Fun facts

I am still feeling all out-of-sorts from finding out about my friend relapsing as well as a more recent development in my life (which I will blog about in the near future) and so my brain is really having a hard time wrapping itself around any type of meaningful blog-able fodder. I have been wanting to do one of these fun fact lists for awhile, so I guess now is as good a time as ever.

1) I am a cat person. I have two, and before L came along, they were my babies.

2) I played the violin for 8 years, still have my violin, and can still squeak off some pleasing notes and read music.

3) My dad's nickname for me growing up was Squirt.

4) I have one brother who is 18 mos older than me whom I love SO SO MUCH. We've been through a lot together, to say the least.

5) When we were growing up, we had a sort of hobby farm...at one time we had 18 outside cats, most of which got killed on the road, but we always had some running around...We also had at some point or another: 4 cows (they got shipped off and butchered and we ate them), chickens (don't know how many, just know it was multiple), whose eggs we collected and ate, bunny I, II, II and probably IV, 2 pigs, a lamb, Mikey, who thought he was a dog, who would scratch on the screen door thinking we would let him in the house like the dogs, a goat (who head-butted me in the ass one time) and dogs...There was Penny and Buffy when I was little, then Buffy had to be put down, then we got Katie, so it was Penny and Katie, then Penny had to go down so we got Amber and it was Amber and Katie when I moved out of my parents house. Both Amber and Katie have now since passed.

6) We also had gerbils for awhile, and they had babies, and I used to have nightmares that those nasty, hairless little babies got loose in the house and it FREAKED.ME.OUT and I wanted to drown the little nasty bastards. I sometimes still have nightmares about hairless rodents infesting my house.

7) I took Spanish for a few years in HS. I still know it fairly well.

8) Before I knew what pot REALLY looked like, we smoked these hollow reeds that we found up our backroad in the woods that we THOUGHT were pot (WTF?!! That was obviously before the whole D.A.R.E. campaign cuz they totally showed us what pot looked like, but by THEN we had figured out our error and already knew what it looked like). They were the harshest thing in the world, and I am sure we thought the headache we got from coughing so hard was from being high. We thought we were so cool. HA!

9) I smoked pot (the real stuff, not weird reeds I found in the woods!) pretty much daily from the time I was 15 until sometime in my early 20's. I still enjoy it on rare occasions, which is MUCH more enjoyable than smoking it every day!

10) I think that if anything should be illegal, it should be alcohol, not marijuana.

11) When I was probably 10 we started stealing my moms cigarette butts and smoking them. One time, my brother and I and a neighbor kid were smoking in the attic of my dad's garage, and my brother left matches on the insulation up there, and my dad found it and ROYALLY chewed our asses and grounded us. For awhile.

12) I have tried LOTS of drugs at least once, but have never done Heroin or PCP.

13) I love to read. That is something I really miss from before L; having the opportunity to just lay on the couch all day on a Sunday, from morning until night, reading. Not doing anything all day except reading.

14) I love Stephen King, and own the majority of his books, and will be sad when he dies and can no longer write books for me to read.

15) I love photography. I hope to continue to practice it as a hobby, with the dream of it being more someday. I think I have a knack for taking good pictures.

16) I have a big mouth, and sometimes I really hate it. Sometimes, things come out that I wish I hadn't said.

17) I have a need to be a part of everything; like at work, we are a small office, and sometimes I can't keep my nose out of whatever is going on, even if it has nothing to do with me. Or like the time in 3rd grade when we had a sub, and someone came into the classroom and asked the sub if so-and-so was there, and I blurted out "NO!" and so-and-so actually WAS there, and the teacher scolded me, and I was SO embarrased. I hate that memory.

18) I really really thought L was a girl the whole time I was pregnant with him. When the Dr. pulled him out and said "It's a boy!" I was shocked and said "It's a boy? Really?" after which I was immediately happy to have a healthy boy. Now, I am glad I had a boy first...there is just something special about mama's little boy!

19) I really want to have a girl next time. Since we think we will stop at 2, I really want to be able to experience raising both.

20) When I was pregnant with L, I was REALLY concerned that my drug use would come back to haunt me in the form of a deformed or disabled child. (NO NO NO, I did not use drugs while pregnant, I meant my high school / early 20's drug use!)

21) In some ways I am more like my mom than I like to admit or acknowledge(see #16 and #17).

22) I have a tendency to be OCD about things. My dishes have a black stripe along one side adn they all have to be lined up and facing the same direction in the cupboard. Clothing and towels must be folded a certain way. Clothing hung on hangers must face a certain direction. I count my steps a lot.

23) I need to be in charge of things. I have control issues. I like to have a plan, and when things don't go according to plan, I don't like it and it throws me out of whack. I hate that about myself.

24) On that same line, I am not good with change what.so.ever. Not even good change. I also hate this about myself.

25) My friend Lynda, whom I have been trying to blog about, was a total free spirit, lived completely in the now, went with the flow. I think that is why I was so attracted to her; she was completely and thouroughly, down to her core, what I could never truly be. I reveled in her free-ness, I basked in the sunlight that was her soul.

26) I *really* loved her. I loved her so deeply that it went beyond any bounds and is different than any love I have felt for any other woman in my life.

27) I miss her.

28) I used to have a re-curring nightmare about a bear chasing me up my driveway, and I would stab it in the shoulder with a nail (WTF?!).

29) I have only broken one bone in my life; my thumb during a softball tournament when I was like 20. I have only had 4 stitches in my life, when I was probably 12, in my knee. I have only had two surgeries; I had a tonsillectomy when I was 26, just before my wedding, and emergency laproscopic surgery when I was 27 to remove an ectopic pregnancy.

I will stop there...29 facts, one for all 29 years of my life. I only get to be 29 for about 7 more weeks, so that seems like a good number.