A (Belated) Introduction

I've been blogging for almost two months now and I only just realized that I wasn't posting to the communities I had sought out.  As of two minutes ago, I saw how to do this.  As I was looking through the categories, I noticed the Introductions and realized I had not introduced myself either.  So, belatedly, here it is :)

I am a married thirty-seven year old mom of four; Ocean, 11, Ethan, 10, Aaron, 7 and Hunter, 3. In April I graduated with my BA from the U of Calgary after four years of being a full-time student and part to full-time employee. Originally I returned to school with one goal - get my degree and then to law school. We had relocated the previous August (2012) and only took possession of our house on the 20th - I had a week to get the house in order before school started back up for the kids and for myself - and it didn't happen.


We had also moved the eldest kids from a French Immersion school to an English (and Catholic!) school and they needed a lot of help to catch up.  I found an amazing care-giver for Hunter so that was one bright, wonderful, guilt-free thing. 

During the past year, I realized that my spouse was out of the house for a lot of hours.  He left between 6:30 and 7:00 in the morning and returned anywhere between 5:00 and 7:00 at night.  I began to think "I can't work those hours..."  With all the additional help the kids needed each night from me, I was having difficulty keeping up with my own studies and life was just plain difficult. I should have applied to law school in October.  I couldn't see how I was going to manage the additional workload, so I didn't apply.  Fast-forward to April, 2013.


Looking for a new job wasn't going so well. Having been employed for the majority of my adult life (with some obvious gaps), I looked for work along the lines of my experience.  Turns out I should have taken a business degree - but I hadn't planned to use this one anyway.  Whoops.  The thing was that I didn't have enough experience - everyone wanted social media experience and I had painstakingly avoided that for four years. I had figured it would be difficult to find care for all four of my children during the summer so I had kind of decided to take the summer off anyway.

However, I opened a Twitter account, started using LinkedIn and reconnected with people on Facebook (I'm baaaack!).  Then I saw an ad for a dream job - assistant editor for a small newspaper  (and it turns out I also should have pursued that English degree - I took sociology with a criminology concentration and a philosophy minor - because that would have been good for LAW).  I reviewed the post, I had this, I had that... they wanted two years of blogging experience.  I was completely inexperienced for any job I had looked at.  Can you see ... frustrated?

I turned around and started a blog.  Then, Hunter's care-giver, the one he stumbled out of bed each morning and said "Can I go to Kerri's today?", amazing, wonderful Kerri, told me she was going back to school herself - and her last day would be the end of June.  Sigh.  I've been looking for that silver lining and I think I've found it - here.  I've always wanted to write and now I suppose this is the opportunity.  I've also started getting my home organized so I can concentrate on organizing my very busy life - it's been almost a year - and I'm blogging that along too at theorganizationevolution.blogspot.com. (I'm not proud of what it was - but I'm proud of what it's become- pictures, hideous to beautiful pictures) I'm also enjoying spending time with my kids.  I couldn't just relax after what I've been through - I refuse to stop...doing...something more. 

So that's me, an extremely long-winded introduction perhaps but succinct was never my forte - that's what I got Twitter for :).  Not sure if I plug that here too so: @DeirdresBA and @themomevolution and The Mom Evolution on Facebook pages.