100 things

Nov 11, 2009

I have been blogging for a little over 6 months now and I have to say I love it. I love having a place to put my thoughts for the world to see. I need a place to process, create, and share and this has been the perfect answer to fill those needs. I love hearing from my readers on how things have touched them or how they relate to something I have written. It is a tad bit addicting for me, so I have tried to keep it in balance and will need to keep working on that one!

I have arrived at my 100th post and have been motivated by fellow bloggers to share 100 things about myself, in case you didn’t already know everything about me! These are in no particular order…just random thoughts off the top of my head.

• 1. I love the number seven and even named one of my children the number seven in Hebrew. I was born on the 7th, at 7:00, weighed 7 lbs., and my mom pushed me out for seven minutes. Seven is the most holy and perfect number in Hebrew and I love that I started out with a string of them.
• 2. I love cantaloupe.
• 3. I cannot sew worth a darn. It is the most frustrating thing in the world to me…and yet, here I am doing a huge sewing project for children in Uganda!
• 4. I love to read. I could spend my life reading if I didn’t have children. Thankfully God knew I needed to get my head out of the books and gave me some children that need fed, held, and loved on.
• 5. I once cooked pancakes on a cookie sheet. On top of the stove. Of course, the flame burned right through. Lovely.
• 6. I am 35 years old and can still do a back handspring. In fact I did one at gym this week.
• 7. Our house burned down when we had been married just 8 weeks.
• 8. I have a bachelor’s degree in psychology. It took me a long time to get it…I was a senior when Blythe was born and it took me another four years to graduate.
• 9. I love to sing at the top of my lungs. I spent my entire childhood singing and driving my family bonkers. I remember my brothers pleading with my mother to please. make. me. be. quiet. right. this. instant. This does not mean I am a good singer…just a passionate one.
• 10. I used to be extremely competitive and am guilty of jumping over people and desks to hand in assignments first. I HAD to always have my papers in first AND get 100% on them or I would be devastated.
• 11. On that same line of thinking, I scored an A++++ in outside reading in the fourth grade. There was this little chart for every 100 pages a child read. The teacher had to make a new chart because I filled mine up so fast. Nuts, truly, I was nuts.
• 12. I have been breastfeeding for over 11 years of my life. Well, that doesn’t count the time my mom breastfed me as an infant, so over 12 years with that. I am hoping my chances for breast cancer are at 0% with all those months of estrogen reduction working for my benefit. If you throw in pregnancies, I have been either gestating or nursing for 170 months of my adult life, which is 14.16 years. We have been married 16 years.
• 13. I have had four wonderful and very different home births.
• 14. I love Hebrew and I cannot make the gutteral sounds that are critical to correct pronunciation.
• 15. I use cloth diapers and love them.
• 16. I also use cloth pads and a Keeper menstrual cup…love them too!
• 17. I have a very weak set of Kegel muscles and cannot stop from peeing my pants if I laugh very hard. I have probably had over 1000 accidents in my life. When I was a teenager and packing for our family reunions, I would always bring about 15 outfits for the 3 day trip because Camille and Tami would make me laugh so hard I would go through lots of outfits every day.
• 18. Speaking of Camille and Tami…they are my cousins and also my best friends. I have been blessed with their love, support, laughter, and encouragement for the last 30+ years. They have held me when I cried, driven hours and hours to visit me, loved my children, called me in the middle of the night, given me lots of massages, brought me delicious food, sang “Families Can Be Together Forever,” and been the best “women” friends anyone could ever ask for. I used to think this was normal, but now I realize how rare it is to have two such precious friends to walk this journey of life with. We will be friends forever and I can just see us when we are all 90…we will still be laughing and staying up all night playing games as we enjoy each other’s great-grandchildren.
