100

This is my 100th post. I so need to shut up from time to time. I think blogs are what happens when you've been in a house with people under 4 feet tall for too long.
Anyway, in honor of my 100th post, here are my 100 things:

1. I have been married twice
2. Mr X was happy bachelor before me.
3. My ex-husband was a liar, a cheat and a drug addict
4. I had terrible taste in men
5. I left him after I found drugs in my house
6. Mr X is 8 years older than me
7 I always call him a cradle robber
8 I've been described as odd on more than one occasion
9 Olives freak me out because it feels they're watching me
10 Don't talk to me about feet
11 I don't get along with my sister
12 I didn't like my mother very much either
13 My dad rocks
14 I love being pregnant- minus the freaking out bit
15 I once broke my foot tripping over a brick
16 I can no longer straighten my pinky without the aid of my other hand
17 I got it caught in a drill press
18 I worked for a temp agency because I get bored easily
19 I'm dyslexic
20 I love to create
21 I go overboard for my kids parties
22 I made all the decorations for Girl X's 7th birthday
23 The theme was Alice in Wonderland and I made the flowers from the movie
24 I also drew Alice and the Cheshire Cat
25 I love decorating cakes
26 I knitted Girl X's first jumper
27 It was the first thing I ever knitted
28 I'm mostly boring
29 I love practical jokes
30 I cannot raise one eyebrow a'la the Rock
31 Mr X can and it makes me crazy
32 I have 2 siblings, 3 step-siblings and 2 half-siblings
33 My mom was married 4 times
34 My worst fear is being her
35 I am terrible at math
36 I love That 70's Show
37 I hate reality TV
38 I have green eyes
39 No one else in my family has green eyes
40 I don't know what I want to be when I grow up
41 Journalist
42 Teacher
43 Something in medicine
44 Something in law
45 Someone could pay me to make cakes for them every day
46 I hate driving on the freeway
47 I don't talk to anyone I ever went to school with
48 That Laffy Taffy song makes me want to rip off my ears
49 I laugh even if I don't get the joke
50 I took 2 years of French
51 All I remember is how to call someone my little cabbage head
52 I want to go to Greece
53 And Spain
54 And maybe Italy
55 oohh! Ireland. Yeah. Ireland
56 I hate flying.
57 I panic for months if I know we're flying somewhere
58 I have never lived completely by myself
59 The only time I came close, I had Girl X
60 I have never been a bridesmaid
61 Sometimes I wish we lived closer to my parents
62 I feel guilty for taking their grandkids so far away
63 But I love living here
64 My parents used to send me to camp every summer
65 I hated it
66 I once threw up in the top bunk while sleeping
67 I had told them I was sick but they didn't listen
68 I didn't realize I had done that until 2 days later
69 Poor lower bunk
70 I got my first kiss at camp
71 I was 12 and his name was Robbie
72 I will not be sending my kids to camp
73 I made spaghetti the night we brought Baby X home
74 I think of it every time I make it for dinner
75 I love his kisses
76 I love that he likes to cuddle
77 My first born, labor lasted less than 4 hours
78 She rarely wanted to cuddle
79 Some times I think about where we could be
80 Then I see Baby X and know that it's ok
81 I love blue
82 I hate orange
83 I don't really like pizza
84 I hate pizza sauce
85 I love Vietnamese food
86 I'll never tell my MIL that
87 I can't stand the smell of vanilla
88 I love the Gap's Heaven
89 I can watch Casablanca anytime
90 I love older movies far better then today's
91 I'm not talking about movies made in the 80's either
92 I can't carry a tune
93 I love to belt it out in the car
94 I don't have a cell phone
95 I don't really like talking on the phone
96 I'm lousy at making friends
97 I'm afraid that my kids might inherit that
98 I'm not as funny as I think I am
99 I'll laugh anyway
100 I love my life

The One Where I Get All Rambly and Off Topic.....

