Thanks, Margo. This thread is fascinating, or I should say, TQS members lead fascinating lives.

My professional life included 27 years of teaching elementary school special education. I'm highly relieved to be retired from that job as of June 2012. The stress got to me. I may go back to school in the field specifically for new research in the field of dyslexia, and find some other avenue to teach, because I loved teaching, but the stress of meetings and paperwork and trying to live up to government expectations, ugh.

I took a break from teaching when my two children were born and was fortunate enough to stay home with them much of the time before they entered elementary school. During that time, I worked for a sewing machine dealer after MIL purchased my first new DSM for me. I'd been sewing my own clothes since age 12, then sewed for my children. That job opened the world of sewing wide open.
I re-started quilting in approximately 2008, almost when I found out about TQS.

Ah, a life involved with music, including playing the piano from age 10, choral singing including a madrigal group high school, a semester as an applied piano student in college, and 15 years of church choir. Big thrills included singing in choirs at Washington National Cathedral. My voice pooped out and arthritis ended the music phase except for listening.

I'm guardian and conservator for my step-mother who resides in a nursing home on the Eastern Shore of VA (Vah as we like to say). Her diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease sparked my interest in the Alz Quilt Initiative.

I am an avid birder and enjoy researching and travelling to Important Bird Areas when I can find travel companions to do so.
Then there is church, and playing cards, and martinis, and and and ...

I'm overawed by the amount of TQS members have had jobs where maths were needed, I hated maths and dreaded the days when we had it at school, so when I left school at the age of 15 I trained to be a hairdresser and worked near Oxford Street, London I started in 1954 and hairdressing was so different then.
I was in that job for nearly 10 years and left when we moved to Suffolk, East Anglia in 1964 after my DD was born, then 21 months later my DS was born ( Happy days)

I have worked in factories, and as a shop assistant, a ward clerk on a plastic surgery unit, also in the canteen for Marks and Spencer very hard work but I enjoyed it. My last job was cleaning house for 2 ladies.
I have been retired for many years and a friend introduced me to quilting in 2000 and that has become an obsession "thanks Audrey"
I also enjoy gardening and can't wait to get outside and tidy up the mess that winter has left but I'll wait until it's a bit warmer.
I have 1 DD who lives nearby and a DS who lives in Australia, he visited us last October to help us celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary it was a wonderful time, but it's awful when he goes back and it taken a while to get over it. I would like to visit Australia again but I don't think I could face the journey 21 hours in a tin can, I've done it 5 times and it doesn't get any easier
I don't have any grandchildren
I am enjoying reading all the posts on this thread, thank's Margo
Happy quilting
Anne

Zarah wrote: Sarah, what's that? The curious want to know!

Wow! This thread is just way too cool! So much for the expression "Get a life!" It looks like we all have some very interesting ones, outside of quilting!

After a year of college, I knew I couldn't sit in a classrooms anymore, so went to work as a "gopher" and file clerk for a top attorney's office in Santa Barbara. I then moved south to Oceanside and worked as a salesgirl in a small women's clothing store. And, repeated the job when we moved inland to Escondido. That's where I first began to work in make-up at their Charles of the Ritz counter, and then took a job as a make-up artist at a well known spa. I love make-up, and that is why you will probably never see me without it. I love color and art, and that is probably why I was attracted to quilting. Since the drive was long to the spa, I eventually looked for something closer, and found a job at a large computer company, loading circuit boards. I worked my way up there, and eventually became the thin film technician for the engineering department. (I forget to say that I did have lab experience from a previous job in the ink industry) It was all R & D, and I can say I was in on the pioneering of the first thermal print head! But, they sent me back to school (on their dime) and I found myself back in the classroom taking such things chemistry, algebra, and physics. The biggest bonus of the job was meeting my future husband there! We will celebrate 37 years this June.

I love to garden; love plants and flowers! I read a lot, and I am going to try my hand at writing, entering this year's Spoonfuls of Stories contest that my daughter won last year.

My FIL was a rocket scientist, and we raised chickens when I was young, just for our own eggs, and to put meat on the table. I was a stay-at-home mommy while we raised our three kids. Being an only child, I found that more of a challenge than any of my previous jobs!

Dawn
In beautiful Northwest Montana

What a great thread, Margo. I have loved reading about the fascinating lives we quilters lead. It just reinforces that ALL of us (and I mean ALL) are multidimensional people with an interest in our larger communities and in the world around us.

I'm in a good, boring place in my life right now, although it's about to get more interesting as my son, DIL and 2 1/2 toddlers (3 yrs., 1 yr. and one on the way) move from Chicago to our neighborhood in a couple of weeks. That'll spice things up.

