Envision

Before I start putting myself out there, I think there are some basic things you should know about me.


1. I just turned 24 years old.
2. I married my best friend on Valentine's Day 2011.
3. I have two incredible step kids - no biological kids of my own though.
4. I have family that I love.
5. I can actually say that I like my husband's side of the family.
6. I have a job - something that I am thankful for every day. Even if it's not my dream job, it still pays the bills.
7. I have a car that's turning 3 model years old this year - was purchased brand new. Only 3 years left on the loan!!
8. I live in the country in a 10 year old house.
9. Finances are paycheck to paycheck at times, but the bills are paid and there is food in the house.
10. I have some college experience.


Doesn't sound too bad, huh? The only issue is it's NOTHING like what I had envisioned for my life.






Turning 24:
I think this is really the only thing that I PLANNED on happening and it did. For the record, I plan to get a lot older too.


My husband:
I grew up in West Virginia until the middle of my freshman year of high school and had always considered that my home after I moved out of state. I had always pictured myself moving back once college was done. So, in all honesty, I had pictured myself ending up with someone back home around my age and settling down. Instead, life gave me Brian. Anyone that knows us knows that we are polar opposites in many ways but we are also nearly identical in other ways. For example, we don't agree on politics or music (most of the time), but we have almost identical views on religion. I think our ages have quite a bit to do with it seeing as he's 13 years older than me. We also grew up entirely different - almost like it's different time periods sometimes. It was a rocky start, I would be crazy to say that it wasn't. It took us a while to work out a lot of the kinks in our relationship and honestly, they weren't all worked out before we got married. Hell, they still aren't all worked out now! But we have definitely worked on a lot of things. Now the only time we don't get along too well is during that time of the month where I don't have any patience. All in all, we balance each other out pretty well, I think.


Kids:
I had always pictured myself adopting kids... a lot of them. I have always believed that there are kids out there that no matter what has happened in their lives they deserve people that will love them, people that will take care of them, people that will educate, clothe, and feed them - unconditionally. I figured the only way I can make a difference in those kids' lives is to be the one that takes responsibility for them and does everything that a mother should do.


As I said, I don't have any biological children. And at this point, I don't have any adopted children. But, Brian has two sons that came from his previous marriage... they were 3 and 5 years old when I met them and are now 7 and 9.  I help take care of them, feed them (even though sometimes they may not like what I fix), clothe them (these kids have more clothes than Brian and I put together!). I take them to the doctor when they're sick. I carry their health insurance - it's more practical for me to get it through my employer rather than Brian to get it from his. I try to make it to every school event.. I think there's only been a couple I couldn't make it to. I, up until recently, was involved with their cub scouts. I helped their dad coach baseball for 2 years in a row now even though I initially didn't know very much about the game. I try to get them involved in as many different things as possible so they can at least know what's out there in case they really like something. One or both of them have done football, baseball, soccer, wrestling, and tennis. The oldest has even taken an art class through Clark State. It's amazing to see how similar the boys are but yet still be so incredibly different. It's been a privilege to be with them and watch them grow.


Family:
This one I will get more in depth in another blog... all I will say is I have a HUGE extended family. All together, I have one full brother, one half brother, 3 step brothers, and one step sister - with me in the middle of all ages. They're all spread out in the eastern part of the country now or will be shortly, with one step brother and his wife and son moving to Ohio from Colorado. There's family that I love and will do anything for and there is family that I haven't spoken to in almost 8 years - by choice. There are days when I second guess that choice, but in the end, I believe it is what is best for myself.


Career choice/college:
Teachers from elementary school all the way to high school ask you what you want to be when you grow up. At first, I wanted to be a vet because of my love for animals. Then, as I got older, I decided I wanted to work with whales and dolphins and other marine life, so I decided to be a marine biologist. But... someone (I can't remember who) asked me if I would be able to put a sick or dying animal down if I had to. It took some consideration, trying to weigh the pros and cons, but ultimately I wouldn't be able to do it. So I had to rethink my future. Eventually I settled on being a lawyer, mainly because I will argue until I'm blue in the face, especially if I think I'm right.


I actually pursued the lawyer career in high school. I took Latin since it's the root of most legal terms. I took the minimum amount of science classes and managed to graduate without taking chemistry. I took the advanced math classes all the way up to Calculus in my senior year. But my passion in high school was the arts. Not the kind of art where you draw things, I can't draw anything to save my life, but choir and theater. I graduated with 5 choir credits and 2 theater credits for a total of 7 arts credits in 4 years. Everyone in my senior class talked about how many colleges they applied to and all the responses they were waiting for. How many did I apply to? One. There was ONE school I wanted to get into... The Ohio State University. It was close enough to home to where my parents could be there if I needed them but yet still far enough away that I could maintain my independence. I was completely ecstatic when I got my acceptance letter! I jumped up and down. I screamed. I danced. I was elated. Graduation came and went. Later that summer, I went to OSU for orientation weekend and picked out my classes, saw my dorm, even met my roommate.