Because I never do that. Ok, well not that often. Shut up.
I realized the other day that I am way behind in these stories I have talked about (sometimes with myself) like Girl X's adoption and that whole process and the preceding drama and I think I promised someone a picture of that awful rubber band tie I bought Mr X (stop laughing) and the other bagillion ideas I had that I can't remember right now.
I've thought about actually writing these ideas down but then I start thinking about all those little scraps of paper with things like 'purple cow' and 'shoe meet brick' and 'that funny thing the goose did to my brother' and Mr X finding them and wondering if it's some kind of code and then I have to explain it to him which leads me to the story of my old crazy neighbor (she kept pickled eggs under her kitchen sink to ward off the 'hoogie boogies' and that's a whole 'nother story) and that time she freaked out because someone had dumped a bunch of those Always pads tab thingies in her yard that had a spade on it and said 'remember your symbol' and she thought that it meant some spade gang was out there warning her they were going to kill her with a deck of cards and that's just more than he really wants to know and wow! That is a run on sentence. Are you still with me? Did you pass out trying to read all that in one breath? I'm sorry. See? I told you I was going to get rambly and when I get rambly I tend to run on. And on. And I can't remember now what I was going to finally remember to talk about. I need to go back a minute.
Ok, right. John Wayne. That's what I was going to remember to talk about. I'm about to post these pictures that will appear up at the top. I have yet to figure out how to move them down here where I want them without losing everything I just wrote and we do NOT want to go there again. Oh no. We do not want that.
That second one is the awful felt (FELT!) painting Mr X bought off of some police auction site. I've comforted myself with the thought that the artist (The hell? What made this guy wake up one day and say 'hmmm, I think I'll paint on material normally reserved for puppets!') is sitting behind bars for making bad art. I've had it hidden in a closet with poor John Wayne facing the wall. I couldn't take his pleading any more! "Come on pilgrim, just set me on fire. This ain't art, this is crime, pilgrim" Which tells me I have to stop watching John Wayne movies with Mr X.
So, Girl X got him that first one for Christmas but it's all in charcoal and it looks so much better and it's NOT ON FELT!! So we should be able to get rid of the felt (barf!) one right? No. Mr X wants to pass it on to Baby X someday because he is convinced it will be worth something. Unless felt suddenly becomes scarce and unmake-able and therefore worth more than gold, I predict Baby X will someday bury it in the backyard with that bedazzled bird.
And this all leads me to the reason my grandmother told a bunch of people (after swearing them to secrecy and telling them they were the only ones she was telling) that we were related to John Wayne.
See, my Grandmother was crazy. It's why she was so much fun. I've never felt the need to ride roller coasters because I've been in a car with her. Do you know what it's like to go the wrong way on an exit ramp and then drive 2 miles the wrong way on the freeway before having 2 state patrol officers stop you and turn you around?
I do.
And it was funny because she kept getting mad at everyone else for driving the wrong way and we kept telling her that she was going the wrong way but she didn't believe us.
She used to get lost all the time. She'd be driving down the road and say "I don't think I'm supposed to go down that way. I'll be lost." and then she'd turn that way and we'd be hopelessly lost. But without trips like that, we'd never have found that one Chinese restaurant that gave us steamed rice topped with gumdrops. No, we didn't ask for the gumdrops. That's just how they served it.
Or the time she flashed a bag boy at our local grocery store after asking him if he'd ever seen a woman with one boob. She had two, but they were attached to each other. She was a lot of fun at parties. She never drank more than a teaspoon of champagne. That was her thing. "I'll just have a teaspoon of champagne."
And her house! She had a couch. It disappeared 12 years ago under some boxes that apparently mated and then never moved out. She was a packrat. A packrat that multiplied daily. Her house is a scavenger hunt.
But that's not what I was talking about. I was talking about this thing about us being related to John Wayne and let me just preface this by saying, we are not. As sad as that makes Mr X, we are most definitely not related.
My grandfather's uncle had a child out of wedlock. In fact, I have the court papers that show he paid a grand total of $245 in child support in 1930-something. My grandmother was certain that the mother's maiden name was Wayne (it wasn't) and since John Wayne's real last name was the same as hers, they must be related. She was sure that John Wayne was my grandfather's cousin. My grandfather just shook his head and sighed.
And um, I'm not really sure why I had to go through all that other stuff to tell you this one little thing but I hope that it makes up for taking so darn long! And I will try to remember to post the picture of the rubber band tie and so on.

Blackouts

Last night I was typing out my entry and I was really into it and it was long and then the power went out and I lost everything. Irony? I had just been typing how frustrating it is that I can't highlight and copy everything I right so that if I lose it when I try to publish or save as draft I can just paste it back in. I was steamed!
Plus, I can't sleep when it's quiet. I know this sounds odd, but it's too loud! I hear every creak and step and it keeps me up. To make it just that much better, our fire alarm kept beeping and it's a shrill beep. Ours are hardwired and I guess the backup battery was bad. I tried to ignore it. I tried to stop it (barstool wasn't tall enough for me to reach it). I even tried talking to it.
*beep*

Can you just save that for later because I'm trying to sleep?

*beep*

Come on, you're loud. You're going to wake up Baby X (because I figured maybe it didn't like me since I was always setting it off while cooking but it couldn't have anything against Baby X, right?).

*beep*

If you stop beeping, I'll make Mr X put in some uber-expensive top of the line battery.

*beep*

You are mocking me.

*beep*

You've been talking to the laundry room haven't you?

*beep*

Forget what he told you. We worked it out, I learned my lesson. Please stop.

*beep*

I hate you.

*beep*

I did finally fall asleep about 2 hours later. 20 minutes later the power came back on and woke me up.


I'll try to get the entry I was working on up later today.