In my previous life, I (like so many other quilters it seems) spent my career working with numbers. I have always loved math so even though I abandoned my math major in college it seems to have been a constant in my working life. My graduate work was in research and statistical methods but I somehow migrated to the world of accounting and finance. I became a CPA specializing in governmental audits and income tax work (ugh!!) then entered the world of manufacturing. For a number of years, I owned my own small machine shop where I learned, out of necessity, to program and run CNC lathes, do all the purchasing, all the sales and estimating work, even some of the steel pickup and parts delivery.
I was lucky to retire early (the company I worked for wanted to transfer me to a place I didn't want to go) and since then, I've discovered quilting and that has really become my big passion outside of family. I also sing with a symphony chorale, am currently program chair of my quilt guild, do community work and last week I started a new exercise regimen - early morning Spin classes. I've not yet adjusted to that. It seems like I get home at 7 am and am ready to crawl into bed for a very long nap!

Great topic, Margo--hope I get time to read the hundreds of responses this will surely bring!

I've been a tax professional for 33 years, working for H&R Block. There's not much about individual taxes I don't know or know where to get the answer. I'm an
Enrolled Agent, which means I am authorized by the IRS to represent clients with them.

That's the right brain side of my life--which is probably why most of my quilts are symmetrical, square, thousands of pieces, and very colorful--debits and credits, neat and tidy.

Oh, yeah--the first four years of my working life I was an officer in the United States Marine Corps--ooh rah!!! An Admin officer, payroll, orders, transfers, neat and tidy, Marines in and Marines out! Semper Fi!!

Wow! You gals have done some pretty amazing things. My life seems dull in comparison. I was born and raised in Int'l. Falls, MN (some of you may have heard it referred to as "the icebox of the nation"). I married my husband right out of high school and this June we will be married 44 years. We moved to Tempe, AZ for my husband to attend ASU, so from the coldest place to one of the hottest. In AZ, I worked at several different jobs, including as a bank teller. After 10 years in the desert and never adjusting to the heat, we moved to the Seattle, WA area (known for being one of the rainiest). There I worked in the international sales department for a company that exported lifting equipment - it was a very fun job working with vendors all over the world, planning how much equipment could fit in a container and working with the different shipping lines. One of my favorite things was about once a year I would be invited to dine on board ship while the containers were being loaded. Then 20 years ago we gave up city life and moved to MT and my days of working outside the home ended. I do manage my husband's home office, doing his bookeeping and filing, but now I fill my time with quilting, volunteering, and being a grandma.

I too am enjoying reading about the very different lives of my TQS friends.
Nothing to dramatic in my life, which I am ok with that. After high school I worked in a bank and at a lumber yard as a secretary. My husband (married 35 years) and I own an asphalt paving business for 30 years now and I am the only office staff we have. Since I was a stay at home mom, we had the office at our home until 1995. Now I take my two dogs with me to work each day. I have four sons, two work in the accounting/financial field and two are Marines. Most trying time in my life was when both Marines were stationed in Afghanistan (one for 7 months and one for a year) at the same time in 2010. Many, many prayers said during that time. My prayers were answered and both safely completed their active duty and are living nearby and working for us. Nothing out of the ordinary, but I am very happy and content.

Margo, thanks for starting this topic.

What an interesting and diverse group of people we are! I have really thoroughly enjoyed learning a little of what you all do.

As some of you know already I am a singer. I started off when I was a young teen singing in the folk clubs and pubs in Dublin - my Mum let me because my sister was older and could keep an eye on me ) But she also insisted that I do a secretarial course, as a back-up, in case I could not make a living as a singer. I worked in a solicitors office, an estate agent's office, secretary to a psychologist who worked in market research (boy was that a crock of crap!) and the patent office but I eventually had to give up secretarial work because I had too much work at night as a singer and also as a session singer - backing vocals for albums, jingles etc. That's how I met my DH as he was doing most of the jingle work in the country at the time.

DH wrote a suite of music especially for me to sing (Granuaile) based around an Irish woman pirate called Grace O'Malley who lived in the changing times in Ireland in the 1500s. Through this and other of his works I have been fortunate to travel and perform in some of the most wonderful places from Cathedrals to football stadiums (or stadia if you would prefer ) Most memorable: Stad de France in the middle of the football pitch surrounded by 200 bagpipers and a crowd of 50,000 (boy that was loud!); Croke Park Dublin singing the anthem for the Special Olympics with a crowd of 80,000 most of whom were singing along as it had been the No. 1 selling record for 5 weeks (all proceeds went to the SO); and singing on the walls of Derry City in 1990 after a concert in the Guild Hall where there were so many people that they couldn't fit them all in so I was asked to sing the song again outside. Scary at the time as it was before the troubles were over so I felt like a big white target on top of the walls! :shock: And singing at the inauguration of the President of Ireland in 2011.

