Let Me Introduce Myself!

Hello! Here I am..this is my first blog, or, should I say, attempt at a blog. I still for the life of me cannot figure out why anyone would call something like this a "blog", but they did, and here I am, so here goes.
My name is Cathy, Cat for short. I live in a small coastal town in Maine, with my husband, 10 year old twins Brett and Ali (, now there's a handful), my 26 year old adult daughter, and her 3 year old daughter, 2 cats, and 2 fish. The house is crowded, especially when my then pregnant daughter needed to move back home, into my family room. All my other family (mom, siblings) live far away, and I am unable to see them very often, a fact that bothers me immensely. Mom and one brother are in Murrels Inlet, SC, my other brother is in Buffalo, Ny, and my sister is in Atlanta. So that is the skinny on my family.
I went to school at the SUNY at Brockport, NY, and graduated in 1979 with a BS in Social Work. I ran group homes and day programs for mentally challenged folks until landing a job with the State of Maine as a social worker. I worked there for almost 20 years, and had every intention of staying there until retirement age. But.......I had my twins when I was already "older"....over 40, and that apparently messed up my body. I ended up spending the next 2 years trying to get the doctors to get me a diagnosis.....which they finally did in 200o. I have fibromyalgia as my main diagnosis, and I have it BBBBAAADDDDD!!! Then I have a wonderful cocktail of other conditions that came along with it, all made worse by the fibro, all chronic. So, after fighting to keep working for a long time, way past when my doctor said I needed to stop, I finally had to retire in 2004. I was devastated. I mean, after working for 20 years, my job became huge part of my identity. So suddenly, who was I? What what I the best at now??? Suddenly, since I was not a wage earner, my family treated my differently. My opinion was not as necessary as it used to be. I had not wanted to retire, and was not ready to retire, and my life was thrown into turmoil.
Next blog......return to my art.....my saving grace