150 things about me for my 150th post

which will actually be my Photo Hunters post tomorrow.

1. Before I got married, my initials were MMM.
2. I have an irregular birthmark on my right arm; people who know me forever are stunned to discover it. Strangers ask me if it is poison ivy.
3. I had three ministers in my wedding.
4. I like to shower in the dark. I can even shave my legs in the dark.
5. I drink everything iced – when I drank coffee it was iced too.
6. I used to be a bill collector and garnish people’s wages.
7. I wear a lot of black.
8. I have many holes in my ears although no are earrings in them.
9. I do lots of crafty things.
10. I am an INTJ on the Meyers-Briggs personality test.

11. My husband and I knew that we wanted to give a girl C’s name before we got married.
12. Before I met my husband, I often mistook him for an Egyptian who attended our same college.
13. I know how to chop the head off a chicken and pluck and singe it – but I don’t know how to butcher it.
14. I am a late bloomer. I still don’t know what I want to do. But have since decided that maybe that is okay – I always seem to be doing what I ought at the moment (or at least in recent years).
15. Roast beef makes me gag. I thought it was something I would get over. But every time I try it, it makes me gag.
16. I can’t tell a nickel and dime apart. I can tell you that the big one is five cents and the small one is ten cents but I can’t give you the name.
17. I can eat a can of sweetened condensed milk in one sitting (call me Pooh).
18. I love Dr Pepper – I think I had it in my amniotic fluid as an infant (my Mom was a huge drinker of it when we were young).
19. I think spiders are cool.
20. I photograph cemeteries all the time. My oldest makes comments about the interest and quality of stones at cemeteries.

21. I am the oldest of four siblings.
22. I was a very mean big sister. I told ghost stories to my next oldest sister and always beat up my brother and I bossed both of them around terribly.
23. I used to get up at 4:30 or 5:00 in the morning while in high school just to be alone. I would soak for hours in the tub. My Mom would get up, sit on the toilet, read the Bible to me, and pray for me. It is most certainly due to her that I am saved.
24. I was an excellent Volleyball player in high school – I could serve up an entire game and when my spike was on it was on.
25. I am 5 foot 9 inches.
26. I weigh way too much.
27. My dad quit smoking when I was born. I’ve never even tried a cigarette.
28. I learned how to type in HS and have always been glad – especially when I watch people hunt and peck. I taught myself to ten-key when I was in customer service. Nice skill to have too.
29. I suffer from the ‘Mom Curse’ I have children who are every bit what I was as a child.
30. I am very hot blooded and find myself hot all the time.

31. I don’t like having doors closed – I am very opposed to it in fact...
32. I had a knife accidentally driven through my arm when I was a child – it was a serrated-edged paring knife and I pulled it out myself.
33. I’ve never broken a bone.
34. I did not have a cavity until I was an adult and now I get them all the time. I think our well-water must have been excellent.
35. I grew up in a very rural/isolated area.
36. I was born at Seymour Johnson Air force Base.
37. One day in HS, I drank a whole bottle of lemon juice the day before vocal contest trying to clear my throat up. I didn’t get to go. I had bronchitis.
38. I write poetry.
39. I take photos.
40. I sew.

41. I don’t form a lot of habits...in many things I do things differently every time I do them. It drives hubby nuts.
42. When I went to kindergarten, I did not know my alphabet, numbers, colors, or shapes. I was valedictorian of my HS class and have no problems achieving any sort of educational or intellectual requirement that our world deigns necessary. I guess it is unnecessary to push small children too hard or too fast.
43. Coyotes howling freak me out.
44. I am very grumpy if you wake me up.
45. I love the smell and texture of wool.
46. It takes me months to memorize a new phone number or address...moving is hard that way!!
47. I’ve been water skiing and snorkeling but I do not know how to swim.
48. I tend to thing in metaphors and images and I like to make unusual connections and analogies.
49. It wasn’t until I was in my late twenties or early thirties that I understood what math was about – I did well enough to score quite highly on the standardized tests and therefore did not have to take a math course in college. However, I did it by rote – the understanding what was behind it lacked – when it clicked – math became a much cooler thing. (But I loved geometry – the idea of theorems – always pleased me in some way). One of those late bloomer things – I have a lot of those in my life.
50. I won’t read maps – blame my father. My husband does.

