Happy Blog-oversary!!

WOW! Today marks five whole years of being a blogger--and I have to say, I've enjoyed every minute of it. I have a lot of newer readers who've only started following this year, so I'd like to tell a little bit about the history of the Little Pink Blog.

It all started in July 2004. I was offered a job in England, and I wanted to make some kind of web page that my friends and family could go to for all of my pictures and stories. The easiest way to do this was to start a blog. My friend Shae had been blogging for a while, so I used Blogger because it's what I knew.

I needed a good name, and The Wild and Absolutely True Adventures of Meg came to mind. I've adopted an attitude that all of life is an adventure, whether you're packing up and shipping off to another country or just going about your day-to-day life. For me, sometimes just going to the grocery store (scroll down to the part that says "Bad Luck") turns into a story that I have to tell.

My first post wasn't very exciting, and, in fact, the blog was slow-moving and kind of dull until I actually arrived in England on August 24. I finally got a chance to update the blog on August 26, with the news that my new home, Burnham-on-Crouch, is adorable and very livable.

That year in England was the most incredible, crazy, stressful, amazing year of my life. I adore England, and associate it, for many reasons, with healing after a nasty break-up sent me fleeing to London for a semester in 1999. However, the job itself was stressful--I had to learn the curriculum, deal with some interesting behavior issues at the school, and in the end, I knew that staying beyond the one year just wasn't an option. I was sold out of miracles.

So I finished off the school year, which goes much longer than here in the States. Thus I found myself flying back to the U.S. of A. on August 5, 2005, a week before my 27th birthday.

Here's the thing, though: Home was a totally new place. When I came home from England for Christmas, Mom and Dad were in the process of moving. I flew home to San Francisco, then flew back to London from Seattle. We had spent the 27th of December driving from Folsom to Bremerton, Washington. Mom and Dad would move to their newly-completed house in Port Ludlow a couple of months later.

So I came home--to a completely unfamiliar house in a part of the world I'd seen one time, for a few days. I was excited to explore Seattle (a truly fabulous city), but I missed England terribly and also sort of missed California, where my friends lived.

It was an interesting time. I hadn't driven for a year, and now I had to not only reacquaint myself with Rosie Pro, I had to do it in the middle of a forest, constantly watching out for suicidal wildlife and overzealous cops.

Somehow I managed. And, within a couple of months, I had found two jobs. I would teach one period of 6th grade choir each day, and by night work at Mervyn's.

In February (it was now 2006), we had a three-day power outage after a severe windstorm. Mom and Dad got a hotel room, and one morning over the complimentary breakfast, Dad said, "Well...Mom and I are thinking of going back to California."

Turns out that "thinking about" and "all systems GO" were the same thing. Before I knew it, plans were being made, movers were called, and I was applying for California teaching positions after all the craziness I'd gone through to get a Washington Teaching Certificate.

I wasn't happy.

But I knew, deep down, that if Mom and Dad were in California, I needed to be, too. My friends were there, and while Washington is a beautiful, fascinating place, my life was heading back to California.

So June rolled around and I was off. Mom and Dad left a few days before me, but I had a contract to finish, so Heather flew up to Seattle, spent an awesome weekend with me, and then, proving her friendship, sat in the passenger seat on Interstate 5 from Seattle to Sacramento. It's roughly 800 miles, and we did it in one very long day.

I was fortunate enough to have a job already lined up, so the day after my long old Seattle-to-Sacramento drive, I found myself driving to Antioch to meet my new boss.

The next two years were more stressful and crazy than my year in England. I truly did NOT know what I was getting into, taking over for a much-loved choir teacher at a huge high school. I jumped in the deep end without my floatation devices, and I paid dearly in terms of mental health and physical health.

Blogging was sparse in those two years, with my most productive month being January 2007, with 13 blog posts (if you look at the amount of posts I've made since August 2008, you'll understand that this is not a lot). I was struggling with anxiety and depression, and at some point, had my first panic attack--not fun, not easy. A change was in order.

I left Antioch at the end of June 2008. I didn't have a job lined up, but a few weeks later, I was offered a K-8 music position in Stockton--my current gig. In Stockton, I have found relief from the anxiety, time for working out and focusing on myself, and deep satisfaction in teaching--which had eluded me for a few years. I also joined Stockton Chorale, which as led to new friendships and opportunities.

I've lived a lot in the last five years. Since starting this blog, I've lived in Folsom, Burnham-on-Crouch, Port Ludlow, Lincoln (Mom and Dad's current home), Antioch and Stockton. I have flown across the Atlantic Ocean four times, visited France, Ireland and Canada, and been on countless road trips all over California.

I have fallen in love with England, explored the Puget Sound, and rediscovered that I really am a California Girl, and I'm perfectly okay with that. It's all in here--five years of adventures, Wild and Absolutely True.

Here's to many, many more. I hope you'll stick around and read about them.