I Have Been TAGGED!

I have been tagged by my BZ friend Andrea…

So here is what you get, 10 random things about me that you may or may not know.

HERE'S HOW YOU PLAY:
ONCE YOU'VE BEEN TAGGED YOU HAVE TO WRITE A BLOG OF TEN WEIRD, RANDOM THINGS, FACTS OR HABITS ABOUT YOURSELF.
AT THE END, YOU CHOOSE FIVE PEOPLE TO BE TAGGED, LISTING THEIR NAMES (AND IF YOU WANT TO, WHY YOU CHOSE THEM TO BE TAGGED).
DON'T FORGET TO LEAVE THEM A COMMENT "YOU'RE IT" AND TO READ YOUR BLOG.
YOU CAN'T TAG THE PERSON WHO TAGGED YOU.
SINCE YOU CAN'T TAG THAT PERSON BACK, LET HIM OR HER KNOW WHEN YOU'VE POSTED YOUR BLOG SO HE OR SHE CAN READ YOUR ANSWERS.

1. When my oldest daughter first started Kindergarten, she wanted to get her ears pierced before she started her first day.

I decided she was old enough to make that decision and let her get her ears pierced a few weeks before Kindergarten started. She was such a trooper about it too.

We went back to the same place a few days later because my youngest daughter decided that she wanted to get her ears pierced too.
I decided she was old enough to make that decision too. When we went got back there, my oldest daughter wanted to get more ear piercings. I wouldn't necessarily have been opposed to that, except that the school only allowed them to wear one pair of studs anyways. So she did not get any more piercings. Now both of my girls were going to have their ears pierced. I was, I think, 27 years old at the time. I had never had a piercing of any sort. So I got my ears pierced for the first time when I was somewhere around 27 years old.
It was my first piercing. Although I did have tattoos. Which brings me to my number 2.




2. I have tattoos on my back.
I have my oldest daughter's name in purple ink, I got it when she was about 1 year old; My youngest daughter's name is in pink ink, I didn't get it until she was about 4 years old; I still need to get my baby boy's name tattooed, probably in the color blue, what do you think? I wonder how old he will be before I actually get his name tattooed on me?




3. I am so embarrassed and ashamed of my ex-husband that it literally makes me sick. I swear he wasn't this bad when I met him. Well, if he was, he did a good job of hiding it from me for the first few months at least. He just got progressively worse. He did it to himself through drug & alcohol abuse and gambling addiction. He also cheated on me and left me and my daughter to be with his girlfriend without so much as a phone call to me for over 4 months. When he did call me 4 months later is was from a pay phone and he told me that he was going to blow up my house! Now he and that same girlfriend get weekend visitations every other weekend with my daughter plus one evening during the week that they don't have her for the weekend. My daughter was 6 years old before she met him, she didn't remember from when she was a baby, obviously. He left and said he was never coming back. He told my husband he wanted my husband to adopt her. My husband and I were so thrilled that we sacrificed our planned wedding and rushed for a short & sweet marriage to hurry with the adoption. My husband filed all the paperwork and we went for the adoption and my ex-husband fought it and lied in court not to lose his parental rights. He won the retention of them. I still don't understand how. He never paid child support and they had no relationship, his choice. He lied and said he paid support and his excuse for claiming that he wanted his parental rights terminated was that he was "trying to establish trust". Whatever. It's just unforgivable what he did. So hard to let go of all the hurt this has caused, not just me, but my husband, and most of all my daughter. We still haven't recovered financially from that either. The problems I have with him is one of my biggest hurdles and I pray about it often. I want so badly to accept things the way they are, but they are harmful and unjustifiable. It seems like every time I finally decide I'm just going to suck it up and deal with it, he does something so unimaginable that I just can't even force myself to accept! It makes me even more angry because I feel like he is the only thing standing in my way in my attempt to live my life "walking with Jesus", if you get what I mean.




4. I am ashamed and embarrassed about the way I look. I know it's not my fault, it's this disease, but it makes me feel awful. I'm so ashamed I don't even really want to leave the house. When I do, I'm in so much pain that I forget how awful I look though. It's not just that I'm fat and swollen now, you know? I have poor vision, and poor hearing. Communication with others is difficult for me. Which probably makes me seem less intelligent. Now I also have bad acne. I sweat really bad. That probably makes me not smell so good too, I don't know. And of course I'm stressed to the max, so I'm sure I have a nasty little attitude, which makes you look downright ugly all the time too.




5. I have been trying to get a van with 7 or more seats, and cold A/C for almost 2 years now. We don't want to finance another vehicle, so we want to buy one outright. Every single time we've had the money and could afford one, something goes wrong with the vehicle we have. Either that, or someone we know and love needs financial help. It seems like I will never get the one thing I have been aiming for all this time. I actually met someone whose family member just gave them a van as like a baby-shower kind of a gift one time. Do you know how jealous I am to this day!?