51. When the words “Stop Ahead” are painted on the road, I read “Ahead Stop.”
52. I tend to do things the hard way. I took astronomy in college because the science classes seemed redundant to HS. The prof forbid papers on black holes and said that he would give anyone who did one an automatic F. He said that people wrote papers on black holes because they were dramatic but that they didn’t understand them. I decided to do such a good one he would give me my grade. I got an A.
53. I’m stubborn.
54. I talk very, very loudly when something matters to me.
55. I didn’t cry at graduation, I didn’t cry when I got married, I cried when my babies were born.
56. I like the smell of hot tar.
57. I am extremely ticklish.
58. I always thought those cracky pools by the pig pen were solid and always tried walking across them, much to my grandmother’s endless dismay and frustration.
59. I can’t curl my tongue.
60. My husband says I say iron funny it comes out something like ‘I run.’

61. I have no desire to do childhood or high school again My personality is such that I did them quite poorly and did not enjoy them nearly as much as many people seem to.
62. I prefer the week to the weekend.
63. I love, love, love, grey rainy days.
64. Fall is my favorite season.
65. I’ve struggled with feelings of anger and rage (with no object or reason for it) my entire life. Going on Zoloft has been worth it not just for the depressive personality that I have (inherited quite honestly, I think) but also for eliminating the rage. I never realized how big a part of my life it was until it was gone. I thank God nothing bad came of it.
66. I think moss is absolutely lovely and I love fungus and mushrooms.
67. The song Non Nobis as recorded for Henry V (Kenneth Branagh movie version) sends me every single time.
68. One of my most interesting thrift store finds was an old man’s coat that I bought. (I wear military coats or fuddy-duddy old men coats for winter – I love them for some reason). This particular coat was a vivid olive green and after I bought it I reached into the pocket and found a rosary – oh, the stories I can imagine.
69. I used to be able to do a cartwheel and I used to be able to do the splits.
70. I don’t much care for wind.

71. When I first saw the ocean (I was nineteen, I think) – I didn’t like it. I love it now.
72. I fought with hubby the night he proposed (New Years Eve 1992). We had already set the date for our wedding so when he asked me to marry him (we were at my parents so it was in my childhood bedroom). I was in bed and he was saying goodnight. He knelt by the bed and asked me if I wanted to marry him. I thought he was nuts – of course, why else would we be planning a wedding. It completely escaped me that he was proposing.
73. I love wild thunderstorms and really don’t practice appropriate safety.
74. I take my children out to dance in the rain (not during thunderstorms).
75. I never had a born again moment, per se.
76. I have a passion for trees and their leaves. My mom often picks and dries leaves in the fall and then sends them to me to let me know she is thinking of me.
77. We believe in infant baptism.
78. I have many pastors in my family, my grandfather, my great-grandfather, my uncle.
79. I’ve do not personally know and am not related to anyone famous.
80. I have no patience and I am easily irritated – I am an introvert – all things that often make being a Mom especially to children who have all my more difficult traits well difficult. I think my strengths as a Mom are the Bible reading, prayers, and hymn singing we do, lots of music, we do have a ‘music house’ (my oldest loves Ode to Joy and the Halleluiah Chorus and Moody Blues – my youngest likes Newsboys, Queen, Meatloaf – neither of them seem to like Celtic music) the book reading I’ve done and continue to do, the loads and loads of nature walks and all the stops we make to observe and discuss things, daily journal writing for them (they tell me their day, I write it down) the daily homemade meals, and my willingness to say no matter what the weather, we’ll weather the weather whether we like it or not.

