A new look at me

I've been thinking about starting a new blog for a while. I have really wanted to have an outlet for all my thoughts, or lack of, but wanted to keep the boys' blog all about them. I thought this may be the best way for me to really deal with all the changes going on in my life. I expect to have a hard time with culture shock and everything else that comes along with moving to the other side of the world and well...life in general. I promise I will still keep up with the boys blog. This is just something for me.

To start off I made a 100 things about me list. I was shocked I could come up with that much.

1. I love the smell of bleach. To me bleach=clean.
2. This could also come from the fact that I was a swimmer growing up, which means I smelled like chlorine 90% of the time.
3. I drop things A LOT!
4. I have never dropped one of my children—I am amazed at that.
5. I have a weird fascination with numbers and number patterns.
6. I think that could be why I enjoy Algebra.
7. I hate Geometry, it’s fake math to me. Shapes and numbers have little to do with each other in my mind. Well other than the fact that we learn both in Kindergarten.
8. I like my surroundings to be neat and organized.
9. I spend an unusual amount of time organizing things in my mind and thinking of ways to make life easier.
10. Convenience products are quite appealing to me.
11. I’m a firm believer that people are only environmentally friendly when it’s convenient for them. There are a few exceptions.
12. I didn’t try very hard in school.
13. I was a ‘B’ average student.
14. I wonder what kind of grades I could have gotten if I worked hard.
15. Speaking of working hard, I really don’t like to work for other people.
16. I have only really enjoyed two jobs out of the 15-20 I’ve had. Vinyard Café and Kids R Kids.
17. Both times I was working for fellow believers in Christ.
18. The main reason I don’t like working for others is because I don’t like to be on someone else’s time schedule.
19. I like to make a schedule that goes along with my logic.
20. I think the work Stan and I are doing now is well suited for me.
21. I’m a list maker.
22. I feel accomplished when I can check things off my list.
23. Recently I was cleaning out the glove box in our car and found a list of Wedding To Do’s. One thing was not checked off and I was pretty disturbed by that.
24. Four years later I was wondering if I ever completed that item. Something is wrong with me.
25. I really like being a mother.
26. So I take back #23—there are three jobs that I have enjoyed.
27. This is the most important thing I will ever do in my life.
28. I’m pretty sure I will do something to ‘mess them up’.
29. I like being able to say ‘because I’m the mom and I said so’.
30. I am the parent and I call the shots. I AM IN CHARGE.
31. I hate seeing families where the child is in charge—you know what I’m talking about—it absolutely makes me cringe.
32. I love having boys.
33. I want to have a little girl with all my heart.
34. Stan says Kirby acts like me (he’s slightly OCD like I am) and Bennett looks like me.
35. I love that Kirby has a huge imagination and Bennett has so much joy.
36. I know neither of these is because of anything I have done.
37. I use a cell phone that is at least 6 years old and I like to brag about it. It has a green screen and no features at all. It has been dropped a million times and is still going strong. I think I’ll be sad to have to give it up since it won’t work overseas.
38. There was very little I had a hard time letting go of when we had to get rid of everything that we couldn’t take on the plane.
39. My favorite color is red.
40. I write and eat with my left hand, everything else I do right handed.
41. I enjoy running errands, as long as I’m alone. Goes back to the checking things off a list.
42. I boycott Wal Mart as much a possible. The employees are always rude and the stores are always dirty. I’m a Target girl.
43. Life is ironic in the fact that I am incredibly excited that the city where we will live is building a Wal Mart. Go figure.
44. I could spend endless time in stores like CVS and Staples. Goes back to items for convenience (I like to buy travel mini’s) and organization.
45. I sing at the top of my lungs when I’m in the car alone or with my family.
46. I’m not a very good singer even though I like to pretend that I am.
47. My relationship with Christ is the most important relationship I have ever had.
48. My husband and children come next. In that order. Stan will always come before our children.
49. I am perplexed that there are people who celebrate Christian holidays but are not Christian. We lived in an area with a huge population of Hindu Indians that celebrated Christmas and Easter. What? I don’t get it. I could go on but I won’t.
50. I hate when I am the first to blame God but the last to thank Him. I am working on Praising Him through the hardest of times. I am often reminded that those are the times I am being refined in the fire.
51. My life is way harder now than before I was a follower of Christ—whoever said that makes life easy must not be a follower.
52. I like the process of putting on make up. I enjoy picking out eye colors and mixing them up. I like to take my time.
53. I don’t feel like I wear too much make up. I don’t look like a clown unless I do it on purpose.
54. I am way faster than I used to be. Being a mom has made me able to cut down my routine by a lot, if not all the way, if time doesn’t permit.
55. I was in 11th grade before I realized that I had curly hair.
56. Up until that point I thought I just had really wavy, frizzy hair and spent my whole life wishing it was straight.
57. If I could pick anybody’s hair to have it would be Kitty (aka Kathleen). Her hair is thick and straight but holds curl really well. I’ve never seen it look frizzy. Not fair.
