100 things about me

I was inspired to do this list of 100 things you might not know about me by my dear friend Barb. Our friends Kayecee and Brian also did theirs. Edit: and so did this  Barb!  I'm totally loving these lists!  I love discovering new stuffs about my friends.

I'm not sure if I have the wherewithall to do this or even if I even know how, but let's just go with it, eh?

1. I'm not sure I can finish this list. I'm not that interesting a person.

2. I'm married to a wonderful man who is ten years younger than me and my opposite in personality. This is probably why we're still together.

3. I was married before, for almost 10 years, to a lying, cheating, lazy, waste of carbon, white trash, lump of shit.  I thank Cthulhu every day that we never had kids and that I got out from under his 300lbs of corpselike misery.

4. Marrying my first husband was one of the stupidest things I've ever done in my life and I've done some dumb shit.

5. I cuss worse than a sailor. I cuss worse than Dexter's sister.  I shock people when I curse around them and so I'm constantly trying to supress it. I try to keep it off this blog. Well, I TRY.

6. I curse around my children. It's just how I talk. They're used to it and know that it's 'grown up talk' just like Jack and diet Coke is a 'grown up drink'.

7. I never curse AT my children. Ever.

8. I have a terrible temper and it's explosive. I don't work up to a rage, I am beamed into that state. If something sets me off it's like Jekyll and Hyde.

9. I blow up at my kids and my husband way more than I want to.

10. I try to tone myself down. I apologise to them a lot. I should do it more often.

11. I'm a rabid Anglophile. I love all things British, the history, the literature, the films, the people, the country, the food. srsly.

12. I've been to England once, for a while, when I was considering marrying an Englishman. Then I realised that I loved England more than I loved the Englishman in question.

13. I want to take my family to England. It's my dream vacation.

14. My speech and writing IRL is peppered with British slang and spelling. This is due to the above Anglophilia, my time in England, and the influence of various Brits in my life. It's not an affectation, it's really how I talk.  Like with the cursing, I have to conciously make myself spell and talk like an American sometimes.

15. The one thing I've wanted to be my whole life is a writer. Unfortunately I suck at it.  I have several stories that I've been working on for years.

16. I did complete NaNoWriMo last year though. That was cool and felt really good.

17. I am incredibly proud that both my husband and 7 year old son participated and both ALSO completed it.

18. I have two stories in mind to write about this year, but can't decide on which one: the broken woman , overwhelmed by her own emotional baggage, returning to her disfunctional home; or the tiny lake town where, after a power plant accident one woman starts seeing ghosts?

19. My favourite fiction writers are Stephen King, Kathy Reichs, Tess Garritsen, and Anne McCaffrey.

20. Not surprisingly, I like writing Sci Fi / fantasy / horror

21. I'm a pretty good artist - with a pencil and paper. I'm trying to translate that to the computer.

22. I've been drawing and writing since I was four.

23. It's been way too long since I've actually sat down and drawn.:(

24. I'm also a pretty dab hand at jewelry making. I get bored with the fiddly bits, though, and quit pretty quickly.

25. I'm a huge comic book freak and have been since I was small. I used to own Spiderman comics from the early 70s. Yes, I have a "but my mom threw them away" story. And it's true.

26. My favourite comics right now are anything by Mike Mignola (BPRD / Hellboy), Chew, Jack Staff, Locke and Key (Joe Hill), some Deadpool, some Punisher, and some of Marvel's Ultimate titles.

27. I'm 45 years old but feel like I'm 20 (except for my knees).

28. ...both of which have mangled menisci and arthritis.

29. I have lost over 150lbs ... twice. No, that weight is never coming back.

30. I love my new diet / lifestyle (Paleo) and can get kind of enthusiastic talking about it. I'm not trying to preach, it's just that the difference in my health is astounding!

31. I've been Paleo for 3 years now. My family is Low-Carb.

32. I don't eat any bread, cakes, cookies, muffins, bagels, pitas, pasta, rice, potatoes, beans, peanuts, nightshades, fruit, or sugar, and haven't in 3 years. No. Not even one bite.