81. Church has been a difficulty in our life. When we moved to the cities we now live in, we started CRC at a delightful church – that closed – my husband was a deacon at the time and it was sad and difficult time – and affected his faith in negative way. Then we went to an even more conservative RCUS church. Hindsight reveals to me how bad it was for us but at the time, I loved it. When they excommunicated a friend for reasons we did not agree with (I now think the only time for excommunication is heresy and blatant attacks against the church – I think excommunication is too dangerous to practice at any other time) we left and now go to an awesome non-denominational Bible believing church. The old pastor announced his retirement shortly after we started attending and the new pastor is awesome. When we started attending this church, we found a couple from our first church that we hadn’t seen in years attends this church. The have believer’s baptism and that is the only ‘real’ difficulty for us as we have all been baptized as infants.
82. I am a bona fide morning person but don’t bug me too early I like to be up but I wake up slowly and am crabby if I don’t get ‘my time.’
83. My husband is an INTP on the Meyers-Briggs personality test. My best friend in college was a Psych major and ran around administering this test to people – she was amazed at how deeply our introverted tendencies run.
84. I fell in love with my husband’s compassion. In college I tried to commit suicide (one of those – I didn’t really intend for it to work things). Several days later, my friends called me to my husband’s apartment to talk. When I arrived (early – I do that) I walked past his room the door was open and he was kneeling by the floor praying. My Mom fell in love with him because he made me go home to visit when the found out about it (I didn’t want to go). So he took me. Since then, he displays it at odd moments when his heart is truly touched and out of those moments comes tremendous generosity.
85. College was the best time of my life – I love to learn. It was also one of the weirder times of my life as my friends were extremely eccentric and I had some strange cases of guys professing their love/infatuation to me. I had an odd habit of picking these guys up – I do not know how or why.
86. I double majored in English and History and almost picked up minors in art and philosophy. If it weren’t for the money thing I think I could like being a professional student – but are they crazy – I have to pay them in order to be one.
87. I don’t tell jokes.
88. A college friend once observed that my husband I do not do crowds well – unless it is an event we truly want to be at – we are terrible with crowds.
89. I met Meatloaf once and I’ve read his autobio. He is a very funny, bright, unusual man.
90. The smell of toddler toothpaste makes me gag.

91. We (hubby and I) love Les Mis the musical and I’ve read the unabridged translation of Victor Hugo’s book at least half a dozen times.
92. The song “Coward of the County” by Kenny Rogers makes me cry.
93. The ‘songs’ of certain birds always cause my ears to go on alert as the cry calls me – the inverted trill of a Western Meadowlark, the mournful call of turtle doves, and the ‘beeping’ cry of a hunting nighthawk are somehow built into me. As an adult I’ve discovered the call of a loon (moving north may have something to do with that) and the croak of a great blue heron in flight. I also am fascinating by the slight whistling sound of ducks wings when they fly low over head. And a flock of Canadian geese flying through the air crying make me wish I were wild.
94. I grew up in a house heated with a wood stove.
95. I’ve had head cheese.
96. I used to milk our goats.
97. We had goats growing up so guess what I’ve drank goats milk too.
98. We have over a dozen globes in our house (as in ball-shaped maps). I have a hard time not buying them when I find them at thrift stores (maybe the girls will grow up map savvy (we have two chalkboard maps from a school hanging in the basement and the girls have map placemats) and globally aware).
99. I have a huge collection of nutcrackers that haven’t seen the light of day for over three years.
100. I am fascinated by etymology – word origins and the story of how language changes is absolutely fascinating to me.

