back on campus

Guess who's going back to school? After a 9 year hiatus, I am re-enrolled at Boise State University. I'll continue to run my interior design business to make some extra money, but I've decided to channel most of what little spare time I have into getting my degree.

Now before I tell you what my plans are, let me tell you a little bit about my history:

My mom was widowed when I was only 4 and my brother 2. She had once worked as a realtor, but it was now the late 70's and the housing market was belly up. She had no education beyond high school, and no real plans as to what to do. I remember times being very tough for several years. We went on welfare initially, but she had too much pride to do that for long. She worked in the layaway department at Woolworths. She worked evenings at a catering company. She cleaned rental houses. She shampooed carpets. She worked for a rancher helping him during branding time. But nothing seemed to be steady enough or pay well enough. Finally, mom ended up getting a good secretarial job at a sand and gravel company-- a company which she eventually ended up buying and turning into a success. Her last 10 years of life were spent retired, doting on her children and grandchildren, and happily traveling the world on her boat.

Still, although her life had a good ending--those tough years were tough--on all of us. My mom had to put my brother and I in daycare to be able to take the secretarial job. There we were often mistreated by the owners' teenage children (which we were always too afraid to tell our mom about or I'm sure she would have put us somewhere different). As I got older, I remember Mom coming home from work around 6:30 every evening and looking SO frazzled and tired. There never seemed to be time to make meals, so we ate out at fast food and pizza restaurants constantly. Because she was so depended on at work, she couldn't take time off during the day to come see school plays or stay home with us when we were sick. And her weekend time was usually channeled into making some kind of a dent on the enormous amount of house and yard work that always seemed to be piling up. We always knew she loved us more than anything, but it's still hard to build much family unity or to keep your kids out of trouble in only an hour or two a day. Lucky for me, one of the lessons I took from growing up in that situation was: ALWAYS HAVE A BACK UP LIFE PLAN----you never know what's going to happen.

So, for that reason, I've maintained my design business for the past 11 years and had always planned on going back to school when the boys were older (don't we ALL want to do that?!). I do love interior design, but the work seems to either be feast or famine and I need something a little more steady. Also, I want to find a career that will allow me to work from home as much as possible. My first and most important job is and will always be being mom to my babies. It's not their fault that their family got split in two, and I will work with every ounce of strength, energy, smarts, and talent I can squeeze out of me to make sure they get the mothering time that is so essential to raising good kids. It's going to mean a year of public school for Zane and Ethan, but since I've homeschooled them from kindergarten, they always were curious to see what they were missing out on! We're truly trying to go at this turn in our life with positive attitudes and a sense of adventure. Each night as we kneel for family prayer, we say "Heavenly Father, things aren't exactly as we want them to be right now, but please help us to be brave, to see the many blessings that are around us, and to take good care of one another." So far that prayer seems to be working!

What is it that I will be doing in school? Will I be a surgeon? An astrophysicist? A politician? A lumberjack? (I am laughing at all these choices by the way!).........

I'm happy to announce to you faithful blog readers that I will be returning not as the German/Secondary Education major I was 9 years ago, but as an English major with a writing emphasis. Writing has always been my first love, and I do have a talent for it--even though it may not always be evident in blog format! I know this degree has a lot of flexibility in it--from teaching to freelance writing to editing--and the good thing about writing is that it can be done from HOME! So give me two years (maybe less-- I get to start as a senior) and I'll soon have a cute picture to post of me holding a diploma.

Now, come on-- tell me how brave and wise I am :)!