But things beyond my control happened - I'll get deeper into that in another blog - and I ended up not going to school there. Instead, I enrolled in Clark State Community College for their Physical Therapy Assistant program. (Nothing even close to being a lawyer, I know...) Everything was going great... until chemistry class. I had intended on being a lawyer, so I didn't take chemistry in high school. If I had, I wouldn't have had to take it in college. Science and I don't particularly get along that well. In the end, chemistry won. Instead of taking the class over again, I decided to change my major - again - this time to Accounting. I had been really good with math, so I figured it would be something that would come relatively easy to me. The math wasn't the issue... it was the job statistics. There were thousands of people with accounting degrees that weren't actually doing anything with their degree. I didn't want to have a degree that I really couldn't do anything with, so I changed it back to PTA and decided to give chemistry another shot. Didn't work... again. By that time, I was so disheartened and disappointed in myself. That feeling coupled with life in general  - details to come in another blog - led to my eventual drop out of college. I had worked in a party store, a pet store, a fast food place (something I swore to myself would NEVER happen), and a car dealership. So I didn't really have many career choices at that point. When the dealership I was working at closed in 2008, I answered an ad on Careerbuilder for Assurant Specialty Property and have been there ever since. So I have gone from wanting to be a vet to working in a call center in 24 years. My goal is to work as many different functions as I can and then work my way up into management. Hopefully my experience with the company will make up for not having a degree. 


Car choice:
I started out with a POS car, like I'm sure everyone did. But this car was REALLY a POS. It was a '92 Chrysler LeBaron convertible - purchased for $200.00. The top was broken to where it wouldn't come down. The glass in the top wasn't completely attached anymore so my dad, being the "genius" he is, put black duct tape around the glass to attach it back and then put a 2x4 in the back of the car to prop the glass back up to where it needed to be. There had to be some seals that weren't sealed because every time it rained, my floor filled up with water. So when I had to go somewhere in a hurry and didn't have time to suck all the water out with a shop vac, I took flip flops with me and rolled up my pant legs. I also kept a pillow in the car so if the seat was wet, I could sit on the pillow without getting my butt wet. It also had an oil leak in it so I was putting a quart of oil in it every week or so. To top it off, I was in an accident in this car about 2-3 weeks after I bought it and went under the back of a Tacoma. It crushed the front of the car. I drove it home from work that day and my dad took a chain, hooked one end of it to the car and wrapped the other end around a tree, got in the car and floored it in reverse which ended up at least pulling the frame back out to where it was supposed to. He then proceeded to get on the hood of the car with a mallet and pound the hood back into place and get the dents out. As goofy as he looked doing it, it worked for the most part. The driver side door wouldn't shut all the way to hit the little button inside the door frame to turn the interior lights off, so he took 6 pennies, stacked them up, and duct taped them to the door. When the door shut, the pennies pushed in the button and turned the lights off. But the best part was the headlights. They had been broken in the accident and wouldn't stay up, so my dad found the flattest rocks he could find and put them under the headlights to prop them up. Needless to say, I only drove that car for about 6-7 months.


The next car was a '99 Chrysler LHS. In all reality, it wasn't a bad looking car. It had heated leather seats, a 6-disc CD player, and a sunroof. But, something had broke in it and the defrost wouldn't turn off and it was stuck on the highest heat setting. It was FABULOUS in the winter. Absolutely miserable in the summer.


After that one was a '05 Ford Mustang - the first year they had changed the body style back to look like the old ones. There are lots of details around this car that I'm sure will be in another blog, but a long story short... once I learned how to drive it, I LOVED it. I hadn't wanted to buy it in the first place... it was a completely unnecessary, frivolous purchase for someone that absolutely didn't deserve it. But, anyway, once I got the car back, it was the most fun car I've ever had. It's when I really started enjoying to drive. It became my way to clear my mind... filling up the tank and just driving without having a set destination. I will definitely have another one, hopefully sooner than later.


My current car is a '10 Ford Fusion. Once Brian and I got serious and I realized I would be driving the boys around a lot, I knew I needed to get a 4-door car. Trying to fit 2 kids and their booster seats into the back of a Mustang just wasn't working too well. My Mustang also scared me to death to drive in the winter out where our house is because they don't get plowed often and if I was going to live there, I needed to get something to drive better in the snow. My Fusion was one of the first 2010 models to be delivered to the dealership where I bought it so there wasn't a whole lot of rebates on it and I had about $3000 negative equity in my Mustang, so the payments on my car are pretty high. But, it's reliable and it will last for a long time - well after the loan is paid off - so it's worth it.


Living in the country:
I have always lived in some kind of city or town ever since I was born. I've moved around... a lot... but it was always within city limits. The first time I came to my husband's home, before we left he told me you could see it from the car dealership we both worked at. We got in the car and it seemed like it took forever to get here. It is so incredibly quiet and peaceful out here. But I really miss the convenience of living in the city and at times I really miss the hustle and bustle too. But besides that, there's loads of room out here for the kids to play and do whatever. One has a 4 wheeler and the other has a dirt bike. We have overgrown grass in the back yard with paths cut in it so the kids can ride. There's so much space that we were even able to have baseball practice in the front yard this year.


Finances:
Yes, finances are paycheck to paycheck at times, but honestly, isn't everyone? I have recently taken a new position at work that comes with a pretty nice raise that I'm waiting to start, so I'm hoping to be able to start saving some money again. I would also like to make more trips back home to see family, even most of the ones that live there are the ones that I don't really have anything to do with.




The point, I guess, is that nothing I have planned out for my life has actually turned out like it was supposed to. But when I sit and look at my life, I really don't want to change anything about it. That doesn't mean that I won't get irritated at times or get frustrated at times or complain some times. But overall,

I'm happy.