101. I am easily addicted to computer games. We got a plug and play pacman for the television from the MIL recently and I sat down to play one game after the girls went down for naps – I was still playing it four hours later when hubby came home from work – not good.
102. The older I get the more I realize that who I was growing up and who my family parents and their families are – is what I am becoming. And I like that. Even my husband says that we are raising the girls as M’s (my maiden name) and not as H’s our family name.
103. We have and old rapidly approaching ancient adopted (i.e. rescued) greyhound named Willow. I have a hard time realizing how long we’ve had her. We will probably never do another greyhound as far as we can tell they are all psycho. However, watching a greyhound run in play is very, very cool. They were built to run (they are fast even slow dogs like Willow) and they love to run. There is joy in it for them. That said the girls adore her.
104. I’ve never taken a driving test. When I was growing up – all I had to do was get a good grade in driver’s ed and I did not need to take a driving test – so I make very sure to keep my license renewed!!
105. I can’t roll my tongue – but I can roll my rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr’s.
106. I used to run all the time and thought I always would. Now I never run and doubt I ever will again.
107. The first concert I ever went to was White Heart.
108. I love my husband and my children and my parents and my sibs – and generally my whole wonderful extended family.
109. When I was a child, I was always jealous of my sister A because when we butchered chickens she got to pull the lining of the gizzard out and I thought that was cool. I had to pinfeather. Grandma said that A got to do it cause she was younger.
110. When I was in HS and I would take the family car to go out for the night my father always told me “Watch for cops and watch for deer.” As he knew that I would speed. I did. The Malibu Wagon was good to a hundred. My brother and father claim they saw me take a corner on two wheels – I say they dreamt it.

111. The older I get, the more I procrastinate.
112. If you ask me a question, I have a hard time giving you anything but a direct answer.
113. I’m 35.
114. I’m not good at relaxing.
115. I seldom (and when I do it is usually for the sake of argument or for the sake of proving a point) follow a recipe to the exact degree.
116. While I do lots of cooking and baking and thoroughly enjoy most aspects. I do not like making cookies. My poor children.
117. Because I have a problem with speeding, I use the cruise all the time even on short trips at slow speeds with lots of lights.
118. I’ve built myself access databases to keep track of stuff. Three databases are used all the time. My recipes database, my address database, and my favorite my quote database.
119. I have a tendency to crack joints – my right ankle (I sprained it severely a couple of times) lets out a splendid rolling crunch when I crack it.
120. I fall asleep in just a few minutes and I sleep soundly through the night until morning – my insomniac moments always occur in the morning...I might get up at three...but falling asleep and staying asleep for at least five hours generally isn’t a problem.

121. If my knees ache so much I can’t keep them still, I need to go to bed and immediately.
122. I have a bizarre phobia about wringing out washcloths – I just have a really hard time forcing myself to do it.
123. I am fascinated with the synesthesia and know a person who has it.
124. I cannot write in meter – I simply cannot hear it.
125. I do not have good manual dexterity.
126. Wow – this is hard – twenty-five to go...
127. When I was young, I was told I looked like Barbara Striesand by many people – when I was older some said I resembled Demi Moore (when I had short black hair)...I can maybe see the resemblance to Striesand as I think she is ugly.
128. My brother and I used to ride on the back of a Hampshire ram that we had on the farm. One day he got sick of it, rubbed us off, and came back after us.
129. The first time I remember seeing a bald eagle was when I was in HS I was laying on the top of a tin shed filling up the waterhole for the pigs down below and I looked up and saw him soar above the shelter belt.
130. Weird things I’ve ate: tongue, gizzards, liver, head cheese/scrapple...the only one I liked was headcheese – fried with mustard...

131. My maiden name is quite a mouthful and a bit unusual even in the first grade I sometimes messed up spelling it.
132. I am 5’ 9” tall. My husband is 6’ 4” so our children are quite tall.
133. Mosquito bites don’t bother me.
134. When I was young, I found a book on edible weeds. I used to do things like gather up pigweed, boil it like spinach, and then try to get my family to eat it. I was fascinated by survival living.
135. When I was nine my Mom got a night job and so I kept house during the day for me and my three younger siblings. My Dad would come home for lunch to eat and to check on us. There were many disasters.
136. The most notable perhaps was the time all the dishes were dirty and I decided to make stovetop oil popcorn in an oversized metal lid from a peanut butter jar. I started a grease fire – I remember thinking quite clearly that water was not the thing and that the fire needed to be smothered and so I grabbed the baking soda and used it to put out the fire. I didn’t tell Mom – I just cleaned up the mess.
137. I was a terrible bookworm growing up. Mom would help Dad do farm chores in the evening and leave me in the house telling me to take something out of the oven at a certain time. She would come back, the house would be full of smoke, and I would be exactly where she left me my nose in a book.
138. Perhaps the above should be explained my Dad was a City Maintenance Man by day, my Mom was a nurse’s aid at night and we had a farm.
139. When I was older, I liked to go out into the pasture to a massive cottonwood that leaned at a forty-five degree angle. It had a bees nest in the main stump. I would climb into the tree with a copy of classic poetry and try to be romantic and intellectual.
140. I rescued an American Kestrel once. It was blizzarding and my brother and I were feeding the sheep alfalfa when I noticed a bird struggling in the snow. It was a Kestrel. A dead Western Meadowlark had died with its talons around the kestrels. We brought it into the house, fed it a few days, and then released it. That spring we found a dead kestrel in the ditch.