33. No, I don't miss them at all!  Really! :D

34. My favourite foods are huge steaks (preferably t-bones or ribeyes) and steamed cauliflower drenched in real butter. Nom!

35. I don't do cardio. It makes me spill my drink.

36. I have 20 more pounds to lose.

37. I have five beautiful, funny, and smart children. I don't know how that happened. I think my uterus was used in an evil experiment.

38. I had five cesarean sections and six amniocenteses.

39. I loved being pregnant. For the first time in my life I did something right and was somebody.

40. I wanted seven children. I'm incredibly blessed with the five I have. I'd still love to adopt more.

41. Each of my babies was 9+ pounds. My smallest (Bitty Girl) was 9 pounds even and my largest (Boy) was 10 1/2 pounds (and 16 days overdue).  Now they're all slender, active, normal-sized kids. In the womb I was feeding them the nasty Standard American Diet, now they eat whole, natural, low carb. Booyah!

42. I name all of my cars.

43. My favourite colour is black.

44. I still paint my fingernails black and line my eyes with kohl.

45. I consider family dogs to be part of the family and refer to them as such. I had a dog brother and sister growing up whom I miss, still, and refer to our dogs as my children's brothers and sister.

46. I prefer dogs to cats but I like cats too. The obnoxious, overindulged, and obese ones, not so much.

47. I do NOT like small dogs. The bulgy-eyed and/or squashed face ones especially squick me out. (apologies to my friends with these type dogs)

48. I was obsessed with horses from a very early age. I still adore them just can't afford to keep them.  I still consider myself a "horse person".

49. My mother bought me a horse when I was in high school. I will adore her forever for this. He was a snowflake appaloosa cross named "Snap". I immediately renamed him "Spellcaster" and I miss him to this day.  Like my dog brother and sister, Bobbie and Kate, I get weepy just looking at old pictures of him / them. As a matter of fact I'm misting up just typing this.

50. Only 50? This is as interesting as I get!  OK, OK ... 50. I am obsessed with buying domain names. Only the lack of  funds keeps me from owning as many as my online friends do.  It's probably a blessing since I don't have the time / skill to develop them.

51. I'm rather socially inept and don't make friends easily.

52. I don't like doing the things most people find enjoyable: cook-outs, parties, bars. I dislike all the noise and  feel stupid and ugly and usually just stand in a corner, people-watching.

53. I get on MUCH better with men than women. I like to talk about cars and farming and guy stuff. I find most women incredibly trite and dull.

54. That being said, I have no friends IRL.  I have some people online (many of whom are women!) whom I really treasure but I'm not sure how they feel about me.

55. I don't call / see my extended family (such as it is) nearly enough.

56. One hobby of mine that I truly get a great deal of pleasure from is dumpster diving. Not only am I good at it but I actually get excited about it. Nothing beats the triumph and satisfaction of saving something from being wasted. I have found everything in the dumpster from money to food. No lie.

57. I have an almost pathological loathing of waste. I save, reuse, repurpose, recycle, almost EVERYTHING.

58. I HATE people who are wasteful. Who cook too much food knowing that they don't eat leftovers, who take loads of clothes and toys and household items to the dump because they can't be arsed to drive to the donation center after their yard sales, who buy paper plates and ziplock bags and paper towels and toss them about like they're nothing, who buy everything in wee individual packages cuz it's just too hard to divide stuff up yourself.  Who has the time?  Oh give me a break you lazy cow!

Just over halfway through and I go into a rant?

Jeez.

ANYway ...

59. Uh ... I am kinda prone to rants. On my blogs and IRL.  Along w/ my explosive temper (#8), I am very opinionated and a TEENSY bit judgemental. So I get on these juicy ... erm ... fits of exposition. but that's what blogs and husbands are for, right?

60. I've had an invisible friend since I was small. I still talk to him - yes, out loud sometimes. Yes, he talks to me. His name is Ci (pronounced "sigh"). He said I could say all this here.

61. I suffered infertility for the ten years I was married to my first husband. No, it wasn't him.  He got his dumb-arsed Charleston slut pregnant just fine.  That all was a really, really dark time in my life.

