My life in a nutshell:

Graduate of Pullman High School. Pullman, Washington. Graduate of University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa.

I moved to Shelton in 1989 and had a position teaching high school English. Unfortunately, the woman who had been on maternity leave came back and, and as the principal and I didn't see eye to eye (when he told me I should kick someone off my literary magazine staff because they were a "problem," I asked to see his football roster), I was unable to find a teaching job anywhere else.

So then I started at House of Fabrics and was quickly promoted to Crafts Coordinator and Assistant Manager, which was a way-cool job until it was no longer fun; then I was abhorred by the fact that my raises were just keeping up with the increases in minimum wage and I quit to go through a series of other jobs.

I have now been with Arco for four+ years. I started as a cashier, then went to Olympia as a Facility Support Manager, then a manager. I returned to the store in Shelton in the fall of '97 as Manager and was promoted to Senior Manager in the winter of 98-99. Most of the time it's a great job-- it helps that we were on the chopping blocks until just last summer and I am one of those (with the help of my Supervisor and District Manager) who turned us around from a store that had always been in the red to one that made about $120,000 more profit this year than two years ago. As of late Winter/early Spring 2000, I'm back in the West Olympia store, next to Hwy 101 after the exit from I-5.

I acquired Spatula in 1990 when the dog I had rescued from the middle of the road ran away in a hailstorm and after weeks of not finding him (which my friend Jack blamed on the fact that the next day he was supposed to go to the doggie doctor to be fixed) picked up the best dog in the world as she was being loaded into the back of a truck to be taken to Olympia to be "dealt with." She was with me constantly until she tangled with a raccoon and came down with the very rare Coonhound Paralysis. We nursed her all summer long and it was so sad to come home when all she could do was lift her head and wag her tail. We had to put her down the same day we signed the papers for our house in August 1997. One of the best days and positively the worst day of my life.

I met Terry in 1991 when we were both involved in community theater one summer, but we didn't start dating until that fall. Then it only took him six and a half years to ask me to marry him.

I'd given up on that ever happening! But we did it June 26, 1999, in our back yard with a few friends and family present and it was exactly what we had both always wanted. We did some fixing up of our 1936 home, but I think this will be a lifelong project-- which I guess is a good thing, since we have vowed never to move again.