get to find out more about him and our relationship later this month. :)

3.  My "boys".  Before I became a mother and a wife, I was an early-20s, soul searching, college dropout, and depressed girl. It was recommended that I get something to help me get out of bed every day.  Well, one led to two and then, heck, ya can't have two and not have three!  So, I have three boys...