62. After my 'starter husband' left, I was left alone with our dog, an Aussie-Border Collie cross, who, in my way of thinking was my dog son (see #45).  As an infertile woman, with no husband, I glommed onto him (his name was Nick) and we weathered the storm together. I consider him my first child and still refer to him as "my number one son". My first human son, Boy, respectfully understands all this. I still cry sometimes thinking about the day Nick died.

63. My given name is not "Blue", but it will be my legal name one day.

64. I'm a Libra and that suits me well. I can wear opals with abandon, though I don't prefer them.

65. My favourite stones are lapis lazuli, amber, and jade. I've purchased two jade bracelets from china but broke them both. :( They shatter like glass!

66. I only wear silver, platinum, or white gold. Yellow gold looks ugly and cheap on me.

67. I've had debilitating asthma since I was a tiny thing - pills, inhaler with me at all times, a few ER visits, etc. I used to have one or two attacks minimum per day

68. I have had only two mild asthma attacks in the 3 years since I went Paleo and I don't even know where my inhaler is now.  I also don't have dandruff any more. How weird is that?

69. I'm not afraid of snakes, spiders, rats, bats, or bugs, but I will admit that palmetto bugs and maggots make me cringe.  Oh and I hate houseflies. They make me crazy.

70. I named my children after my heroes (Charles Darwin, Chuck Yeager), some of my fave literature (HP Lovecraft),  several comic book references (Bruce Banner, Hank McCoy), and some family names.

71. I think a lot of people name their children stupidly or unthinkingly. I hope I didn't. I tried to give my kids names that were easy to spell, easy to pronounce, unusual, and meaningful. I also gave everyone a nice common name in case they get sick of the odd one. I hope they grow into their names and like them because I loathe my given one.

72. I DON'T think all babies are cute. I think a great deal of them are ugly as sin. I thought three of my own children were not so pretty at birth.

73. My number one disliked trait in people is uselessness. I hate useless people, people who can't DO anything. People who can't fix things, who can't change a tyre or check their oil, who can't bake a simple birthday cake or fix a good (not fancy!) meal, who can't figure out how to fix a wobbly table or leaky faucet, who can't sew on a button or fix a small tear, who can't do their taxes when they're young and single.  Bah!

74. My number one liked trait in people is a sense of humour. I love folks who don't take themselves too seriously and who are not uptight.  People with no sense of humour give me the heebie jeebies.

75. My favourite type of farm animal is waterfowl, especially my geese. I don't know why I love them so much, but I do.

76. I hate the way I look. I've never been an attractive person (even when I was a kid), so I'm used to being the ugly chick, but since being obese and losing weight (and ageing) I now look really bad: stringy, saggy,  and old. Yuck.  Being ugly sucks. It's not so much the looks part as the fact that no one pays any attention to you. Being ugly means being invisible. Trust me I know. I've been the invisible girl my whole life.

77. My favourite flowers are white roses. I love cut flowers but can't afford them.

78. I sometimes find flowers in the dumpster - stores toss them out still bundled - and it never fails to make me smile to bring home three or four dozen flowers to put on my table.

79. My favourite horse colour is dark bay, followed by black and white piebald (like Pie in National Velvet). Americans call them "paints" but that's not the same, really. Paint is a breed of horse and the patterns look different.

80. My favourite books of all time are: National Velvet, Watership Down, the All Creatures Great and Small series by James Herriot, and Anne McCaffrey's dragon books.  I also love every Stephen King book except Cujo and the Dark Tower series, Catch-22, The World According to Garp, all of Jane Austin, the Lord of the Rings, all Sherlock Holmes stories, and every Agatha Christie ever written.

81. I probably left some out. I love books. I'm a huge bibliophile. I usually am reading two to four books at a time (I switch back and forth between them) as well as that week's comic books. I have a Kindle and am IN LOVE with it and read on it every day (I'm usually reading 1 or 2 on the Kindle and 1 or 2 real books at a time).

82. I really enjoy the LOLcat sites (icanhascheezburger) and can speak and write Lolspeak pretty well. I know it probably seems silly or irritating to a lot of people but I find it fun and whimsical.  Innocent whimsy is good. We don't indulge enough in it.

