My 101 Things

In catching up on Beth's blog, I stumbled on her 101 things. And decided that I should try one too. I'm not sure how excited I am, because this will prove to all of you just how "off" I can be sometimes. What the hell, that didn't stop me from posting nude pictures, so it's not stopping me now.

1. I need to have an ending point, I need to see the end of the tunnel. Case in point- I typed in every number before starting, even though it caused me to forget several of the things I had already thought of.


2. I need to know that my effort is appreciated. This means I can do very little just for myself. While R has been gone, I rarely clean the house or do dishes, because I cannot appreciate my own hard work. I will scrub every nook and cranny right before he comes home, but until then I can't force myself to be proactive. I can't even enjoy cooking for myself, food just doesn't have that relaxing and indulgent flavor if I'm not making it for somebody else too.

3. As much as I really want to know what is going on in our budget, I need R to be in charge of it. I try to give my ideas on what money to save and our "play money," but I have some sort of fear of having to take care of it myself.

4. This drives R crazy, because I'm constantly asking to be involved but freaking out and running away when he does try to involve me in the monthly budget planning.

5. R also hates my eating habits when he's gone. Since I can't enjoy eating food I've spent time preparing, I eat nothing but TV dinners, bagel pizzas, and lun.chables. And cereal.

6. I don't usually eat those things when R is here, I save the "comfort food" factor of those things for when he's gone. I worry that if I indulge in bagel pizzas when he's around, they won't taste as good when he's gone and therefore I wouldn't eat much at all.


7. If I could eat nothing but Taco Bell while R is gone, I would. There is something about their chips that is just heavenly when dipped into that hot little plastic cup of cheese goo.


8. I nearly drove back to Taco Bell on Monday, because they only gave me 2 sauce packets total for my 2 tacos. I always use 2 mild packets per taco. From now on I will go inside to order so I can grab my own sauce packets and not deal with the stingy drive-thru lady. If I hadn't had extra sauce packets in my fridge (for just such an emergency), I wouldn't have been able to eat, seriously.


9. Which means my sauce packet emergency stash is now drained (because we always do drive-thru and they always stiff me on extra sauce packets) and I'm slightly panicked about the next time I have Taco Bell.


10. My brain latches on to weird things to obsessively worry about. Like wondering how hard it would be to replace a few ceiling tiles, if we'd have to take out the whole row, just the few surrounding tiles, everything to the wall... if the candelabra were to fall. A candelabra that is NOT currently put up, and I have no idea if we'll ever put up at all, considering the house is a little small for something of that size hanging from the ceiling, plus we never use candles, and it doesn't really match the decor. But I've been worrying for days about how to fix the ceiling if it falls.


11. I'm now considering drywalling the ceiling so that tiles are not an issue should we ever decide to put up the candelabra.


12. I really want new furniture, to go with the great rug we bought a few months ago.


13. But the rug has me so content that I don't actually care about furniture right now.


14. My dogs eat holistic, grain-free food. I was adament about cutting out fillers and poor-quality ingredients in their food.


15. But their treats are full of the crap I made sure their food doesn't have.


16. I don't care if that makes me a hypocrite, they rarely get treats anyway, so I don't see it as affecting them much. Plus, that food is expensive, which I don't mind, but grain-free treats cost as much per month as their food, and that's crazy.


17. I love both of my dogs, but pet one more than the other. The one I pet less is because he is always licking and rubbing his nose all over me, and I hate being slimed. I give the extra pettings when he is not around, because I don't want him to get jealous.


18. I feel so guilty about that, so I give him one more treat than the other dog every day. They don't notice the difference (because I give him an extra bedtime treat, and they are separated at night), but it eases my guilt to know that I'm somehow spoiling him in a way I don't spoil her.


19. I'm pretty sure that makes me crazy.


20. And I don't care, because my dogs are happy and loved.


21. Here begins writing session 2 of this little experiment in knowing myself. Session 1 went well, but I'm starting to feel a little lost and wondering how much there really is to know about me.


22. R tells me I'm perfect on a daily basis.


23. It means more to me coming from my friend K.


24. Only because K startled me the first time he said it. I had mentioned to K a conversation I'd had with my ex-husband prior to the divorce, telling him that every once in a while I just wanted him to tell me that I'm perfect. And said ex replied with "you're perfect, FOR ME." Yep, that divorce was worth it. But K remembered, and one day I was really down and upset and he told me I was perfect. I didn't think he had paid attention to that conversation, and I never expected him to remember. But he did, so I will always smile so big I almost cry when K tells me I'm perfect.


