Hi, I'm Kate! Though I used to go by Katie (back in the day) and my real name is Katherine Eliza (after my awesome world traveling, spinster, lived to be 93, great aunt Catherine Elizabeth K.,who passed away as I was finishing high school). My maiden name was atrocious (though we did have a Dwarf, Smurf, Care bear, etc. namesake), but I somehow managed to hold off until I got married at nearly 30 to change it (to thankfully something much better). My husband was born and raised in India and came to Chicago to attend graduate school in the late '90's and stayed to work, and that is where we met in 2004.
I was born and raised in landlocked northern Wisconsin, which I wouldn't recommend if you're like me and love the ocean (and don't drink beer or hunt, lord why did I end up there?). But lucky for me, I was smarty pants enough to get a lift to Boston to attend college (w/summers on the Cape), but I moved back to the Midwest after college (twice) to be closer to my dysfunctional family, which includes four parents and four sisters of various varieties. My parents divorced when I was five and my eldest sister (and nine year cancer survivor) was born with Williams Syndrome. These are a few of the more formative experiences of my life.
I'm nearly six feet tall and used to model a wee bit (ironic given all my previous years of myopia, acne, braces, and bad hair), though I didn't like runway work and really don't like having my picture taken, though you'll find a few around these parts if you look really hard. I apparently didn't get enough of my (almost) all female household and left home to go to a women's college outside Boston, where I walked on the crew team, got involved in politics, took up sailing, and then realized it wasn't the school for me after all (as my grandma so wisely observed, I'd outgrown it). After two years, I transferred to a nearby Jesuit university, (from which I graduated), and while both may sound similar to a convent, they were pretty different from that and each other.
Speaking of convents, my father's family is Catholic (though he left his religion in Vietnam) and my mother converted (from Episcopalian) when they married in college. But then after that was history, I was raised Lutheran (cuz why not?) and my husband is a Hindu. My step-mother is Jewish and my step-father was raised Dutch Reformed. If you can make sense of that, then you'll know how I feel about religion... Needless to say, I won't be waxing poetic on this blog.
So after my life as a working girl in the city and then married in the burbs, when I came across infertility, I was pretty used to a challenge. It was just a test, like many others people face, the big Ds (and I don't mean Dallas: divorce, disability, disease, death, disadvantage, dysfunction, discrimination, etc.), and with an amazing partner, we made it through the fire.
I was born and raised in landlocked northern Wisconsin, which I wouldn't recommend if you're like me and love the ocean (and don't drink beer or hunt, lord why did I end up there?). But lucky for me, I was smarty pants enough to get a lift to Boston to attend college (w/summers on the Cape), but I moved back to the Midwest after college (twice) to be closer to my dysfunctional family, which includes four parents and four sisters of various varieties. My parents divorced when I was five and my eldest sister (and nine year cancer survivor) was born with Williams Syndrome. These are a few of the more formative experiences of my life.
I'm nearly six feet tall and used to model a wee bit (ironic given all my previous years of myopia, acne, braces, and bad hair), though I didn't like runway work and really don't like having my picture taken, though you'll find a few around these parts if you look really hard. I apparently didn't get enough of my (almost) all female household and left home to go to a women's college outside Boston, where I walked on the crew team, got involved in politics, took up sailing, and then realized it wasn't the school for me after all (as my grandma so wisely observed, I'd outgrown it). After two years, I transferred to a nearby Jesuit university, (from which I graduated), and while both may sound similar to a convent, they were pretty different from that and each other.
Speaking of convents, my father's family is Catholic (though he left his religion in Vietnam) and my mother converted (from Episcopalian) when they married in college. But then after that was history, I was raised Lutheran (cuz why not?) and my husband is a Hindu. My step-mother is Jewish and my step-father was raised Dutch Reformed. If you can make sense of that, then you'll know how I feel about religion... Needless to say, I won't be waxing poetic on this blog.
So after my life as a working girl in the city and then married in the burbs, when I came across infertility, I was pretty used to a challenge. It was just a test, like many others people face, the big Ds (and I don't mean Dallas: divorce, disability, disease, death, disadvantage, dysfunction, discrimination, etc.), and with an amazing partner, we made it through the fire.
