29 minus 1

Tomorrow I will wake up another year older. 

Every year I say it, and every year I mean it, but this last year has been the most educational of my life.  I have learned more about myself than I ever thought possible.  I have pushed myself in ways I didn't know existed.  I found a way to love myself, even if it's just a little bit.

So, in honor of my last night falling asleep as a 28 year old, here is MY list of number 1's.  In no particular order.

• Johnny Depp
• Hanson
• Forrest Gump or Benny and Joon
• Adele
• Blue
• John Lennon
• JK Rowling
• I Know This Much is True
• Jacob
• Treasure Island, FL
• Boxers
• Cats
• Pizza
• Early morning sweet text messages
• Waking up in his arms
• Edemame
• Friday

29 minus 2

I realize that I didn't get around to #3 yesterday, but I think I can live with missing one day in ten.  Forgive me.

Coming up with random information about myself has proven harder than I thought.  I'm trying not to talk about things that I talk about often, like my weight loss, or Aiden being born with bilateral clubfoot.  So I figured today was a good day for some bullet points.

• I count stairs as I walk them, either up or down.
• I have the bad habit of filling silences with "so...." (I've realized that both my mother and sister do this as well, so I'm going to chalk that up to a genetic thing.)
• I can talk a big talk, but I'm inwardly very shy when it comes to sex.  
• I've been told that I'm extremely feminine, even though I can rough and tumble with the best of the boys.  I never would consider myself "feminine" though.
• I wear contacts, and I have since my 14th birthday.
• With the weight I've lost, there are things that have shrunk that I never expected to, such as my hands and my feet.  My wrists, my chest.  It still amazes me when I look at my calves and realize that these muscular legs that I didn't think were big to begin with have actually shrunk and toned.
• I over think and over analyze nearly EVERYTHING.  This is one of my greatest faults, and something I've been working very hard on overcoming.  I have to remember that my reality isn't necessarily someone elses.
•  My favorite thing to do when I have downtime is to nap.
• I am a fierce Democrat.
• I love when a man has two or three days worth of stubble on his face.
• Very rarely am I not chewing gum, or have a mint in my mouth.
• I would get a half sleeve tattoo if I had sexy enough arms.
• I have no ass.
• I love bread and butter pickles, hot tamales, reece's peanut butter cups, cheese, Thai food, and pretty much any kind of Mexican food.
• In the summer, one of my favorite things to do is to lay out in the sun for hours.
• ham and pineapple pizza is the shit.

29 minus 4

It's incredibly hard for me to write (fiction, or non-fiction) when things in my life are going well.  Rob Thomas was quoted once as saying something along the lines of "when you're depressed, you write.  When you're happy, you live."  Which sums it up pretty nicely.

There are a lot less things to say when things are good, and I'm not sure if that's because of my fear of jinxing things, or if I'm simply more boring when I'm happy than when I'm not.

And truthfully, I am incredibly boring.  I surf the internet, I watch television, I cook, I try to clean, I work, I go to the gym, and I sleep.  Of course there's all sorts of living that's going on in between.  I cuddle with my boyfriend, play outside with the three cutest little boys, spend a couple of hours a week driving, and laughing.

That's probably one of the best things about living, is all the laughing I do.  Most of the time, it's D doing something (whether it's on purpose, or most of the time, it's him being the fabulous unknowingly funny guy.) or saying something.  I love to laugh.

So I apologize if the last few days haven't been the most exciting of reads, I've been busy living ;)

29 minus 5

When I was 15 years old, I started to collect blue bottles.  This came about from one of my friends that I had connected with online.  She lived in New Hampshire, and we connected through heartache and writing.

I called her my blue bottled angel, and I bought a matching blue vase set, mailed one to her, and kept the other for myself.  We both wore Ralph Lauren Romance perfume.  We had both loved and lost and lost a little more.  We were connected through losing friends to suicide, to boyfriends who cheated on us.  We wrote about it, and attempted to share it with the rest of the world.

She was one of my best friends, someone I could always count on to be only a phone call away.

We're still in contact, though we don't talk nearly as much anymore, our lives have gone in completely different directions, and through that I realize how little we had in common to begin with, but how such small things were able to connect us.  Like a blue bottle.

I still have mine.  I have added to the collection over the years, and I display them proudly.  Several of my friends and lovers over the years have contributed to the collection.  I don't collect much of anything, but I have a feeling that I will hold onto those blue bottles for a long time.

29 minus 6

I was in Girl Scouts for 12 years. 

My last year was my sophomore year in high school, when I made the choice to concentrate more on band and my social life than spending all of my spare time with a bunch of other girls.  I mean, what fun is that?