25. I feel like R jumped on the "perfect" bandwagon because he was jealous that K could affect me so much with just 2 words. I'd told him the ex story long before I told K, and K was the one that remembered and made a point to say it when I needed it most. R says it constantly, and that takes away a lot of the meaning for me.


26. I met K when I worked at cub scout camp (he worked on the boy scout side of camp). I was the "health officer." A glorified name for "girl who dispenses medications and sometimes washes a boo boo."


27. K was infatuated with me, but I thought very little of it, since I was one of 3 female staff members at the entire camp. We eventually did "date" long distance after camp, but we didn't "click" as a romantic couple and just stayed friends.


28. That was over 5 years ago, and I have considered him one of my very best friends since that summer.


29. Considering R and I have been together 7 1/2 years, that whole 5 years ago date can be confusing. R and I were very on-again-off-again. We were together for the first time 7 1/2 years ago, but it was about 50/50 on and off until 4 1/2 years ago when he proposed.


30. Those off-again times resulted in my first marriage and Little H's conception.


31. I got married the first time for none of the right reasons. I didn't want to be alone, an ex-boyfriend turned friend stood up to his family for me, diamonds are pretty, R was being an idiot and had completely cut off communication with me for no reason 2 months prior to me getting engaged. The guy promised to take care of me forever.


32. 3 months later he was calling me, drunk, from the strip club every night, telling me what his favorite girl was wearing and which girl he was going to have dinner with or take to the movies.


33. The ex and I were married for 6 months before we knew it was legal.


34. The county clerk had no marriage record for us, kept claiming it was lost in the mail or never sent by the official. Turns out it was there the whole time, "somebody" had convinced them to file it under the wrong date (because it was still in alphabetical order) and not enter it into the computers.


35. That "somebody" was ex's grandfather, who had way more weight in that town than somebody of his morals ever should.


36. Our marriage record appeared instantly when grandpa called to get it so ex could get a bigger paycheck from the military, but for another 2 months after that when I needed it the thing was still "lost."


37. I'm weird, so I actually considered deleting this number and making a stupid joke at the end about nobody noticing. Then I realized that it would be very m.yspace to do such a thing, and I'm way more mature than that. But I am curious as to why this number stuck out in my head as being the one I should delete.


38. My favorite number is actually 15, so 37 holds no significance that I know of.


39. I am OCD about my keys. I check my purse twice before I get out of the car, twice more after I get out but before I shut the door, and at least once more as I walk away from the car- making sure I did put my car keys in their pocket in my purse. I also take my house keys with me when I walk to the end of my tiny driveway to check the mail.


40. The house keys are somewhat justified, though. Last winter we had adopted a german shepherd from the shelter, and while R and I unloaded some things from the truck into the garage we had the dogs in the laundry room (this is before the male we have now, but we had our lab mix). When we went to enter the house after we finished, the deadbolt was locked. Turns our the german shepherd really wanted to come outside with us and pawed at the door until it locked. My keys were in my purse, in the house, and that was the exact moment we realized R had locked his keys in the truck.


41. The truck window was open just enough to reach in and unlock it, so we weren't locked outside all night and no locksmith was necessary. But I will never be on the outside of anything without my keys again.


42. Our house only has 2 bedrooms, one for us and one for Little H. I think I let R buy this house for that reason, because I had lost all hope of having a baby and couldn't handle the idea of a third bedroom that would never become a nursery.


43. Turns out our insurance does cover the RE. We were told multiple times last year that it didn't, so we cancelled our appt and I went on BCP to control the endo. I just got the benefits book, and the RE is covered, including any diagnostics. And there is no mention of medications not being covered, so I think we actually have coverage for those, too, just a crazy-high copay because there is no way IF meds are part of their formulary.


44. I'm excited by that and scared at the same time, because of the whole "haven't had sex with my husband in 8 months" thing I blogged about not long ago. I want to get started right away, but I don't want R to feel like he's just a sperm bank, and I want to be in a place inside myself where I can "be" with R completely, before I'm knocked up and morning sickness takes away any chance of nookie.


45. R is even more excited than I am, he's making plans for how to take care of me after lap (because I can feel that the endo is raging again, so I need/want one before we start TTC again), wondering what drugs he can give me before the HSG so I'm not in as much pain this time, wants the list of baby names we came up with way back when we were naive and hopeful, keeping track of the foods I sometimes crave now, especially the odd ones (like Pi.zza Hut cheesy breadsticks, made on an unwashed cinnamon breadsticks pan, so they have cinnamon sugar on the bottom and cheese on the top- had it once on accident, and now I need it sometimes).


