What you don't know...will probably kill you.

Everyone on Facebook has been passing around that "what you don't know about me" meme, and if you comment or like, you get a number.  Dude, I have commented and liked all over the place and have not received a number.  My sad little girl self says it's because nobody cares, but my rational self says it's probably because I am not a particularly private person and overshare, anyway.  But it's fun, and it's a list, and you all know I love lists.  So here they are...some things you all may not know about me:

1.  I was not born in this country.  My dad was in the Army, and I was born in Panama.  I actually had dual citizenship until I was 18 and had to choose.

2.  I actually find tattoos very sexy, but I'm terrified of needles, so I stopped at one.  I've promised myself one more when I get 100 lbs off.

3.  I was completely out of contact with all but one high school friend until Facebook.  So that was almost 15 years.  When I started communicating with them again, I found that the people I really liked in high school were still amazing people, and some were even better.  This is why I never complain about Facebook. 

4.  I am still friends, at least on Facebook, with almost all of my ex-boyfriends.  I like to make some self-deprecating excuse for this, but the fact is, if I liked them enough to date them, I liked them enough to be friends with them.  In fact, some of them are still some of my favorite people.  One was a guest at my wedding, and one was in my wedding.

5.  Re: the above - my husband has no problem with this.  He is not a jealous person, anyway, but he honestly likes some of them.

6.  My friends love to tease me about my bibliophilic tendancies, but honestly, most of what I read is rather "low-brow."  I happen to love chick-lit, and I'm not ashamed of it.  One of my favorites.

7.  I enjoy my "alternative" music, but when working out of dancing, I prefer Black Eyed Peas, LMFAO, and Britney Spears.  Shut up.

8.  The older I get, the less I can tolerate crowds.  I went to a festival with my family recently, a festival I've always enjoyed, and I was miserable all night.  This is an odd trait for a social person.  I have discovered that, while I am social, I am an introvert. 

9.  Also, I love to be alone.  I rarely get lonely.  Don't get me wrong, I love my friends, but I'm very happy alone.  I don't even talk to myself when I'm alone (although I do talk to my cats.)

10.  I love to think of myself as a spiritual person, but I have trouble enjoying spiritual books.  I've tried to slog my way through Eckhart Tolle 3 separate times, and I just cannot force myself to finish it.  And I'm the girl who forced herself through Dostoevsky.

11.  I always wanted to be a gymnast, but I never had the nerve to even kick up into a handstand.  I also have never had the body for it.  So I have always been obsessed with anyone who can do a flip or any other acrobatics.  There is this girl who lives in the house behind us and she used to jump on her trampoline all the time.  I became the creepy woman who would stare at these kids on the trampoline - but it was only because I was fascinated by their ability to flip.

12.  When I was in elementary school, I checked out the same books from the library over and over again.  I was a constant re-reader.  We didn't have these new-fangled computer check-outs, we had cards.  The cards in my favorite books only had my name written, over and over again.  The ones I read the most included The Boxcar Children and this book about a Girl Scout troop that solves mysteries.  I also read and re-read Baby Island, Little Women, The Little Princess, and the Trixie Belden series.

13.  I love to sing, and I'm not horrible, I have crippling stage fright, and a terrible envious streak.  Yeah, this means I will watch someone else sing, I will feel jealous and petty, but I won't perform myself, because I will throw up.  This is one of my least favorite things about me.

14.  I despise The Disney Channel.  Oh wait, you all know this. (my daughter is watching one of the ridiculous shows starring one of their clones right now.)

15.  Last one.  I've always wanted to be a beautiful, hippy-like flower child, with a yard full of growing things, homeschooling my children, making soup from scratch, sewing our clothes, off-the-grid, artistic, smelling of patchouli and baking and dreadlocks kind of woman.  Then, as my children started growing and I discovered the ease of television and occasional McDonalds, I realized I was too lazy and too addicted to modern life to live that life.  That, and I have little patience for ironing seams, my children are better behaved for other people, I am a terrible artist, and I look like crap in dreads.  And I kill everything I grow.  So I just read the blogs of the women who do these things, think of how awesome they are, and go watch "The Simpsons."  I think I have finally started to come to terms with the real version of myself. 

 

I'm going to freaking eat that frog.

One of the cool things about blogging and reading blogs, and doing other bloggy things, is you discover some pretty cool people with some pretty interesting things to say.  I try to share the ones I love the most here, although I am not always so great with the links.  I've been reading Simple Mom off and on for a few years, and I've been more off than on as of late.  This morning, through a series of links from other blogs, I ended up on her blog again.  She's written another book, this one called One Bite at a Time.  I read the first chapter and was hooked right off with her use of the following quotation:
"Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day."
Mark Twain
What the heck is she saying with this?  Figure out the important things that need to be done, take the suckiest one you don't want to do the most, and get it done first.  Simple right?  Tsh goes on to say her frog is exercise...and I bought the book.  Because, while I don't hate exercising, I hate the act of getting off my ass and starting.  And I've been saying, over the past few weeks, that I just need to get up and work out and get it out of the way, and my life will be so much better.

So my first little project - finding and eating my frog - is to wake up and exercise.  And I will start tomorrow morning.  This is a good time to start this, having fallen back this morning.  I'll feel like it's not so very early, right? 

Just to defend my rather disjointed writing here - the Boy is listening to people play Magic  while I'm writing, and I can't freaking concentrate on what I'm trying to say.  I think I'm just going to bed.  I have to be up early, after all.