In the midst of all my singing I had 3 children two of whom were born in the 1990 while I studied and received an honours degree in Literature with the Open University (now how the heck did I do that? )

I have always knitted and sewn and dabbled in patchwork but these days there is less singing and more quilting than the other way round.

At first when I saw this thread I thought that my life has been so plain and of no interest for others. But then I realized that it's just because I was the one who lived it and I got accustomed to it along the way.
My working life is easily told: I'm a draftsman and worked for 28 years in a university educating engineers. Well I finished that 12 years ago, pensioned myself so to speak, because I did not like the changes that were not done at my job.
My private life has been the challenging part. I met my husband when I was 20 and we married two years later. In between he had a cancer operation and for many years we lived with the threat that it would come back. It was skin cancer, the most dangerous of them. We had two boys and were living a rather common life until in 1983 my husband was really sick. For me it was a chock because after 7 weeks he was gone. I had not realized that we were coping with the cancer again. I was 33 at that time and my boys 7 and 10, so we were on our own and have been since then. It was quite a wake up to have to take care of everything alone but I got used to it and have had a great life. We were lucky that money was never a problem. That's why I could quit my job when I wanted to.
9 years ago I moved to the place where I live now and I'm waiting for my brother and his wife to sell their houses, so we can create a life together. We are spiritually oriented and we are already arranging things in this house where people come and participate, but we want to integrate our daily life and have one big house with 3 people rather that 3 people with 3 houses as it is now.
For the last 2½ year I have had an American trans channeler come and work from my house. He is working in UK, Sweden and Norway as well and have been doing that for nearly 12 years.
My brother is creative in photography and when they move here, we want to make exhibitions together, so I must make more quilts and I use all the time I can in my sewing area. I'm so happy to have met all you in the TQS family. I have learned a lot from this site.
I have been creative all my life and I think that's how I survived the hard times.

Not a lot to add to mine I got most of it in my profile
"I am an apprentice trained embroideress(RSN) and a tailoress (16 mths on Savile Row). I was a member of the English Civil War Society, when I made all mine and hubby's costumes, then along came our daughter. I started my first bed quilt 7'x7' quilt as you go in '05 as a project to cover my grans old blankets for the guest beds and plan to cover the rest eventually. I am very interested in things h"
it was supposed to finish that I am very interested in things historical.

Apart from that I am the daughter of a rocket scientist, and she can spot a 'hiccup' in a design/piece of work at a 1000 paces (or so it seems ) I just grew up with it and thought everyone's mum was like that, until my 20's, when a friend made a remark about the sharpness of my mother's eyes.

I fell in love with d'Artagnan and all things swashbuckling when I was about 8-9. Fell in love with embroidery when my mother took me to see an exhibition called 'Threads of History' put on by the RSN for the Queen's Silver Jubilee, and these 2 passions have pretty much stayed with me ever since.

(by the way, that first quilt actually finished up 6'8" x 6'8" - oh well , it fits the bed, just )

What I've read so far on this thread is fascinating- we do seem to lead interesting lives!

I got a degree in Chemistry, then switched over to pharmacy. I've been a pharmacist in a hospital for over 30 years. We don't put pills in bottles anymore... . We evaluate and clarify physician orders, and make them appear in the patient's computer record so the nurses and physicians can chart what's going on with the patients. It can be a stressful job but it's also rewarding. I feel like we are a vital part of the team taking care of the patients, even though most of the patients have no idea that we are doing it! All my life I've been interested in fibers- first sewing clothes, then knitting, now quilting. Sewing really helps with the stress of life. There are still some years to go before I retire- really looking forward to having more time for quilting/sewing!!!

I haven't been keeping up with TQS for the past month or so, everything's been all a little too much! I'm glad to know you're all here and talking.
Kathy

At the age of 12, I did babysitting for neighbor kids....and came to the conclusion that I never wanted to have kids! :shock: From the age of 14 through 18, I worked at a fast food taco joint....and I still LOVE Mexican food! At the age of 18, I was taught custom picture framing and was told by my boss that if I became good at framing, I would never be out of a job. So far that's been true! And I guess that's why I tend to be a bit obsessed about straight lines being straight!

Love this topic, Margo! And if I ever have any questions about chickens, I'll know who to ask!

Margo what an interesting topic. I also have a very dull life, but I have always worked as a secretary and enjoy it very much. When we moved here 36 years ago, I was secretary to the Chief of Police and that was very rewarding. I took time off to be a mommy, but still needed the income, so I made draperies and window treatments at home. When the kids left I went back to secretarial work. I have been working part time for a Psychologist for 10 years, and I could certainly write a book about the people in our town. LOL I still make draperies and window treatments, but on a limited basis. I would rather be quilting.