141. I played the flute in school.
142. I sang soprano.
143. I have blue eyes.
144. I was most definitely not popular. However, I was bright and my whole class cheated off me. One day the teacher of our psychology class had me write down all wrong answers and then write the correct answers small and in the margins. The entire class failed.
145. I grew up expecting I would go to college. I am not sure how my parents did it. They certainly didn’t belabor the point. But I remember being quite young and living with the assumption that I would one day go to college.
146. I have a very large nose – it is from my Dad’s family.
147. My children aren’t keen on coming to this world on their own. I had to be induced for both births. My oldest was 9 lbs 6 oz. My youngest was 8 lbs 6 oz. I learned during C’s birth that narcotics aren’t for me. They made me looooooooooooopy.
148. I rather enjoy Arthurian legend and loads of books on it.
149. I’ve never read “The Catcher in the Rye.”
150. My first sentence was “Dusty cry and cry and cry.” Dusty was my baby brother.

things I love - the letter M

This is a “Things I love” meme that I found at Christine's blog (the sacred art of living). She assigned me the letter M. It was fun to do.

1. Music – in many of the forms God has given it to us works its peace and rejuvenation and joy in my life and sometimes music is there to let me move more deeply into sorrow.
2. Memory – I have a passion for keeping history and memory alive – and as my grandmother’s Alzheimer’s moves her further and further beyond us my understanding of the value of memory only grows.
3. Mirrors – perhaps you’ve seen all the mirrors in my house – most of them are so high up they serve no practical purpose, they are there because I love mirrors. It is a fascination that grew from my Mom’s fascination in them.
4. Mom – I am blessed to have a particularly close relationship with my Mom. When our schedules permit we talk daily on the phone.
5. Mod-Podge – hey I like to craft and I really like decoupage projects – it is a wonderful all-purpose adhesive/finish.
6. My Man – my hubby is a gem. He has his flaws as all men and hubbies do but he is supportive of me and he is oh so cozy.
7. Munchkins – my munchkins aren’t always easy to get on with but they have made my life tremendously fuller than it would have been without them and watching them grow and learn and develop has its own fascination.
8. Mondays – I am a week sort of person – I don’t do weekends well at all. I am always glad to come back round to Monday and a more predictable routine.
9. Macro Lens – as is evidences by my blog I have a passion for photography. My macro lens is probably the most valuable piece of camera equipment I own – not in terms of price but in terms of vision – somehow it sees how I see and I take the best photos when I use it (which for those who may be curious – it is on my camera about 95 percent of the time – all photos are taken with it, family, landscape, macros, etc. – I only switch lenses when the macro doesn’t provide me enough angle and that would be only when I don’t have enough room to back far enough away from something to shoot it). The Macro lens speaks my language.
10. Mulch – I love to garden and mulch seems the best word to bring it in – especially since I compost and try to avoid all pesticides.

a little meme

I decided I wanted to do a simple meme cause I looked at my keychain the other day and realized that I had been carrying it around for 14 years and have used it through four vehicles. I got it as a gift from my husband it is Beast from "Beauty and the Beast" I gave my husband a similar keychain of Mickey Mouse as the sorcerer's apprentice from the first Fantasia movie (he still carries his too). I am no longer fascinated by all things Disney but I still have the keychain.




I am also posting a keychain from my great-grandpa P. He used to make keychains out of peach pits. I know my parents used their's for years. I never used mine because the link was week and I was afraid of using it plus it is the one thing from him that I own.