100 Things for the 100th Post

On a playdate at the Cleveland Zoo with K-, her friends and a few cousins. I climbed the rope tower to go help her out. It was kind of fun, so I hung out for a few!

Can I really do it? Some of it'll be lame, but sure!
1. I think that I've shrunk. I'm now about 5' 3/4". When I was measured in 7th grade, I was 5' 1 1/4". Bummer.
2. I'm the shortest in my family.
3. I ate so many swiss cheese and mustard sandwiches as a toddler that I can't can even consider eating swiss cheese as an adult.
4. When I was three, Mom said that I could take my clothes off and put them on my dollies. You see, I was still in 18 month old clothing.
5. I don't drink milk. I never did. Even as a baby I didn't like it. At 6 weeks old, my mother started feeding me Cream of Wheat because I wasn't eating. I still like Cream of Wheat.
6. I don't eat berries. Beyond just not liking the taste, there are a lot of seeds. I don't like to eat seeds.
7. I'm not a huge fruit fan. Oranges gross me out with their texture. Though, I love orange juice. I do eat apples, bananas, pears and pineapple. Most fruits leave me feeling disappointed because people say, "They are soooo sweet." I don't find that to be true.
8. I do, however, love vegetables.
9. I love the hard, crusty ends of bread.
10. I will drink milk if you liquor it up with a lot of Ovaltine.
11. I can't sleep in hotels, because the blankets aren't heavy enough. When I say heavy, I mean weight wise. They're blankets are plenty warm, though.
12. I'm a shoe snob. I pretty much only wear Birkenstocks and Saucony tennis shoes. After ACL surgery, I have to be certain that shoes that I wear are good and supportive, or my leg and knee will hurt. (When I blew the ACL, I also broke the side of my knee.)
13. I love patterned socks and have a ton of them.
14. I chew my lips in the winter. I have to keep Chapstick on hand so that I don't chew to bleeding. In fact, I put Chapstick on before bed.
15. I hate to floss my teeth. I don't know why, I just don't like to do it. Don't worry, I do it sometimes, but brush my teeth several times a day.
16. I'm generally asleep well within 10 minutes of my head hitting the pillow.
17. I love to watch America's Next Top Model.
18. I rode an elephant when I was 3 and was determined that Santa was going to bring me one for Christmas. He didn't. He did bring me the Weeble Circus. My mom was inspired by my desire for the elephant and wrote a book about it. She tried to have it published, but Golden Book said no thank you.
19. I failed my kindergarten entrance exam, because I didn't take it seriously. I thought it was a game! I had to re-take it. When I did, I smashed my finger in a flip-top desk and had to put my finger in the water fountain to stop the bleeding.
20. I always put my left shoe on first.
21. My eyes are brown. Really dark brown, though sometimes they can look black.
22. I love snow storms and I love snow.
23. I don't like to be cold.
24. I do like to shovel the driveway.
25. I start my own vegetable and flower plants from seeds in my garden window.
26. I wanted to be a geologist, but decided that I wasn't going to make it through the science classes that would require me to dissect things.
27. I'm fanatic about keeping my toenails incredibly short. I had ingrown toenails as a child, had to have foot surgery as a result and do not look forward to having that again. That's another explanation of why I wear my granola Birk's. They have lots of tootsie room.
28. I had braces on my teeth to correct some nasty toothness going on. My eye teeth were pointing out, instead of down. Talk about attractive!
29. I love walking on crunchy leaves in the fall.
30. When I was 19, I was doing donuts in the parking lot of the grocery I worked at. When I went to leave, my car went into a spin and got hung up on the concrete island. I had to go and ask all the packers to push my car back off so that I could go home. Ugh.
31. I love driving in the snow. I don't like spinning, though.
32. I hate the feeling of nail polish on my fingernails. I like to paint my toenails, though.
33. My fingers, cuticles and hands in general are cracked. They are so bad that they are bleeding right now.
34. I was in 4-H for 9 years.
35. As a result, I competed for Fair Queen and won.
36. I wear slippers all the time in the winter, yet go barefoot all the time in the summer.
37. Because the grocery that I worked for had the scanning rights taken away and we had to hand key all grocery purchases, I can run an adding machine at lightning speed. (You lose scanning rights when Weights and Measures comes in multiple times in a row, busts you for inaccurate scanning and you don't fix the problem.)
