Lets Get Personal

So you may have just scratched the surface there in the About page. Here is where we get, well, personal.

I am from Bath, Michigan.
I moved to New Jersey as I was about the enter 5th grade. I found out while I was having dinner first the first time at Olive Garden. I still see that specific restaurant and laugh at how I cried over having to leave my 3rd/4th grade boyfriend.
I have played volleyball since I was in 3rd grade and hung up my shoes for the Rowan Volleyball due to family reasons in 2017.
I want to say the sport made me who I am, but I think my family and friends have molded me the most. Of course most of my friends and support came from my different volleyball families, so I will give volleyball that credit.

I have had two cats, and currently have an older australian/border collie who lives with my dad, and my own puppy who is a lab/pit mix. She is the cutest darn thing I have ever seen but of course I am biased.

If you are really interested in my story, continue reading to start from the beginning. I will gradually work on “completing the story” as it unfolds.

IN THE BEGINNING

I am originally from Bath, Michigan. Since most of you have probably never heard of it, it is right next to Lansing, the capital. Fancy right. Michigan State University was about 10 minutes away from me, so you bet my dad was up at 3 am getting things all ready for his tailgates. Even though we were by ~the capital~ my town was oh so small (literally one main traffic light in the center) with tons of farm land and pick up trucks. I absolutely loved it there. It was sweet and simple. Life was slower. However, the economy was REALLY bad. My dad was laid off, and he was actually one of the lucky ones. Most of his coworkers showed up the next week to locked doors and no unemployment plans. Additionally, my mom’s boss had just passed away suddenly from a heart attack. He was a super fit guy, so it took everyone by surprise. That week felt like time stopped for us. Luckily, the owner of my Mom’s company knew the talent she had, and couldn’t afford to lose her. He offered her a deal she couldn’t resist and off we were to New Jersey.

Now, my mom had been here several times before, so she knew what to expect when it came time to look for a house. Dad and I however, associated New Jersey with New York; concrete, rats, garbage, rude people, and dirty water dogs. That was not at all what we are surrounded by. We were surprised to see tons and tons of trees, farmland, small towns, and a few dirt roads. It took some heart break of leaving friends and all of our family behind, but we soon become adjusted and happy with our new home in North Jersey. I mean, we also didn’t really have a choice.

TWO CATS, MID-AUGUST, NO POWER

The move itself was very interesting. We had two cats at the time who hated car rides. If you don’t know, cats can make CRAZY sounds when they are scared like mine were. We took them to the vet before the move, and two minutes into it, it sounded like there was a screaming baby in our car. So we had to get them medicine to make them drowsy for the 12 hour car ride. My dad gave my fat cat a bit too much of the medication and his eyes had rolled all the way back into his head, and he was limp. My parents assured me he would be fine, but I would later find out that they were in fact very nervous that they hurt him. Luckily, we can laugh about it now because he lived to be eighteen years old. Anyways, with the cats drugged and sleepy, our goodbyes said and tears shed, we pulled out of the neighborhood that I was so deeply in love with.

I had my best friends there, one of them who I am still really close to and was even the maid-of-honor at her wedding a few years ago. I had ridden my bike around that cul-de-sac thousands of times, and fallen off it a hundred times. We had all of our family there, I was scared and I didn’t know what would come next.

I don’t remember much of the ride, besides one specific pit stop where we had to give the cats some water through a straw. This was pretty entertaining because my fat cat was in the middle of meowing when my mom released the water from the straw, and if you can imagine a cat crying, while water goes down it’s throat, it’s a very hysterical sound like from a cartoon. Anyways, that helped me laugh a bit during such a bittersweet time. As we continued driving, we were about 2 hours out when the sun went down.

Now, Jersey is interesting for the fact that it doesn’t have nearly as many street lights as Michigan, especially as you get off the main highways and roads. It seemed like absolute darkness. To add to that, our GPS stopped working. I don’t remember exactly what happened, but at the time they were the ones that plugged into the cigarette lighters, and had funny English or Australian accents. We had no cell phone GPS or one that comes with the car. We were tired, hot, frustrated, and blind. Luckily, my mom is great with navigation and managed to find our way to the neighborhood and to the house. We had made it.

We scrambled for the keys, and opened the door. Suddenly, we were hit with a wave of hot, humid heat. It was 10 pm, it shouldn’t have been hot inside the house like that. My dad reached for the light switch and….nothing. The power was out. It had been hot that whole week, and the house felt like a sauna. My mom quickly called our realtor and explained the situation. He realized no one had every switched the electric and gas over. We were screwed. What a great start.

My mom around for a hotel and once we found one we were relieved. We had to find a place for the cats since the hotel wouldn’t take pets. We tried several rooms until we decided the best place was a cement storage room that we have in the basement. It was dark and cold. Not ideal for the cats emotionally, but physically it would keep them safe.

ADJUSTING

So, I honestly don’t have anything to really say about elementary or middle school. I had a small group of friends who I often hung out with at lunch and had sleepovers with on the weekends. We kept it simple; movies, swimming in the pool, dressing up in crazy outfits and taking ridiculous pictures. It was a group that didn’t like drama and just wanted to hang out with their friends. It was a pretty smooth adjustment. We visited Michigan a few times a year for the next few years, especially around the holidays. The schooling was a bit different, and I found I was a bit behind in some areas, especially Spanish. At my previous school, we started taking a language class in high school, not elementary school. When the Spanish teacher came in, saying hello, how is everyone, I was lost. I wanted to cry when the whole class started singing a goodbye song as she was leaving. Luckily, I kept my cool and forced myself to catch up and stay on top of things. Today, I am still learning Spanish and I find it is one of my favorite languages. One of my closest family friends even came from Mexico and we often speak Spanglish to her children.

As I become older, headed to high school I felt I really adjusted to New Jersey. I had played on a few local volleyball teams and even tried out for a travel team with one of my friends. We both made the team and had so much fun together. The best part was being able to leave school early for an away tournament. I held that early dismissal pass out for everyone to see as I walked out of my classroom like a ~boss~. Moving to New Jersey opened a world of experiences I probably would have never been able to do in Michigan. We were able to go to NYC for a day, drive down to Baltimore or explore Washington DC for a long weekend. If we had still been in Michigan, we would have been financially struggling.