6. I went to school to become a real estate agent. I ended up moving to a different state before testing for my license though. When I got settled after moving, I thought about pursuing the career there. I would have had to start all over, but I became pregnant with my youngest daughter and decided against it.
I worked for a Realtor for a while who paid for my schooling. I often dream about fabulous homes (empty ones). I would love to design my own home some day when we are in the position to buy a home. Which I also pray is very soon. I love living carefree in apartments because you have less utility bills and if something goes wrong maintenance-wise it's someone else's major problem, right down to the appliances! However, owning our own home would be nice too, especially with having a dog. Living in an apartment, someone has to take her out to "do her business" and it's getting to be a very difficult problem these days. In fact, we desperately need someone to "dog-sit" and just take her to their home and foster her for us while my husband is in AZ on business from mid-April to the end of June. Preferably someone willing to do this for free out of the kindness of their heart!




7. I'm giving out a lot information about myself here.
When I was 18 I won the 1998 Jeep Wrangler from Lexmark, you know, the printer company? I went to Comdex computer convention and entered their raffle and I was the Grand Prize Winner!
I couldn't drive a stick-shift vehicle though, no one ever taught me how. I still don't know that much about driving those, I'd be nervous to, but I could if my life depended on it I bet.
Anyways, so the vehicle was worth $19,000.00 and the dealership gave me $11,000.00 for it. I totally got ripped off, but I was young and thinking "Hey, this is all free! Cool!" That money went fast and I was too young and unguided to have done something significant with it. Too bad I didn't know anything about investing. Actually, I wish I would have just learned to drive it and kept it, it would have saved me over $30,000.00 on the vehicle I own now which is a 1997, a year older. Wow, that's really even more sad when I think of it like that. The Jeep probably would have been tons more fun too! Oh well, too late now! Oh yeah, that's right, I was unemployed and I couldn't afford the taxes, registration, or insurance to even get the Jeep off of the dealer's lot. Jim Marsh did "screw" me though. I stick to my story on that. He could have found some way to have been more accommodating to me! All he did was let me take my piddly check and get my winner's sign out of the vehicle. I still remember that new-Jeep smell! I kept that sign for a long time. I don't know what ultimately ended up happening to it.




8. I hate feet. I hate my own feet. I hate other people's feet. I can bear my own children's feet, and baby feet are not a problem for me. Other than that, feet totally gross me out!




9. I also hate farting. Sometimes, I think it's genuinely cute when some one under the age of 5 farts, especially a baby.
Same with actually pooping, for babies, in a diaper only. But if someone over the age 5 farts in my presence it is very difficult for me. I don't mind if it's in the bathroom, even in a public restroom (I think it's gross, but I accept it). The worst is in the car or in my bed. I can't stand someone to fart the car! I hate when people fart on other people or on someone's pillow or whatever other fart games. I can't stand them. It really bothers me bad! I just believe that farting should be done in the bathroom. I can hold it, why can't you!?




10. I tend to put a lot of things in parenthesis when I write. I also use a lot of commas. Unintentionally, I end up with run-on sentences. I write like a German. My thought patterns are often opposite than "the norm". Like when you're shown images that can look one way or the other at first glance, I usually see what "the norm" would see second, and I have trouble seeing the natural pattern that "the norm" would first see. I wonder if that has something to do with my brain being goofed up? I mean, who knows how long it's been haywire?

My five tagged people are...
Shihan, Teri or Bob, Difster, SJ, Jer or Les

I'm adding one more, because for those who don't, it's pretty neat and I can't believe I didn't think to mention it before.

11.
My youngest daughter was born on her Daddy's birthday! My husband, John, and our littlest girl get to celebrate their birthdays together! So, since she was born, Daddy has had a personalized photo cake with pictures of him and her, a Sponge Bob Square Pants cake, a Care Bears cake, and the little one has had Pirates of the Caribbean for Daddy! For me (and hopefully my oldest will begin to enjoy partaking in this with me now also) it's one of my most favorite parts of the year, to plan their part(ies)y! As she gets older, my youngest daughter will be very lucky too. Her birthday falls on June the 8th which is right around the last day of school in this area. Great timing for a party, huh?! She will also have had the entire school year to know who her friends are that she wants to invite and she can invite who she wants without offending any one because school won't be in session for anyone invited to brag to anyone not invited and so forth. Plus the weather is usually just right to plan indoors or out, the possibilities are endless! For the rest of us, we run the chance of wind or rain, and little Johnny can just count on it being cold and people penny-pinching for the big Christmas bash. When I was in the hospital getting prepared to have a December preemie, I heard a zillion sad December birthday stories from nurses and others born in December. Johnny's "homecoming" birthday is Christmas Day. And when I was younger, I dated someone for a very long time whose birthday is on Christmas Day.