38. I can type fast, too. It bugs my husband when he is trying to sleep and all he hears is "tick-tick-tick."
39. I would love to have a full massage someday by a qualified massage therapist. In fact, I could use one right now.
40. I love soup and could eat soup absolutely every day.
41. I've just recently discovered that I love The Cure.
42. I make my bed every single morning. I have to do this before I can consider getting dressed. Don't ask me why.
43. I want to learn to sew.
44. I can't and have never been able to bend over and touch my toes without cheating and bending my knees.
45. I absolutely love chocolate, but if I eat a dessert that is too rich, I quickly become very ill.
46. I would love to go to England and Ireland someday. I do fear that I would have to be medicated to get on a plane to fly across the ocean. Unless they get something that is extremely lickety-split, I am not a fan of not seeing land.
47. Same goes for cruise ships. Land ho, my friends. Land ho.
48. Not to mention my fear of deep water.
49. I don't eat raisins because when I was a kid, I got a hold of a bad box and mom found out only after I had eaten 1/2 the box. She discovered that it was full of bugs. YUCK!
50. I really only like crunchy peanut butter. I like peanut butter and butter sandwiches better than standard peanut butter and jelly.
51. I don't obey the speed limit.
52. I like to drive through puddles to see how big the splash can get. K- loves it, too.
53. I always run up steps.
54. I love mums. The small button kind of mums in the brownish or burgundy color.
55. I have a butterfly garden in the back and love to take pictures of them all summer long. Kids like to come hang out to see how many butterflies are back there.
56. I love the smell of Play Doh.
57. I like to eat dry spaghetti noodles when I'm preparing to cook them.
58. I had tomato soup for the first time just recently. It's fine to dip my toasty cheese tortilla into, but I don't know that I'd go bottoms up with it.
59. I love my crockpot. I do love my family more. The crockpot is way handy. So is Hubs though. But Hubs doesn't cook and the crockpot does. There's room for both of them in the house, though.
60. Incredibly strong perfume gives me an almost instant headache.
61. If there is someone smoking in their car a few cars up, I can generally smell it. Their window must be cracked with the wind blowing the right way, but I have a super-sensitive sense of smell.
62. I can watch Gilmore Girls on DVD forever and never grow tired of them. Copper Boom!
63. K- and I always pray for emergency services when they drive past or if we see them helping people.
64. I had baklava for the first time just recently. I'm not a fan of nuts, but apparently if you coat them in enough sugar and in thin layers, I'll scarf it down.
65. I've been a picky eater all my life, but I'm trying to resolve that.
66. My favorite flavor of ice cream is chocolate chip.
67. I wear the same jewelry all the time and rarely change it.
68. I hate shopping at the mall. I feel like I'm trapped and the people in the middle of the main aisle? They drive me crazy, too! If I wanted to buy my name etched on a tiny piece of rice, I'll let you know. Please don't bug me.
69. I park in the same general area in parking lots. If I don't, I'll forget where I parked because I just don't pay attention to that kind of thing!
70. I love to wiggle my toes in the sand.
71. I love it when I can walk on the grass for the first time in the spring.
72. I love Valentine's Day and that it's our anniversary.
73. I love it when Hubs takes K- to the store with him to give me a little bit of a mommy break.
74. I love that K- loves to watch classics with me. She loves "Little Fairy on the House." AKA Little House on the Prairie.
75. I burn candles only in the winter. I'm a candle snob, though. I really only like A. I. Root or Yankee Candle. Root would be my preference, though. Because of this, Hubs bought me a half case of English Lavender votives this year as a Christmas gift. (It helps that the Root factory is down the road from Hubs' work.)
76. I won't color my hair to get rid of my grays. I'm just not that dedicated to keeping up with something like that and would live forever on the Island of Perpetual Roots. (A mommy version of the IPT from Veggie Tales Esther.)
77. I love reading with K-. I love that she is on an Amelia Bedelia kick lately. My mom read me Amelia Bedelia when I was a kid.
78. April has been my best friend since elementary school. In the 4th grade, we made our own version of the alphabet and wrote letters back and forth. We also had pet clay balls that we made houses for. (Ick and Pick.) We were very weird kids.
