I stumbled upon a list of 25 Things About Me that I wrote on Facebook three years ago, back when it was a trend to write 25 random facts about yourself and then tag 25 friends, yada yada yada. So while a few of the minor details have changed since 2009, a lot of them are still completely ME, so in honor of my 39th birthday, here is my revised list, edited and added to.

1. I have a serious case of A.D.D. Its torture for me to have to sit through a conference, seminar, even church makes me crazy sometimes; I *HAVE* to take notes in church or I completely zone out. I can’t even sit and watch TV without doing something with my hands.

2. I barely graduated from high school, due to reason #1. I graduated #245 in a class of 577. And that was *ONLY* due to the goodness in Mrs. Whitman’s heart for ‘giving’ me a 73 in Senior English when I clearly didn’t deserve it. I never read one book in her class that entire year.

3. And its not because of my IQ, lest you think I’m dumb. When I was 3, I watched my dad take a lawnmower apart, and when he went inside to answer the phone, I put the lawnmower back together.

4. I also learned to read when I was 3. My Sunday School teacher was the first to realize it, when she caught me reading the Bible verse I was supposed to have memorized, out of her Bible on the table. Upside down.

5. I only told you #3 and #4 so that you won’t think I’m dumb for barely graduating from high school……

6. My mom is really into genealogy and can trace our family back to Adam and Eve. And I seriously *HATE* genealogy. I got dragged to too many courthouses and cemeteries as a child so that mom could do her research. Most of my childhood memories involve sitting and coloring on a courthouse or library floor while did research on dead people, or playing in a cemetery while she hunted for somebody’s headstone. Know who my great-great-grandmother is? I don’t CARE!! Know when my family came over on a boat? I don’t CARE!!!  I don’t see the point of knowing trivia about dead people.

7. One of my ancestors is William Barrett Travis from the Alamo. And I don’t care. 🙂

8. I’m a *WHOLE* lot more interested in the fact that I’m related to Britney Spears. Not proud of it, per se, I just find that a lot more interesting.

9. My grandmother/mom/cousins are from Kentwood, Louisiana, the tiny little town in Louisiana where Britney is from, y’all.

10. I find humor in the absurd and ridiculous. The movie Dodgeball makes me laugh out loud, and I’ve probably seen it 5 times. I’m not one to laugh out loud at movies, but that one makes me laugh out loud every time I see it.

11. I love to laugh, and love funny people, but I hate jokes. I like funny STORIES, but jokes??? They make me roll my eyes. And Obama jokes……PLEASE! I wish people would stop emailing me those.

12. I do *NOT* find it funny when the humor in a movie comes from watching pathetic people’s misfortune and desperation, like Napoleon Dynamite or Little Miss Sunshine. I hate those kinds of movies. I also hate every single Will Ferrell movie except for Elf.

13. This is probably the ‘Social Worker’ in me coming out. I’ve worked as a Social Worker at a hospital, a psych hospital, for a foster care agency, and now, at a Long Term Care facility for medically fragile children. My heart hurts for suffering people…. Even Napoleon Dynamite.

14. However, I have Z.E.R.O. compassion for drama queens…. histrionic people who manufacture their own attention-seeking crises. Seriously. Zero. Work with a child who is in a vegetative state due to the abuse she received at the hands of her parents, and you’ll get why I have no tolerance for drama queens. Concoct your own drama as a means to get attention = get unfriended by me.

15. I feel like I missed my ‘calling’ in life. I went through college not knowing what I wanted to be when I grew up, and got the first degree I had enough hours to get after my dad told me the funds were being cut off.

16. As a child I would spend hours drawing houses and floor plans of houses. I would draw page after page of floor plans and staple them together in a book. I really, secretly, think I should have been an architect. Or a designer. Or architect-slash-designer. I rarely go into someone’s home that I don’t redecorate and rearrange their furniture in my mind. Sigh.

17. I’m obsessed with old houses and old buildings. I LOVE to tour old homes. When I wrote this list three years ago I wrote, “I love living in an old house. I can’t see me ever living in a new one. I love the creak of the old floors, the nooks and crannies, the glass doorknobs, dare I say the history of them. I love that our house is 80 years old and has so much history.” Uh, I have to recant that statement. I love TOURING old homes; I am so indescribably grateful that I no longer live in an 80 year old house with frigid bathrooms and drafty old windows where I could never quite get warm in the winter and yet our heating bill was a bazillion dollars a month. THANK YOU, LORD. Never again…
18. My kids go to school in the old Tyler High School building which is now an elementary school, and I think I love the building more than I love the school itself. I just love going there, to that cool building. I love the light fixtures and the library and the cafeteria.

