I’m a woman of many hats. Introductions of me are always dependent on the situation I find myself. If I was meeting someone for the first time in say, Kansas City*, with no one in my life around us – I don’t know what I’d say after my name.

 

I’m a stay-at-home parent for my three children and three dogs and have been since I became pregnant with DSI. I love all six of them. Different kinds of love for each of them and believe for me there has been no better teachers in my life than my kids and then my dogs.  Being a student of your child or dog, is wonderfully humbling. Most of the wonderfully humbling, sometimes monstrously humbling.

 

On the other side of being a stay-at home mom, I also work with my husband on a mobile start-up that has us biting our fingernails every other hour with worry over sustainability over its own costs and ability to support our family. That’s on the every other hour where we don’t get some form of encouragement from the universe – usually in disguise of a new or satisfied customer – that we just need to hold on a little longer before we can exhale.

 

I’m an elected public servant in my town and I’m counting down the days until my term is over but can see the spiritual growth I’ve undergone because of my serving and for that I am sincerely grateful.

 

I’m an empath. It makes it difficult to make any decision because I see all the sides of every situation. I cry at everything. Weddings, births, commercials, strangers first-day-of-school photos. When I’m sad, angry, happy, frustrated, in awe and in the flow. It’s one thing I’m trying to embrace about myself because I’ve hated it for so long and it’s not going anywhere. Time for me to live with it – to be alive with it.

 

I’m an actor. Most recently all community theater but I have been paid occasionally. It’s where I feel most accomplished and I haven’t done it officially in quite some time. Between us, I have put my skills to use once or twice in a meeting or phone call in the past year or so.

 

My single biggest hobby is writing though I again don’t partake in it nearly enough. I’ve written and been published for a few websites and again for occasional pay. I’m hoping Drama Dogs Disney gets me into the regular habit of writing my experiences and thoughts. When I’m able to go back a week or a year or several years and see where my head was at on a certain topic it’s much easier for me to see the path ahead.

 

And I’m a life-long fan of Disney. Particularly the theme parks. Grew up in Orange County, California and spent a large part of my childhood counting down my next trip to the Land. Once I was an adult, I was a regular annual passholder and loved to meet my other Disney pals there for just a bite of lunch. Upon moving to the east coast, DH and I became regular visitors to the World. We are now DVC members and on average go once a year. I suspect many entries here will be countdowns to our next trip and where I am in the planning process.

 

I’m also a lot of other things** but typically one of the above is how I’d introduce myself to someone – I’d just need to know first who THEY were before I decided which aspect would be most appropriate.  Isn’t everybody’s life though an attempt at mastery of the and/or? After all the reading (and crying at different readings) I can’t believe I’m even close to alone in this. Integrating everything we are into one amazing whole.

 

*I picked Kansas City when first writing this because it’s in the middle of the country and I don’t think I know anyone who lives there. But having now finished – I know if I met someone from Kansas City and they just sat silently waiting for me to say somethings before they offered a glimpse of who they were, I would mention that I worked with an inner-city non-profit in my late 20s that at one point sent me to Kansas City to coordinate an event. I got to visit the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and it was transformative. I also ate some really great bbq AND some really great Italian there. Not at the same meal though.

 

**80’s Pop/New Wave expert, 90’s Stand-Up Comedy expert, high school graduate, college drop-out, overweight, sister, former cat owner, daughter, plumber, lazy, blonde, movie collector, reality television fan, aunt, long-distance friend, Netflix subscriber, cook, science fiction nerd, biggest Adam Ant fanatic, artist, smart, and though I’ve never met Sir Mix-a-Lot, there’s a chance I’m the inspiration for “Baby Got Back.”