SAMANTHA JANE DEMONT sjdemont@gmail.com Samantha Jane DeMont--my maiden name was Samantha Pettitt. I was named Samantha because of the TV show Bewitched and my mother whose middle name is also Jane. She got the name Jane from her maternal grandmother who picked it out of a book. We don't know which book, but I like to think it was either Jane Eyre or Jane Austen. I'm a book girl. I was born in 1975 in San Antonio, Texas, where my parents adopted me and took me home ten days later, holding me in the front seat of the car taking me to Hamilton, Texas, where Daddy coached football. They were the Bulldogs, and there was a big marquis at the courthouse that said "Welcome Samantha Jane Pettitt to Bulldog Country" or something to that effect. My parents only had about three days notice that I was "available," so it was quite a big deal in the little town. We stayed there a year or two and proceeded to move to a lot of little towns up and down the Texas highways with dad alternating between education and home improvement. I consider Austin my hometown if I had to pick one because most of my memories are centered around there. Life brought me to Somerville for the duration of high school and to the University of North Texas after that. I majored in a lot of things and eventually received a BA in Sociology with a German minor. Under heavy glass it makes a good paperweight, but otherwise it isn't very useful. After college I followed a lot of my generation and moved back in with my parents. Somewhere between taking care of my injured mother and a marathon of ER episodes, I decided I wanted to go to nursing school, so back to school I went, graduating from Texas Woman's University with a BSN in 2004. In 2005, I married Chris, “Hub” to most folks, whom I met on April Fools Day of 1999 while walking my best friend Tracy’s dog at a softball game. Tracy introduced us and married us, and she was there a year later for the birth of our son Lucas Benjamin, a wonderful boy with a head of fiery red hair and the personality to match. Postpartum hormones and a record hot Dallas summer gave me the brilliant idea to move to far northern California for a two year nursing contract. We had redwoods in our front yard and could drive to the beach in under twenty minutes, but it was very expensive and too far from family. So in November of 2008 with child number two due in March, we loaded up the biggest available U-Haul and drove back across the country to Wichita, Kansas, to be near Hub's parents and the free babysitting that would inevitably come with them. If you've never driven 2000 miles while five months pregnant in a vehicle with four cats, a toddler, and your mother-in-law, you are really missing out. Carolyn Jane, how could I not pass it down, was born on the first day of spring 2009, a beautiful blonde princess who will someday take the world by storm. A few months later, postpartum hormones convinced me to convince my husband we should buy a huge house in west Wichita where we now live and continually work to improve. After eight years as a surgery nurse, two of which were as a travel nurse, I grew bored with the bowels, breasts, and various joints in need of repair or replacing and with the incompleteness of never knowing how my patients improved after they left the operating room, I stopped traveling, determined to find a permanent job in anything, and found the best job of all, as a Head Start nurse for just under 300 preschoolers. When I'm not wife, mommy, or "Ms Nurse," I am knitting, cooking from scratch, failing miserably at gardening, or coming up with a never-ending list of things I'd like to try. You can write to me at sjdemont@gmail.com or follow me on Google+. enough MY ESSAYS 1 Purls of Wisdom: How Learning to Knit Changed My Life 2 Dog Days of Summer

SAMANTHA JANE DEMONT

Samantha Jane DeMont--my maiden name was Samantha Pettitt. I was named Samantha because of the TV show Bewitched and my mother whose middle name is also Jane. She got the name Jane from her maternal grandmother who picked it out of a book. We don't know which book, but I like to think it was either Jane Eyre or Jane Austen. I'm a book girl.

I was born in 1975 in San Antonio, Texas, where my parents adopted me and took me home ten days later, holding me in the front seat of the car taking me to Hamilton, Texas, where Daddy coached football. They were the Bulldogs, and there was a big marquis at the courthouse that said "Welcome Samantha Jane Pettitt to Bulldog Country" or something to that effect. My parents only had about three days notice that I was "available," so it was quite a big deal in the little town.

We stayed there a year or two and proceeded to move to a lot of little towns up and down the Texas highways with dad alternating between education and home improvement. I consider Austin my hometown if I had to pick one because most of my memories are centered around there. Life brought me to Somerville for the duration of high school and to the University of North Texas after that. I majored in a lot of things and eventually received a BA in Sociology with a German minor. Under heavy glass it makes a good paperweight, but otherwise it isn't very useful. After college I followed a lot of my generation and moved back in with my parents. Somewhere between taking care of my injured mother and a marathon of ER episodes, I decided I wanted to go to nursing school, so back to school I went, graduating from Texas Woman's University with a BSN in 2004.

In 2005, I married Chris, “Hub” to most folks, whom I met on April Fools Day of 1999 while walking my best friend Tracy’s dog at a softball game. Tracy introduced us and married us, and she was there a year later for the birth of our son Lucas Benjamin, a wonderful boy with a head of fiery red hair and the personality to match. Postpartum hormones and a record hot Dallas summer gave me the brilliant idea to move to far northern California for a two year nursing contract. We had redwoods in our front yard and could drive to the beach in under twenty minutes, but it was very expensive and too far from family. So in November of 2008 with child number two due in March, we loaded up the biggest available U-Haul and drove back across the country to Wichita, Kansas, to be near Hub's parents and the free babysitting that would inevitably come with them. If you've never driven 2000 miles while five months pregnant in a vehicle with four cats, a toddler, and your mother-in-law, you are really missing out.

Carolyn Jane, how could I not pass it down, was born on the first day of spring 2009, a beautiful blonde princess who will someday take the world by storm. A few months later, postpartum hormones convinced me to convince my husband we should buy a huge house in west Wichita where we now live and continually work to improve.

After eight years as a surgery nurse, two of which were as a travel nurse, I grew bored with the bowels, breasts, and various joints in need of repair or replacing and with the incompleteness of never knowing how my patients improved after they left the operating room, I stopped traveling, determined to find a permanent job in anything, and found the best job of all, as a Head Start nurse for just under 300 preschoolers.

When I'm not wife, mommy, or "Ms Nurse," I am knitting, cooking from scratch, failing miserably at gardening, or coming up with a never-ending list of things I'd like to try. You can write to me at sjdemont@gmail.com or follow me on Google+.

enough

MY ESSAYS

1 Purls of Wisdom: How Learning to Knit Changed My Life

2 Dog Days of Summer

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