While living in Baltimore and attending school, I worked at Johns Hopkins Hospital as a lab analyst in a clinical pharmacology laboratory. At the same time there was a medical student named Alex attending Johns Hopkins Medical School. One of his classmates set us up on a blind date and our romance blossomed. 
While he started his internship, I worked on a PhD at the University of Maryland with the intention of going to medical school myself. Then he proposed, we got married, and his career path led him to Chicago. I was pregnant so I decided to postpone my own career desires, and went to Chicago too.
We were supposed to be in Chicago for just a year of research. He would finish his internship at Hopkins, I would have had the baby, and I would be able to return to the PhD program and begin interviewing for medical school. But as things turned out, we spent 12 years in the windy city to allow Alex to complete his General Surgery residency and then a Thoracic Surgery specialty residency, and then take a position as a faculty member in the Department of Surgery at the University of Chicago. And we had 2 precious daughters.
When the girls started school at the famous Laboratory School at the University of Chicago I decided to go back to school myself.
I attended Loyola University of Chicago and got myself a Master's degree in computer science. And soon after entered the workforce again.
But as life would have it, a career move for Alex took us to no other than Las Vegas, Nevada. He accepted a position as a Chairman of a Department of Surgery at the University of Nevada Medical School. As the wife of a Chairman there were unofficial duties for me, so I took on those roles and enjoyed my time as a spouse and mother. And that is when I found glass as an artistic medium. Way back when I started college in upstate New York I wanted to major in art. But my parents discouraged that with the notion that it would be hard to support myself. But art always called to me. So when I discovered lampworking, I followed my dream and started to work in glass to create miniature art forms called beads.
I wanted to show off these hand crafted glass beads so naturally I proceeded to learn how to make some simple jewelry. And my artistic journey as a metalsmith began. The first bead I wanted to make was a Desert Bloom bead. I wanted to capture the offset bloom on a prickley pear pad.
I joined the International Society of Glass Beadmakers. I began to show my beads at art and craft shows. And I launched my business called Desert Bloom Designs. I gained recognition and was published in some books. I wrote how to articles for several journals, and I immersed myself in the art and craft of lampworking and silversmithing.
The girls went off to college. We moved briefly to Dayton, Ohio. And then upon Alex’s retirement, we moved full time to Tucson, Arizona.
I always thought that my life was just too plain ordinary to be considered a true artist. I believed that true artists struggled and suffered or were slightly offbeat. To my surprise in 2016 I discovered that my life wasn’t so ordinary after all. And my personal journey took a huge jump off it’s path. So I found myself amidst a lot of self discovery, and surprisingly my jewelry as an expression of me evolved and grown in ways I could not imagine.
In 2017 I lost my furry baby, 
but gained a special grand baby boy. 
Life in retirement now is bringing me a lot of joy. At the end of 2022 I decided to close my online business. I still sell in a few boutiques, and occasionally I create a special limited edition which I sell online. My circle of subscribers learn about any new work first.
I have created a new blog called Silver Musings. A silver haired jewelry artist musing about life and of course jewelry. My circle of subscribers learn about any new work first. Click the following link to join my circle of friends.