My mother was my troop leader when I was a Daisy, and part of the time when I was a Brownie.  When I became a Junior was when a lot of my friends in the troop thinned out, and I was forced to associate with people I normally wouldn't have.  By the time I reached Senior status, pretty much the only reason I stayed involved was for the camping trips.

I loved Girl Scout camping.  We had a fall camping trip where we would dig holes in the ground to go to the bathroom, spend out afternoons hiking and chasing down firewood and finding random trees and flowers.  Our winter camping was in the Girl Scout lodge in Grand Island, if it was nice enough we could go out on the property and do the tree mazes, and the zip lines.  But most of the time the winter trips involved melting snow for water, and freezing the leader's bra while they slept.

I loved cooking on a campfire, and washing our dishes in water that was warmed over a flame.  I loved the homemade doughnuts, and the chicken on a haystack that was a staple of every camping trip.  I loved singing around the fire at night, telling ghost stories in the tents, putting on three layers of clothes and climbing in my sleeping bag, pulling the sleeping bag over my head so I didn't freeze.  Playing flashlight tag, taking nighttime hikes, scaring the crap out of each other.

I don't regret a single minute that I spent around these wonderful women.  I had wonderful mentors, these wonderful older women who taught me how to be strong, and determined, and brought out my sense of humor.  I made friends, and though there were some girls I didn't get along with, I can honestly say that I didn't make any enemies.

Leaving the girl scouts in my sophomore year was the right decision for me, at the time.  Looking back on it now, I wish I had stuck it out and went all the way.  Earned my silver and my gold torches.



29 minus 7

I was not popular in high school.

I also want to say that I wasn't UN-popular either.  I had a lot of friends, they were just the rough outcasts like myself.  I was in band.  I loved being in band.  I was made fun of for being in band.  I loved Hanson.  I was made fun of for liking Hanson.  I drove a silver Dodge Aries.  I was made fun of for driving a silver Dodge Aries.

My friends were divided into band friends, and non-band friends.  I had acquaintances who I had random classes with, who I got along with, but who I would never dream of hanging out with on a Saturday night.  I tried melding my band and non-band worlds and it never worked out too well.  There was resentment and hurt feelings.  I felt like the third wheel a lot.

I had two boyfriends in high school.  One was the beginning of my freshman year, the other was the end of my senior year.  I'm not sure what happened in the other years, but I do know there was a lot of kissing going on, but nothing official in the ways of a relationship.  Most of the time I just wanted to hang out with my friends, cruise main, eat at perkins, smoke cigarettes, drink beer or vodka.

Nichole and I would sleep out on her trampoline, her mom making us cinnamon rolls in the morning.  Steph and I would sneak out of my house late at night and not come home until the sun was coming up.  Sarah and I would meet boys at school playgrounds.  Maryann and I would drive out of town to meet up with boys we met the previous weekend.

My hair was burgundy, I was probably a good 10 or 15 lbs underweight but still saw myself as a cow.  I was desperately unhappy and I knew very little even though I thought I knew it all.

It's hard for me, as one of the out crowd, to socialize with some of the people who I always thought they thought they were better than me in high school.  The cheerleaders, the jocks.  All of the people whose parents could buy them the most expensive clothes and shoes, who bought them nice cars and who didn't have to spend their afternoons and evenings waiting tables in order to buy gas for their cars.

I realize now that all of that was an illusion.  Popularity in high school doesn't mean jack in the real world.

29 minus 8

I love to read.

There isn't a point in my life where I remember not loving to read.

I was the girl who carried around a book that wasn't assigned for class, and would bury my nose in it every free chance I had.  Before classes started, after getting a homework assignment done, after finishing a test.  I would bring a book to work with me and sit in the breakroom for 15 minutes smoking cigarettes and losing myself in a whole other world.

I've tried my hand at writing.  I've written poetry and random prose.  I've written really terrible fan-fiction.  I've tried to write a memoir, and a children's book.  None of these have ever really panned out.  I would like to write a combination of all of these and put them into a book, and a title it Love, Blue.  I would fill up notebooks with my purple colored ink.  I still have most of them locked in shoe boxes in my closet.

I am good with the real stuff.  I am really good at writing about what I've experienced, what I've felt, what I am able to touch and smell and feel and be.  It's the fiction I struggle with.  However, this is what I enjoy reading the most.  The stories that are not mine.

Favorite book: I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb.
Favorite Poet: Saul Williams

I collect books like some women collect shoes.  I firmly believe that you can never have too many bookshelves.