46. But we actually don't have to have sex to get pg, in fact, sex won't get us pg. So we could start seeing the RE and doing IUI, and never have sex again. Not that we would, but it's strange to know that I could NEVER have sex again, and still get pg.


47. I'm not telling R about that. Besides the fact that he would be crushed, he would also agree with me and drag me to the RE right away to get started.


48. He's got the baby bug more than me, like 2ww with strange symptoms, he just knows it's going to happen, baby bug.


49. I don't know if I'm amazed by his continuing naivete or irritated by his lack of reality.


50. I chose to write from the computer desk today, rather than my comfy lap desk at the couch, because the dogs are comfy on the couch.


51. If a bigger couch would fit in my house, I would buy one so that they could stretch out on in and still leave me a little bit of room to sit.


52. Except they would just stretch out even more, so I'd still have to sit elsewhere. And I wouldn't mind at all.


53. They drive me so crazy when I'm trying to use the computer. I think they are jealous of the laptop, because it's the only time I won't give them at least a little attention before telling them to go play on their own.


54. Writing day 3, which is over a week since the last time I was writing here...

55. My thoughts tend to ramble inside my head, so much that even I can't always figure out how I got from one thought to the next.

56. Back to the K thing- when I worked at camp, my "camp name" (for fun, and I think a little to protect everybody's privacy) was Lucky Bug.


57. K gave me that name, because on the night I was trying to come up with a name a bug fell down my shirt. I'm sure you can all guess the rest of the story.


58. My great-grandmother was a mail-order bride of some sort.


59. But not the Russian stereotype, she was from the Netherlands or something (I don't have all the details, but if anybody can guess her country-of-origin I will write an entire blog about how awesome you are. The last name is Nutting, if that helps).


60. R and I are getting each other new cell phones for Christmas this year (he's doing the ordering, but we each picked out the one we want), mostly because they're practically free when we renew our contract, and partially because we both just want new cute phones.


61. Mine was so much harder to decide to get, because I only had 1 option. I HATE flip phones, don't want any type of bla.ckberry-ish thing, and the only slider phone option has an MP3 player, which I would never use (I have 3 CDs on rotation in my car, but I only switch between them once every 2-4 months), so I was left with a single choice. Which is ok, because it's just a standard bar phone, it calls people and it has text messaging. That's all I want or need. Yeah, a camera would be convenient, but camera phones take shitty pictures and I have an awesome digital camera if I really want pictures of anything.


62. You would think that only 1 option would make it easy, but it didn't, because then the choice wasn't "which phone do I want?" but rather "do I really want a new phone if the only option isn't exactly what I had wanted?"


63. I really wanted a slider phone.


64. Almost entirely because I'm pretty sure it would look completely bitchy to hang up on somebody with one, and I think that would be fun.


65. The image of hanging up on somebody is probably the worst reason EVER to choose a specific phone, but I'm ok with that.


66. Thursday is my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary.


67. They had a double wedding, my grandma's sister married my grandpa's brother in the same ceremony.


68. The cousins from those two couples are SO similar- looks, voice, mannerisms, etc. They're basically all brothers and sisters genetically.


69. Sadly, that also extends to the prevalence of diabetes in that generation.


70. R suggested hanging that chandelier. I immediately projected my state of near-panic about the possibility of it falling, so it's now sitting in the bedroom with no ideas what to do with it.


71. R and I have decided to have Thanksgiving Dinner alone this year. Maybe not alone, because we are going to invite our friend and her baby (my godson) since her fiance is gone and her family sucks. But she may not feel like driving 2 hours, which actually wouldn't bother me at all.


72. I don't think I'm even making a turkey, probably just baking chicken breast.


73. The "fixin's" are the important part anyway, who cares what kind of bird it is as long as there is stuffing and mashed potatoes and gravy and corn and rolls and pie (additional "fixin's" suggestions welcome. please note that we don't like cranberries, or onions, or green bean casserole). I plan on doing it up right (with the exception of the bird) and really enjoying ourselves.


74. I am sad that we won't be with my family, but Argos is stuck outside when we go downstate and I am tired of him being ignored and tied up. My dad was an ass about things over the weekend, which gave me even more reason to boycott family dinner.