• 19. I am extremely spontaneous. I will do pretty much anything on the spur of the moment, including setting off on trips, completely rearranging my entire house, starting a huge Africa project, starting to play the cello, or an endless list of other adventures I have taken my family on. My husband is a planner and a list maker and I pretty much drive him bonkers. But he is used to me now…and he adores me.
• 20. I hate schedules and plans…see #19 above.
• 21. I can eat 1/2 gallon of ice cream in one sitting and have done it many times.
• 22. I rarely make my bed.
• 23. I love fabric and it is a problem because I can’t sew. See #3 above.
• 24. I ride a recumbent high-racer.
• 25. I hate putting laundry away and rarely do it.
• 26. I love Keen, Chaco, and Dansko shoes.
• 27. I have wide, ugly, very-high arched, hobbit feet. See #26 above.
• 28. I have a uni-brow that needs continuous maintenance to adhere to the standards of feminine beauty.
• 29. My favorite place in the world is Green River Lakes.
• 30. My other favorite place is in my husband’s arms and if I had to choose between GRL and his arms, I would choose his arms.
• 31. I am a doula and have helped families birth their babies for the last 13 years. I love it and know that God called me to this sacred work.
• 32. I have caught one breech baby.
• 33. I am loud and obnoxious. (However, I am not loud and obnoxious at births, but believe it is a holy experience that I am to nurture and help all to experience at whatever level they are ready for.)
• 34. I believe agency is a foundational principle and is the defining factor between good and evil. We must choose who we are, what we are made of, and how we will treat others. Programs of compulsion, manipulation, and non-thinking do not develop the best that is within us and we do not progress as children of God when we are forced into anything, especially so called goodness. For it to truly be good, it must be chosen.
• 35. I take my children to the library every week.
• 36. I treasure my friends and I have a lot of them.
• 37. I love the Old Testament, the Jewish culture, and everything about Hebrew.
• 38. I am fairly obsessed with both the Revolutionary War and WWII.
• 39. My parents divorced when I was 12. To say that it changed my life forever is a severe understatement. It completely altered my perceptions of who I was, what reality was, what was truth, and what family meant. I think I am recovered now, but sometimes things still come up.
• 40. I cut or burn myself pretty much every time I am cooking. I have the scars to prove it. I think I could make money on America’s Funniest Home Videos if I just left a camera running all the time in my kitchen.
• 41. I scream with joy, fear, excitement, and shock on a regular basis.
• 42. I love old things.
• 43. My grandmother taught me all I need to know to get to heaven.
• 44. My mother is the most hilarious person ever.
• 45. I use honey for my sweetener.
• 46. I love honeycrisp apples.
• 47. I used to have a lot of functioning brain cells and could remember what I needed to do each day. Now I have children and not a day goes by without me forgetting something important.
• 48. I love quotes that stir my soul.
• 49. I love sleeping in a tent.
• 50. I could live outside, especially at Green River Lakes.
• 51. I have not ridden in an airplane since I was 18 and that was only my 2nd trip.
• 52. I have only been to California, Oregon, Washington, Montana, South Dakota, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Minnesota. All of those except CA and NV were before I was married.
• 53. I can say all the states in alphabetical order…thanks mom for the songs and games growing up.
• 54. I can say the alphabet backwards pretty darn fast. Ditto to mom.
• 55. I have four living children and nine children who haven’t made it to our arms.
• 56. I have a bad habit of thinking I am right.
• 57. I cannot grow a garden, in fact, I can’t even keep a plant alive (although the peace lily Sommer gave me for my birthday is still, at this very minute, alive!). I do keep trying. I think it is something about schedules and structure being needed…
• 58. I am willing to drive across the country to get things I need. Chickens, dogs, fresh air?
• 59. I have driven home from Boise with 100 chickens in my suburban with the windows down the whole way so that my children and I could breathe.
• 60. I have broken more dishes and glassware than should be humanly possible.
• 61. I exploded a pyrex casserole dish by putting it on my flat ceramic stove top that was still turned on high. (Do you have any idea how much glass is in an 11 x 15 pyrex casserole dish? Months later we were still finding glass.)
