Hello, little blog, it's been a long long time!

And since I suspect most of my recent page hits are from potential employers, and since I'd love to get a job someday, I should probably push down the posts about camping with radicals that make me look... well... a little too radical for a banking gig.

(oh, but if only you could appreciate that it was all just field research, I swear! .. and besides, if it HAD turned into a real revolution, I surely would have been hung as a loyalist after that stunt where I convinced my 'deputies' to open the road... It's a real pity I can't use those stories to impress you with my leadership skills.)

So how've I been? Just super. Since last we visited I've wrangled that Econ degree I was going for into sweet sweet submission. Calculus tried to kick my ass, but I kicked back.

Hey, also; the daughter finished high school right around the same time I donned my hat and gown, and has since flown the nest.. off to bigger and better things; her own college experience, deep in the heart of Texas.

They say that the year after you graduate college is a hard one. I don't think anyone has overlaid that map with the year you become an empty nest mama, but lemmee tell ya' folks.. Oof. Big big oof.

2013 was a blur of lost identity, asking myself "Who am I now that I'm not a mom anymore? What is my purpose, my function?" A year of feeling lost, no longer a comrade with my Econ buddies, no longer making sure dinner was on the table by 6 for the girl, no longer checking homework, hers or mine... Suddenly... finished.

Thank goodness THAT feeling has passed.

The stroke of midnight, 12/31/13, and I felt better. Maybe I just set that moment in my head as a THE moment something had to give. Maybe that's all the time I needed to figure out that the idea I had, when I was barely 20 years old and said to myself, "Hey, I'll be an empty nester before I'm 40 and I'll have So Much Freedom and Opportunity" ... that it was time to go for it and make that future happen.

Maybe I realized that even though she doesn't live here anymore, I'm still a mama after all. That she'll always need me to look up to, and that since she's always been just like me, only better.. that the better I am, the better she'll be too.

Maybe I just finally realized how darn good I really am.

Happy New Year, folks... It's good to be back.