19. Though I love their school, I’m a closet homeschooling mom. I homeschooled Katie for part of one semester before my life was sucked up into a tornado and spit back out into a wood chipper and I had to enroll her in public school. I’m not sure that we’ll ever return to the homeschooling season of life, and that’s just fine, but somewhere, deep down, I’m Michelle Duggar driving a 15-passenger-van and teaching my kids the violin… ok, maybe not on the violin or the van, but teaching my kids at home, yeah. Part of me deep down inside wants to do that.

20. Though I don’t have the slightest interest in genealogy I *DO* love owning things that belonged to my grandmother. One of my favorite things is this old yellow mixing bowl that belonged to my grandmother, because I remember helping her make pumpkin pie and dressing in that bowl. I keep it up high in one of my glass kitchen cabinets. I would cry if it got broken. I don’t want my entire house furnished in old things, especially old things that have an old smell, but I’ve always been sort of an old lady; hence the attraction to old yellow mixing bowls and such.

21. Oh wait, my entire house IS mostly furnished with things that belonged to SOMEBODY’S grandmother. In my whole grown-up life I’ve only bought one new piece of furniture from an actual furniture store…the armoire in my living room. Everything else we bought used. Or at Canton. OR auctions or estate sales.

22. …because I am more comfortable with old and used than new and shiny. I‘ve owned two new vehicles purchased new from a car lot, and will promise you that I will never, ever, ever buy a new vehicle again. I drive a 7-year-old Honda Accord and I couldn‘t be happier. Because I’m an old lady, and that’s what old ladies drive.

23. I was the nerdiest of nerds in high school. I tried out for, and MADE, the Academic Decathlon Team in high school. Then didn’t get to compete because I failed Senior English that six-weeks. See #2.

24. I don’t like concerts. Its partially the ADD, and partially because I’m an old lady. But they’re LOUD, and they last too long, and there is not any one person I want to hear sing for two hours or more, especially if I have to sit while I listen. Gah. NO thanks.

25. I was in a commercial for Mitchell’s Dress Shop when I was 17. I miss Mitchell’s Dress Shop.

26. OK, this is one I had to edit… I (used to) love remodeling. I hate living in a house WHILE its being worked on, but love(d) taking an eyesore and transforming it into something beautiful. My heart still races when I look at our ‘before’ pictures of this house, because I remember that thrill I felt when I first walked through it and saw the potential (still true). I would (NOT) do it again in a heartbeat. (Edited to say…. I love SEEING the before and after, but never again will I actually be the one doing the remodeling. I’d rather stick pins in my eyes).

27. I was a stay-at-home mom for nine years. I loved it then… I miss it terribly at times…. Mostly, I miss all the time with my kids. But…. I’ll be honest, I’m not sure if I would go back to those days again. I like having a job. INCOME is fun.

28. I make hair bows for little girls. When I was a stay-at-home-mom, I made hair bows for seven boutiques in four different cities. And I can spot my own hair bows when I see them on little girls out in public.

29. Once in high school, I got sent to the counselor for turning in a dark and depressing poem about death and it got my teacher all in a frenzy. But I didn’t write it; I ‘borrowed’ it from the skater dude who sat next to me in study hall the day I forgot to write a poem for English class and he loaned me one of his. I learned my lesson about cheating in school on that day.

30. Once in college, I broke into the new gym with my friend the Preacher’s Kid. Then we broke into the new dorm and smoked cigarettes. And it felt so scandalously dangerous.

31. After college, I mailed pictures of our escapades to my friend the Preacher’s Kid, and her mother, the Preacher’s Wife, opened the envelope. Chaos and disownment ensued. Several years went by and we reconnected on Facebook.

32. Once in third grade, I got in trouble and had to stand in the corner for tapping my pencil on my desk during a film strip. It was the most humiliating moment of my first eight years.

33. And those are the only times I can remember getting in trouble in school. Teachers love you when you’re nerdy (see #23) and painfully shy.

34. Once I’m friends with someone, its for life. Unless she’s a histrionic drama queen (see #14). Or two-faced. I don’t like two-faced. I’ve been friends with C. since 3rd grade; with S. since 6th grade; with K. and M. and A. and S. since 9th grade; and with L. since our first year at ETBU, 1993. That’s like, forever.

35. Today at work, my closest coworker asked me out of the blue if I had ever considered getting on Adderall because of my serious A.D.D. problem. I had never even TOLD her about my A.D.D. and yet somehow…. She just knew. Hey, look! There’s something shiny!
36. What was I talking about? Oh yeah. Shiny things. I married the love of my life on Christmas Eve, 2011, and he gave me his grandmother’s wedding ring. I think I might have mentioned that once or twice on the blog. I love old things that belonged to someone’s grandmother (see #20, 21, and 22).

37. I wasn’t happy with my original numbers 37, 38, 39, but the beauty of this life is that there’s freedom to change them at any time.

38. God redeems the mistakes, and this brings tears to my eyes.

39. I’ve never walked with Him more closely than I did during 37, 38, and 39. And for that I’m thankful I had to endure them.

39.

Me on the Academic Decathlon team… first row, second from right.

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