When I was just 6 or 7 I was in ballet! I wasn't any good. I wasn't skinny enough, I wasn't limber enough hahaha. I was better at Jazz. And square dancing. And I was great at baton! 

I learned how to sew. I made some of my own clothes! I attached the patterns to the cloth, cut the cloth, pinned it. Sewed by hand and by machine. We would go shopping and instead of looking at clothes on the rack we would look at the pictures on the pattern envelopes then picked the fabric we wanted. 

I also learned how to crochet and knit and tat. I did wood burning, leather burning, wire art. I learned to cook and had chores and earned an allowance ... for actually doing things. 

I hopped over the line around 13 ... well, we know about "Juvie"!

As I got older and had a family, I worked, had dinner on the table by the same time, served my boyfriend first then the kids then myself. I even cut my man's food! He liked his french toast cut into squares in perfect stacks. And I cut his meet in his lunches that I made so he didn't have to carry extra silverware to work. 

I was 165lb when I met John. But I was NOT muscular. So I started exercising. Jane Fonda's workout videos. At first I could only do one 20 min workout. I worked my way up to both 20 min workouts on the VHS tape one after the other!! 

I got overly addicted to losing weight and exercising. Tracked EVERY calorie I ate or burnt. I looked up formulas and created a worksheet that told me how many calories I burned per minute doing everything .... even sitting. And I tracked everything I did. That was in the days of the GOOD Dexatrim and that kept me from getting hungry. I got to the point where I would only eat every other day and when I ate it might be 3 baby carrots. I got to 116lb!!! Then Dexatrim changed its formula, I got hungry, I was too much of a baby to make myself throw up so I started eating like a normal person yet. 

Then I found cardio kickboxing!! I LOVED it and I was able to eat and still keep my weight down! I forget why I stopped cardio kickboxing classes but that is when I found boxing! Don Basset. That was my coach. He did a boxing class that I took but then he would also drill me beyond that. He told me exercises to do too. I actually used to run on a treadmill! And I wasn't allowed to listen to music because his philosophy was that you needed to be able to will yourself through it without anything making it easier on you. 

I was never able to get in a ring. I was over 30 and that was considered masters and we were never able to find anyone to fight me. 

Then I found powerlifting! It got to a point where I couldn't do both. I have this problem where I put 1,000% into everything I do. One always interfered with the other. The shoulders couldn't take both. I loved boxing but it would never go further so I chose powerlifting. 

But that is how I went from ballet to boxing. Pretty well rounded, huh?