75. My family used to be so close, we did everything together. Now two of my cousins live too far away to come home (one is in Wyoming and was just home over the summer, the other is in Australia), one cousin just doesn't come around at all anymore, another cousin should be in jail for all the shit he's pulled recently (including driving bad on his dad's motorcycle, even though he doesn't have a licence to drive even a car, stealing money from every family member he's been allowed around in the past year, etc), that one's dad has a new girlfriend with a 5 year old son and she's one of the worst parents I've encountered in a long time (the kid swears constantly, screams at all times, hits, kicks, bites, violently abuses the chihuahua his dumbass mother got for him). Honestly, if my family just consisted of my mom, my grandparents, my aunt, and the two cousins that are too far away (and my brothers, they're alright), I'd be happy. The rest really aren't worth my time.


76. I'm really mourning the long-lost perfect family holiday. We'd eat off the good china and the special silverware, everybody smiled and laughed, everything tasted perfect, the house smelled like love. Honestly, we were a fucking greeting card! Aunt J's waldorf salad, cousin SJ and her determination to make mac & cheese from scratch (she always loved it, but it was NOT my favorite), grandma's pies, loaded with whipped cream.


77. I know Thanksgiving this year wouldn't be that, so I'm glad that I can use Argos as an additional excuse to not go. I really don't want to be disappointed by my family.


78. I kick ass at Har.ry Po.tter for Ga.meboy. I had to learn how to play it so I could help Little H if he needed it. I totally beat the game in less than a week.


79. I suck at just about every other video game ever invented. I can't even get through 3 screens in Zeld.a before dying. There are not enough fairies in that game!


80. Except for Drag.on Que.st. That is the awesomest game ever. I have one with an emulator on my laptop (I believe it's DQ5), but I want them all. I can play for 6 hours without any sort of break and be perfectly happy.


81. I never played that game on our N.inte.ndo as a child, never really cared to. But now I love it so much.


82. R does the same thing, except with games that people have actually heard of, and that are new and use real technology.


83. Technology pisses me off, give me Ore.gon Trail anyday.


84. I think maybe I feel that way because I suck. There are entirely too many buttons on the new game controllers.


85. I recently found out that I did a lot more damage than originally thought when I strained my neck as a child (every muscle on the right side was pulled, my left ear actually touched my chest). As a result, I have very little head-tilting range of motion, and my head is permanently cocked just a little bit.


86. When my head is positioned properly, everything looks different, because for 18 years I've adjusted to it being "off."


87. I have a degree as a paramedic.


88. I decided not to complete my internship or do the national testing for licensure when I nearly had a mental breakdown in the back of the ambulance one day.


89. I haven't looked back.


90. Although sometimes I get jealous when I see an ambulance go by with lights and siren. I miss the adrenaline rush, and the feeling of helping people.


91. I was also a firefighter for a year and a half.


92. I didn't do much fire fighting because it was a small rural department, and then I injured my back during training class and had to step away from most of it.


93. My poor spine is straight in places that should curve and curved in places that should be straight. For being an extremely cautious, tiny, 25 year old girl, my back is fucked. I am so gonna be the grandma with the hump, there's really no hope for me.


94. On the topic of my family, my grandpa's side of the family has a very persistent trait of "the hidden baby toe." Nearly 1/2 of my baby toe is underneath its neighbor, my grandpa's is so bad you can barely tell he has one at all. Crazy genetics, even my nephews have slightly hidden baby toes.


95. That damn toe is what makes me saddest about Little H not being mine biologically. I cut his toenails every weekend he comes over, and I get slightly sad when I cut the baby toenail because I don't have to search for it under the next toe.


96. I also hate that his mother never cuts them, which is why at 2 years old his toenails wrapped all the way around the ends of his toes and ended underneath.


97. It took me 6 months of fighting and kicking and screaming and cutting his toenails to get them back to near where they belonged.


98. The way we got him to sit still while I did it: "if you sit still, for every toe that hurts you can punch Daddy one time."


99. So it taught him to hit, at least his toenails end on the top if his foot and not the bottom now. And he only ever hit when cutting his nails, he knew better than to try that crap any other time.


100. His mother still doesn't cut his nails, although she will sometimes do the tiniest of trimmings and claim she did (as in his nails were still in desperate need of being cut, but at least he didn't look like he was wearing fake nails anymore because of the length).


101. Being with R still makes me happier than anything else in the world, I breathe deeper and feel more comfortable with him around than I ever have before. I can't imagine my life without that. Oh, and I never did remember those things I had forgotten while typing in the numbers before starting.