79. My old RAV was a classic mama mobile. Toys, books, sticky things. Odd substances under the seat. Enough petrified french fries to feed a small army of children at a play date. All that changed when I was told by the insurance adjuster, "Yes ma'am, the exterior of your car is in excellent condition. For the inside to be in excellent condition, it must be spotless." Um yes, point well taken. The car was well lived in before the accident, but having been slammed into by a very large truck that weighed a lot, the crap that I had stowed in there was thrown all over the car. Darned car looked like a tornado got trapped in there. Being embarrassed by that, I swore to have a clean car after. You know what? My car is clean. It needs the occasional touch up, but we're not heaped in crap anymore.
80. I occasionally take Excedrin Migraine just for the caffeine. I know. It's wrong, but on a rare occasion, I find it necessary.
81. I love to eat hunks of unbaked cake mix. Unfortunately, I've taught K- to love it, too.
82. I've never found a four leafed clover, but still look.
83. I'm allergic to Iodine, thus making me allergic to shellfish, MSG and kelp/seaweed. (The kelp and seaweed thing would be an ingesting issue.) But yes, the little bit of Iodine in salt is fine. No, I'm not sporting a nifty goiter.
84. My thumb has taken to doing this weird end forced click hinge thing. Yes, I need to have it checked out.
85. I find matching socks to be therapeutic. No, I won't come match yours.
86. Blood doesn't really gross me out, but lumps do. Please, don't make me feel your bump or lump! Yarg!
87. When I was 11 years old, we went on a tour of the Fenton Glass factory. I decided then that I wanted to blow glass. It took 4 years of college to accrue enough seniority to get into a class, but I did learn how.
88. Have I mentioned before that it took me 7 years to get my Bachelor's of Art in Fine Arts? My concentration? Printmaking.
89. I've had 8 cars.
My first was a Camaro.
It followed with a Grand Prix that I owned for 6 weeks. I pushed that more than I drove it.
That was traded for a Trans Am that was rear ended a few years later. (It had t-tops and I thought I was way cool.) It was totalled, but I drove it until the uninsured guy paid me money to get another car. At that point, it drove down the road somewhat sideways, but it was all I had.
When that went to the dump, I bought a Blazer. That spun a bearing and was done all of 8 months after I bought it.
I replaced it with a Berlinetta, which needed towed 3 weeks after purchase. Later on, it lost a wheel as I was driving it down the road, smacked onto the pavement and potentially cracked the block. That little problem didn't come up until 6 months later when Ohio's E-Check program got a hold of it. The motor blew. Hubs and I were only married for 6 months and had the pleasure of paying a $3700 car loan off so that we could get another vehicle.
We pulled a lease on our Tercel, which we still have. It's Hubs' car now. When I started the job at the gallery, we could no longer share a car so we needed to purchase me my own.
That's when we bought the old RAV.
She bit the dust when we were rear-ended in March and now I have the new RAV. We also have a new car payment. Fabulous.
90. I have two blood clotting disorders. I'm homozygous for MTHFR and PAI-Type 1. All this tells you is that I bruise if you look at me the wrong way and clotting is something that I could do. Boy, I am an ugly bruiser.
91. I can't tear anything open with my teeth. Nothing. Mom can do it all the time. I was always jealous.
92. My nails are very strong. They hardly ever chip, break or split. They grow very fast, too.
93. I am the second child of 4, thus making me a spaz middle child.
94. I do not like working puzzles. My daughter loves them, though. My family would always have one set up every winter. Eee-ghad. I just never liked them.
95. I save seeds from my flowers to replant the next year.
96. I love nightlights. We have them throughout the house.
97. I cut my daughter's hair. She likes it long with bangs. I can totally handle that. No, I don't give her Yoder bangs (the way high up on the forehead thing). You'd also be glad to know that 7 years in art school earned me a steady hand with scissors. Baby girl has a mommy that can't send her out with crooked bangs.
98. I have a lavender bathroom.
99. I sleep with one pillow.
100. I crawl in bed with K- every morning. "Can I come in?" "Sure!" We hang out there for a good half hour or so talking about the day. Talking about life, answering those weird mommy questions.

At the Children's Garden fountain with K- at the Cleveland Botanical Gardens on my birthday this past year.