83. My favourite film of all time is the original Star Wars.  I'm a HUGE Star Wars fan (Star Trek, too!)  I'm an all around big ol' Sci-Fi geek and love most all Sci-Fi films.

84. I'm a science-head too. I love science. It's fascinating and it makes sense.

85. That being said, my religion is Paganism. I'm an Atheistic Pagan. I don't believe in any higher power or supreme being (and never have) but I DO believe that everything in the universe is interconnected. I think things happen - they evolve - as they should, whether it's good or (perceived as) bad. I believe in the butterfly effect and evolution. I think that everything we do, every decision we make, changes the course of our destiny - and affects everything around us, people, animals, the environment, as well. Basically I believe in science. I also think that there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dremt of in your philosophy. I think that there are things science simply has yet to explain (for example; I believe in ESP).

86. I'm pretty good with grammar, but I'm an aweful awfull awful speller!

87. I adore the beach. We used to vacation in Myrtle Beach and I just love it. I loved it so much that when I left home at 17, I moved there.  No money, no job, no place to stay, just moved. Just the sound of waves sooths me. I have a CD of wave sounds that I use at night as white noise so I can sleep.

88. I have had 20/15 vision for as long as I can remember but, lately, I've not been able to read miniscule print on medicine bottles and such. I think my sight is failing and it upsets me.

89. I've wanted a tattoo for a while and I've finally decided on what and where (a mehndi style tat on my left hand and arm). Now to find a good artist and get the money.

90. I have eleven piercings above the neck (and none below); a nose ring, a centre labret (pronounced lay-BRET not luh-BRAY) and 9 earrings. I'm thinking of getting two more; repiercing my eyebrow and a Monroe. We'll see.

91. I only have nightmares. I dream vividly and often but I cannot recall, in my whole life, having had one that was not dark and disturbing. 98% of my dreams take place in dark settings, sometimes rainy,  and I often dream of mazes; mazes of city streets, mazes of boxes, mazes of rooms. Most of my dreams are recurring. I have about five dreams that repeat over and over and have my whole life. My most prominant one involves a huge, old house. It's always night and I'm looking for something. I always come to a room that scares me so badly that I finally wake up but I never ever find out WHY the room is so scary to me.  My worst ones involve hanging sheets of plastic and the sound it makes.

92. I'm a necrophobe. I have a fear of dead bodies. When I was little I used to get down into the floorboard of the car when we passed a cemetary. I still have to turn my head when I pass a funeral, cemetary, or funeral home. My fear is what kept me from a career in the medical field. If I see a dead body on a telly show or in a film, I'll have nightmares about it for days.

93. I hate taking the rubbish out to the truck/trailer. Seriously. Drives me crazy.

94. I don't own a working dryer or dishwasher. This is by choice. Dryers are stupid wastes of electricity, not to mention the nasty chemical stink of dryer sheets/fabric softener (yes, we can smell it!) and it only takes a few minutes to wash dishes.

95. I love living in the country. I really love it. My kids get to play outside barefoot, eat dirt, and swing on the tyre swing. They get to see how the farm works, help with the chores, get bitten by mosquitoes, and climb on hay bales. Most of all I don't have anybody watching everything I do. No nosey neighbours, no loud music, no cars all day every day running the road.

96. I like self-help books. I guess I need a lot of help.

97. I do all the repairs on and around our house and farm. I've installed doors, painted, finished rooms (sheetrock, mud, caulk, etc), replaced plumbing, fixed electrical, strung fencing, hung gates, built sheds/cages/pens.

98. I dispise chocolate.  Even the smell of it makes me cringe.

99. I'm addicted to electronics. I personally own or have bought for my husband and kids: one iPhone, one blackberry, one netbook, two ipods (family owns three), two desktops, one laptop (family owns two), one graphire pen tablet, one Flip, two cannon digital cameras, and one Kindle.  And that's just what I can think of right now.  AND I want: a Kindle DX, an Intuos4 pen tablet, and an iPad.  Addicted.

100. It took me two days to complete this list.  Jeez. Well, I hope you enjoyed it.   I'm gonna go make some t-shirts. :)