16 Things

Reposted from Facebook, with some slight changes including pictures

1. Mark and I lived together before we were married. Before we started dating, even! I was renting out the upstairs of his house, so technically he was my landlord. And I found the ad for his place online, so when we started dating I fondly referred to him as my "internet boyfriend."

2. I enjoyed eating dirt as a kid. Ok, not really, I just really like this picture!


3. Mark seems to think that he's Paul Bunyan, and I'm Babe the Blue Ox


4. I won a Crayola coloring contest when I was 8. The prize was a soccer ball.

5. I have a pretty good memory, and have been called The Memory Bank by friends. I can still recite all fifty states in alphabetical order, something I learned in 5th grade, and when I was playing the piano regularly I could memorize a song by playing it just a few times.

6. I have a Mini Me


7. When I was little (preschool?) I went through a phase where I insisted on wearing my favorite tshirt with rainbow hearts on it every day. I usually accessorized with jelly bracelets up to both elbows, and red and white striped legwarmers. My mom was so embarrassed that she went in to talk to my teacher, who reassured her that this is normal behavior for the age group. In elementary school I also refused to wear my Brownie uniform because I thought it was ugly, and in pictures I'm the only girl wearing her Brownie sash over a purple dress.



8. After graduating high school, I moved to Atlanta to attend the Art Institute. I stayed for a few years after graduating college, but finally missed Minnesota so much that I decided to move back. Two weeks later, my brother and I were road tripping it up in my Mustang. I love Minnesota but now I miss my family so much it hurts. I'm so torn - I wish Minnesota was closer to Georgia and Texas!

9. I was in labor for 17 hours with Claire, and delivered her under water after 2.5 hours of pushing; the thought of using pain meds or an epidural never even crossed my mind. I labored at home until I hit transition, and I wished we had planned a homebirth because I would have been more comfortable just staying put. I believe every woman is capable of drug-free childbirth, it just takes education and preparation.



10. I believe that, regardless of how her children came into this world - without drugs, with drugs, c-section, adoption - a woman should be proud of herself because it's never easy.

11. When I worked for Wells Fargo, I played on the office softball team. I was by far the worst player on the team, but I still enjoyed playing.

12. I won a contest for reading more than anybody in my grade the summer between 6th and 7th grades (something like 13,000 pages). My homeroom teacher read this announcement in front of the whole class on the first day of 7th grade, and I was so embarrassed that I never went to claim my prize.

13. When I was in elementary and middle school I loved writing and designing clothes. I wrote and "published" several chapter books and catalogs of my fashions (the catalogs even had ads and contests like my Teen magazines at the time had). The books were about three best friends who had sleepovers and solved mysteries together, and my clothing line was called Alyssa Lynn. Watch for these in stores near you for Christmas '09.

14. I am terrified of Willky Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I love it and watch it when I have the chance, but I have to leave the room sometimes. It's what most of my nightmares are made of.

15. My joints crack so loudly that I oftentimes wake Claire as I'm leaving the room after getting her down for a nap.

16. Sometimes I wish I lived on a farm

Knee deep in the hoopla

Whoah, did Claire really just sleep from 10-5? She's never slept longer than 5 hours before, and even that's not common. That sleep sure helped after my long day yesterday!

I went to bed last night thinking about the gym, and drifted off with Def Leopard's Hysteria playing in my head. That was one of my favorite songs to run to before the morning sickness kicked in. I was doing heart rate training, running on the treadmill in intervals. I'd run at around 80% of my max heart rate, about 145 bpm, for five minutes and then take a minute to work up to 100% and hold for a minute. It was so difficult, but I always felt so good afterwards that I would push myself to make it. After holding for a minute I'd take another minute to lower it back down to 145 for another 5 minutes, and so on.

Listening to my exercise playlist while running helped me focus and kept me motivated. But I always kept a secret weapon for when things got really tough.

When I was in elementary school, our favorite unit in gym was the jumprope unit. Those plastic beaded ropes that made the cool clicking sound against the gymnasium floor. Most of them were red and white or blue and white, but there was one that was red, white, AND blue and it was the perfect size for me so it was always my goal to get it before anybody else. At the end of each gym class our teacher would hold the Skipper of the Day contest.

She would wheel out the cart holding her record player (yes, a record player) and have everybody stand up. The anticipation was intense. When she started the song we'd all start jumping rope, sitting down on the floor when we tripped. The last one jumping once everybody else had messed up was crowned Skipper of the Day, and got a certificate with their name posted outside the gym door. It was one of the highest honors one could achieve at Southview Elementary, and I was always determined to win. Of course, I never did. I think Chris did regularly, but I was not even close to athletic until I hit my 20s.

But back to my secret weapon. The song she would play at the end of every class during the jumprope unit was We Built This City. One of the best songs ever. I loved it so much, and remember being so determined each time I listened to it as a kid, that I saved it for the end of each workout when I wasn't sure I could make it just a few more minutes. It would renew my spirit and give me the boost I needed. Isn't it funny how things like that will stick with us? I mean, that was probably about 20 years ago. Wow, I just realized what a nerd I am.

Time to get ready for work! Hopefully they'll have computers for us today...

Those Buick Park Avenues...

...they sure are something else! Mark's parents generously loaned us theirs last month after we sold his car. We took out an ad way ahead of time just in case, but it sold surprisingly fast so our new car wasn't ready yet. I felt bad for Mark - he went from a decently sporty Millennia to this painfully geriatric-looking boat of a car. People intentionally changed lanes at red lights so they wouldn't be stuck behind us, even if the other lane had a longer line. Once, we were on an entrance ramp already going the same speed as traffic on the highway, and we were passed on the dirt shoulder by a big pickup truck. People see the car and assume it's an old person driving, so they take drastic measures to avoid being stuck behind us even though Mark drives at or above the speed limit.

It's discrimination! But I have to admit I do the exact same thing. I always look for the weakest links in traffic, and they're usually Buicks. I just never thought we'd be on the receiving end at such a young age!

So one day we were sitting in the car and Mark started playing around with the buttons. Keep in mind, this is a pretty decked out car; you feel like you're on a plush leather sofa when you get in, and I swear they probably have the 'ejection seat' feature I always say my car has. So he pushed something on the dash and suddenly the radio volume turned up 10 notches and switched to a Spanish station playing a lively polka, the mirrors started buzzing as they readjusted, and the driver seat started gliding forward very quickly. Mark is a tall guy, 6'3, so his knees were rapidly approaching the bottom of the dashboard. Apparently the car has driver preference memory, and it was set for his (much smaller) mom.

Of course I sat there laughing at him while he frantically pushed another button, and the radio switched to another Spanish station even louder than the first, this time talk-radio, and everything started moving in different directions again. The car had a mind of its own!

I thought of that today because I took our new car to the grocery store, and when I got in I felt like a little person. I'm pretty tall for a girl, 5'9 (and a half!) but I still can't reach the pedals after Mark drives the car. It's a CR-V, so it's nowhere near as fancy as the Park Ave, and I started thinking about how nice it would be to have the automatic memory: just get in, push a button, and everything conforms to your specifications in seconds, radio and all.

And speaking of the radio, our car came with 3 months of free XM radio. Their evil plan to get us hooked is working (on me, at least, but we won't be subscribing once the trial period is over). I LOVE the decades stations, especially the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Today I heard KLF, Debbie Gibson, and the Meat Puppets. I need to run more errands.