• 62. I hate flat ceramic stove tops. Give me gas and 20,000 BTU’s any day.
• 63. When I am asleep I like to be straight with the room. I cannot be at an angle with the walls. Except right now our bed is at a perfect 45 degree angle, and that is okay, it is like I am the hypotenuse of the triangle.
• 64. Even though I rarely make my bed, I like my covers to be perfectly orderly when I get into bed.
• 65. Did I mention my husband adores me? Truly. I don’t know why and I certainly don’t deserve it, but he adores me clear down to his little toes and his love has changed my life forever.
• 66. I have 3 brothers and 1 sister…all of them very different from one another.
• 67. I frequently lock myself out of my car. I just did it for the fourth time in 2009 on Tuesday.
• 68. I can still fit into my wedding dress.
• 69. I cook from scratch and have no clue how to cook like a mainstream American woman. I have never used a cake mix, don’t do cream of chicken soup casseroles, and always use real ingredients. Chemicals don’t cut it for me.
• 70. I use freshly ground whole wheat flour. I prefer white wheat. I also like spelt, kamut, oat, quinoa, and amaranth.
• 71. I love Bruce’s Cereal from Kitchen Kneads in Ogden.
• 72. I stick my foot in my mouth frequently, but I rarely mean offense.
• 73. I love C.S. Lewis’ writing.
• 74. I spend hours researching pretty much everything.
• 75. I love 100% cotton handmade quilts. I wish I could quilt and create all the amazing ideas I have in my mind.
• 76. I do not believe in compulsory schooling.
• 77. I am passionate about the Constitution.
• 78. I scored a 5 on the AP History test in High School.
• 79. I really dislike running, but I have always wanted to like it.
• 80. My children throw up profusely…which is why we have leather for our vehicle and our furniture.
• 81. I love Thai food.
• 82. I once punched Richard’s boss. Repeatedly.
• 83. I have been given more love by family and friends than I deserve. Also, more money, food, gifts, and patience.
• 84. There was a period of my life where I stopped crying. For years. I am so glad that part of me is turned back on and now I cry on regular basis.
• 85. I could have easily been a bottle-propping, go to work, give the baby to someone else kind of mother because of my selfishness. Thankfully, I researched breastfeeding and attachment parenting ad nauseum so that my mind could overcome my character flaw.
• 86. At one time I decided I was not going to get married or have children. I was going to get a PhD and do important things without a man telling me what to do. God intervened and patiently taught me where my joy would come from.
• 87. I love the Arbinger Institute’s approach to human relations.
• 88. I believe each person has a mission to accomplish here on earth and that God is helping us individually to prepare for and carry out that work.
• 89. I have a hard time with restraint. In fact, I don’t really know how to restrain myself. I get an idea and I go with it without really stopping to assess how nonsensical, difficult, or inconvenient it might be.
• 90. I am completely fed up with both the Democrat and the Republican parties. I don’t believe a word either of them say and wish a sinkhole would swallow Washington D.C. and all the other power centers of the world.
• 91. I understand why people are drawn to the peace, love, and utopia worldviews. It sounds good…it just doesn’t work with human nature.
• 92. I love eating popcorn while curling up with a good book.
• 93. I love Sudoko puzzles. I actually love all sorts of puzzles.
• 94. I am an “Anne with an E” girl.
• 95. I try to drink 3-4 quarts of water a day.
• 96. I love smoothies made with parsley and pineapple.
• 97. I am a touching person and probably bother people who aren’t by invading their personal space.
• 98. I love sweaters and funky socks and can’t wait for winter to wear them. (Though I hate nursing in sweaters and this is a problem!)
• 99. I meet people and become friends with new people everywhere I go. My husband and children are used to this and aren’t even surprised anymore when I introduce them to someone “just like me” that I just met at the grocery store. I can see something in their eyes, connect with their soul, and know we are meant to be friends. Does that happen to you?
• 100. I wish I lived up to all my ideals of who and what a daughter of God is, but I struggle everyday with the basics and don’t know if I will ever be who He created me to be. I hope so though.

Whew! That took some time! Did you make it all the way?