About Me

ABOUT ME

My name is Paula Cook, and I created my blog, A Desperate Horsewife, to capture some of the random thoughts I have and few of the memories made in my unbelievably cool life. I’m lucky enough to be a mom to two smart, witty kids, wife and business partner to the only guy I’d ever want to be married to, and manager of a crowded animal-centric household where we laugh at- and amongst-ourselves every single day.

I grew up in small-town Idaho and went to college in slightly larger-town Idaho.  After college I moved to California, where I lucked into what had to be one of the coolest jobs in the burgeoning dot-com industry.  My life was fast-paced and fun, and I got paid ridiculous sums of money for doing a job that I adored.   I learned to ski, bought a BMW and then a Porsche (911 convertible, Arena Red) traveled the world first class, and enjoyed all the perks one could expect in the big-spending time of that fantastic era.

Several years into this heady existence my mom got sick and died and I immediately lost my enthusiasm for the glossy life I was living. I realized that I missed my family and wanted to be back home living near them, so I moved back to Idaho in 1998 dragging a bevy of jumping horses I had imported from Germany and Holland and a really cool Belgian Malinois named Bette.  A year later I met my Handsome Husband Greg (generally referred to in the blog as Desperate Hubby or DH).

Handsome Desperate Hubby had three young daughters from a previous marriage, and I was thrown full-force into the role of “bonus mom.”  I wanted to have my own kids, but we were having so much fun enjoying our marriage and our varied hobbies (I sold my pricey hunter jumpers and joined the world of showing reining and cow horses; Greg played in a band and got his private pilot’s license) that we didn’t get around to the procreation side of things for some time.

Seven years later my daughter Annabelle was born when I was but a spring chicken in my early forties.  Eighteen months after that, we were elated to welcome baby Zachary to the family.  Once he got over the shock of having five (!) children, Greg was thrilled to have a son to help dilute some of the free-floating estrogen that controls every aspect of his family life.

After that, things got kind of interesting for a bit.  I had invested pretty much all of the dot-com money I had left (what hadn’t gone for fancy horses or Veuve Cliquot, that is) in dozens of rental properties, and Greg and I had opened our own prosperous mortgage company.  With the decline and subsequent collapse of the housing market, we sold off our properties one by one, followed inevitably by the mortgage company, and eventually started over as official newly-minted members of the downsized-class.  This whole period of our marriage was quite an adventure to us; one we could only approach with a healthy sense of humor and a new sense of gratitude for the really important things in life.

The last seven or so years have been filled with triumphs and joys and the occasional minor setback as we’ve diligently rebuilt our business, navigated the crazily-complex world of elementary education and discovered how much more fun and fulfilling life is when you learn to view it through the eyes of your kids.  These have also undoubtedly been the most rewarding years of my life. I absolutely love being a mom (even when people think I’m their grandma) and the kids continue to provide the most entertaining highlights of every day.

Join me here a I post about the joys of raising kids, riding and showing horses, managing a passel of pets, and whatever other crazy ideas may cross my mind and make it to the computer screen.

And if you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoy writing it….tell your friends!