58. I wish it wasn’t pointless for me to get color in my hair, especially now that my best friend does hair professionally.
59. I think I look better with highlights or at least a little color boost.
60. I think I have by far the coolest engagement story ever.
61. That is a totally narcissistic thing to say but deep down we all think we have the best so I feel like I can say that. I know no one else who rode a donkey up a mountain in China. See I told you it was the coolest.
62. I am the worst speller EVER. If spell check had not been invented I would not have made it through college.
63. Sometimes when I need to know how to spell a word and I’m not using the computer I go open a Word document just to see if my spelling gets a red squiggly line.
64. Most of the time it does.
65. I feel guilty that my parents paid a lot of money for me to go to a private women’s college and I don’t technically use my degree.
66. Since I have a business degree I can use the concepts in all of life but I feel like that doesn’t really count cause I’m not getting paid to work in HR.
67. After my sophomore year in college I realized that I did not want to wear a power suit and go to an office all day, every day.
68. I wanted to get married and have babies. Which is really something I wanted my whole life but I realized that’s all I wanted to do.
69. The first day Stan and I met we had an argument. It is pretty embarrassing now that I think back because all of our friends were sitting around eating lunch. Awkward!
70. It took six months for us to become friends.
71. It took six more months before we realized we wanted more than friendship.
72. Sometimes I think the 2 years he was out of the country were our best years as far as communication.
73. Once I stopped drinking and partying I never missed it.
74. I think I’m just as much fun now as I was then.
75. I think it’s hard for most people to understand that I didn’t stop because it’s against my ‘religion’. I stopped because it was not a part of my life that honored God.
76. I hope that I can honor God with all aspects of my life.
77. My biggest struggle now is food. I have food issues. It sounds silly but God is using food to bring about discipline in my life.
78. Right now I don’t see an end to me having food issues.
79. God sees my issues with food and someone else’s issues with other addictions as the same. (Please let me clarify that I am NOT comparing myself to anyone that struggles with addiction—I’m just stating how God perceives my issue.)
80. This is far from the only struggle in my life; it’s just always been the biggest one.
81. I can watch certain movies over and over again.
82. The same goes with the show Friends.
83. I once owned the first 8 seasons on DVD but had to give them away because it was getting ridiculous at how much I watched through all 8 in order.
84. I’m embarrassed to admit that I like to watch NASCAR.
85. Dale Earnhardt, Jr. is my favorite even though I tried not to be a fan because he is most people’s favorite. I got sucked in. I like to think it’s because he grew up near where I did and is about my age.
86. I have never seen any of the Princess Disney movies all the way through. Another thing I look forward to if I have a daughter.
87. I don’t like to sweat without purpose. If I’m going to workout or doing housework it’s not a problem. If I’m dressed with makeup and ready to go somewhere sweating just makes me mad.
88. I don’t like hot weather unless I’m sitting by the pool.
89. I prefer not to sit on a beach. I don’t like to get sandy and I’m not interested in the ocean—I have the constant feeling that something will get my toes.
90. My favorite season is fall--moderate temperatures and cool crisp air. Winter is nice for the occasional snow but now we are moving to an area where we will not have heat so I’m pretty sure I won’t enjoy that. Spring brings too many allergy issues and summer is just too hot—refer to #88.
91. I enjoy coffee way too much. I could possibly drink it all day until the dehydration sets in from all the caffeine.
92. I enjoy chocolate way too much as well.
93. I once bought some chocolate from Starbucks and on the box is said “When coffee dreams, it dreams of chocolate.” I cut it out and put in on my fridge.
94. I am one of the least compassionate women (well person) I know. It’s definitely NOT one of my spiritual gifts.
95. I always score highest in administrative on the spiritual gifts tests. I’m still trying to figure out how that is spiritual, but if it counts that’s fine with me.
96. I know I put this on my short list but I am not an animal person. When I see a picture of little kittens or puppies the first think I think is ‘those animals would make me sneeze so much’.
97. I’m considering letting Kirby have a pet fish at our new home. There is little drama when fish die; just a quick flush (you may be picking up on the lack of compassion) and they require minimal care.
98. I hate to do laundry. I don’t mind cleaning, cooking or any of those other household things but laundry is never ending. That night, after you finish washing all the clothes, you take off what you were wearing during the day and put it in the basket. And there is sits, laughing at you.
99. In college I had enough underwear to last at least two weeks so I didn’t have to do laundry as often. I still washed towels and sheets at least once a week.
100. I don’t do nic nacs (or however you spell it, it’s not in spell check, darn it).
Bonus: I like to sew, knit and cross-stitch. I made the bedding that the boys used as babies and one Christmas I knitted a bunch of scarves for gifts. I haven’t done any of those things much since the boys were born. Now any down time I have I read, much more accessible and something else I really enjoy.