More Than You Wanted to Know

10 quick facts about me:

1. I met my husband at a fraternity party.

2. We have one son and three boxers.

3. I overshare.

4. I am the oldest sister of four girls.

5. I like Harry Connick Jr. and Michael Buble.

6. We live in a suburb of Seattle.

7. I plan to write a book...someday.

8. I am a procrastinator.

9. I am addicted to Facebook and America's Next Top Model.

10. I can't say "no" to ice cream.



Who the heck am I anyway?

I'm always asking myself that. I used to go through phases. High school jock. Runner. Motivated corporate career woman. I had a rather lengthy Martha period in which I hosted parties for the Oscars, jack-o-lantern carving, gingerbread house-making, birthdays, Christmas cocktails, scrapbooking, card-making. You name it, I was using it as an excuse for a party. The final extravaganza was a 30th birthday celebration for me and my friend. Two weeks later, a little plastic stick revealed why I felt like I had the flu for a month. I am a wife, a mom and a writer. I think I'll stick with that.



Who is Mr. T?

Mr. T is my husband. I met him at a frat party during a frigid winter in Pullman, Wash. He was at Washington State University visiting a mutual friend -- his best friend, who now lives with his wife and two boys eight minutes away from us. Mr. T came back to Pullman the following year to finish school and the rest, as they say, is history. Mr. T is my best friend and my own personal Geek Squad. (He works for "a large software company based in Redmond, Wash.")



Who is T Junior?

Mr. T and I tried for nearly four years to have a baby. Meanwhile, we had become quite involved in showing our boxers. Just when we finally decided to be childless, crazy dog people, I found out I was pregnant. T Junior was born in May 0f 2008. He is what our parents call an "easy" baby, but we have nothing to compare him to, so it all seems hard to us. The most difficult thing so far (other than sleep, because come on, that is a given), was when he contracted salmonella sepsis right around his five-month birthday. It can be deadly. That's all I'm going to write here. I blogged about it, but that didn't do the experience justice. I have post-traumatic stress from the whole thing and guilt. What can I say? I'm a mom.



Who are Annie, AJ and Lucy?

These are our boxers. They each have their own distinct personality, and T Junior is just starting to interact with them. The best way to describe them is by making reference to characters from Winnie the Pooh: Annie is Eyeore, AJ is a strange Piglet-Tigger hybrid and Lucy is Rabbit. Annie and AJ are retired show dogs. Lucy is a mere two-points away from her championship. You can read more about them at Trillium Boxers.



What is my writing background?

It still sounds strange to me to call myself a writer. I started out as a newspaper copy editor in 1999, then became the features editor in 2001 for a medium-sized newspaper in Bellevue, Wash., called the Eastside Journal (later, it combined with the South County Journal and became the King County Journal). I left the paper for a corporate job in 2005.

During three long years as an editor at PACCAR (an international Fortune 200 truck manufacturing company based in Bellevue), I also had the opportunity to do some freelance writing for the King County Journal. And, for almost one year to the day, I wrote and took pictures for the short-lived, but well-loved advertising section in the Seattle Times called Shop SE. Recently, I have been freelancing for City University of Seattle's alumni newsletter, Velocity.


Now, I work two days a week as the copy writer for a small, successful software and DVD publisher in Renton, Wash. I write the text you see on the packaging. I love it.


I always wanted to be the one doing the writing. I remember dreaming about it in high school. "Someday," I thought, "I'll write a book." No book yet. But I refuse to let go of that goal.



Where did the name Sanity Department come from?

I got the idea for Sanity Department when I was pregnant. I was working as the internal communications editor at PACCAR at the time. I was huge. I was tired and emotional. And I was sick of writing about heavy-duty trucks.


The word "department" came from my surroundings then. Human Resources Department. Accounting Department. Marketing Department. Legal Department. There are a lot of departments in corporate America. Me and my co-workers got together every day to vent about work and life. It made me think that companies should have a "Sanity Department," or an organized place where employees could go to let off some steam.


Growing up, I kept a journal off and on, but I never could stick with it. The blog format appealed to me because it was an instant community of like-minded people. The problem with a journal is that nobody reads it. I needed to bounce my experiences off the brains of other mommies. I wanted to make sure I was normal and I thought writing could help me keep sane. I was right.