The Confessional

The time has come. I must come clean and confess. It’s been awfully amusing listening to my little brother and coworkers try and figure out my fib. I’ve had my fun, and I’ve drawn out my fun as long as possibly can…

Actually, I’m going to put it off for just a minute more.

Do I remind  you of a certain vampire you might know?

Wait. Don’t answer that.

Does my new hair remind you of a certain vampire?

OK, OK. I’m done…

__________

Here is the truth to my “25 Truths and a Lie”

A. I am not a good sleeper. – TRUE
~ Some nights it takes me forever to fall asleep, and some nights I wake up a dozen times or more. There are also nights were I never actually sleep. I lay there and as soon as I’m drifting off to sleep, I think of something and snap awake. This will go on all night long.

B. I require alone time. – TRUE
~ I need time to myself to decompress. I need time to think and relax. If I don’t get this time, I get overwhelmed with life. I can also be quite cranky, if my personal time is interrupted. Sometimes I spend this time reading, cooking, watching TV, writing, sleeping, cleaning or doing absolutely nothing.  I strongly believe that sometimes doing nothing, is doing something.

C. Despite my love for traveling, I have only been to two foreign countries. – TRUE
~ I absolutely love to travel, but have only left the country twice. I went to Niagara Falls, Canada my sophomore year of college, and to the Dominican Republic my junior year. It’s highly possible that if I were not a Mommy at this point in my life, that I would be traveling the world. I am not complaining. I would not trade Moanna for anything. I’m just saying that if life went a different direction (we all have things that we would be doing if we were not parents, CEO’s, monks or athletes), I would probably be globe trotting.

D. When I get tired, I become dyslexic. – TRUE
~ I learned this about myself by high school at the latest. When I get tired words, letters and numbers get jumbled. Numbers are the worst. I discovered this in math class one day. I would know exactly how to do a complete equation but get it wrong because somewhere along the way a 56 became a 65.

E. I do not like talking on the phone. – TRUE
~ I hate talking on the phone. I am famous, well infamous, for not answering my phone. I don’t know why, but I would rather snail mail you a letter or drive 10 hours to see you in person than answer a phone and forget being the person making the call. My stomach flips when I have to make a phone call.

F. I love to cook. – TRUE
~ If I did not have to work, I would spend my time teaching myself to cook like the contestants of Top Chef. I love to cook – love it. I just don’t have the time and energy (or counter space) to really get into it. Thankfully, Steve and I have a deal. If I cook, Steve does the dishes. I feel for him because I use every dish and gadget in the kitchen. By the time I’ve finished a dish I realize how I could have made it easier on myself and my dishwasher.

G. I have gray hair. – TRUE
~ Sadly it’s true. I have gray hair, and I tweeze them. I discovered the first one visiting while High School Boyfriend at college one weekend. Now, I spend time searching my head and plucking them out. Some of that alone time we were talking about earlier is spent plucking out the grays. If my hair wasn’t so dark, I probably wouldn’t even know they were there.

H. I want to have four children. – TRUE
~ What can I say? I was put on this Earth to have lots of babies. It’s something I know about myself and have known it since forever.

I. I get really bad cabin fever. – TRUE
~ After being at home for a couple of days, I go crazy. This condition probably developed while I was growing up in the middle of no where. I mean no where. I would become sad and irritable after being stuck at home for so long. Isolation is not my friend.

J. If I had the time I would be a serious news junkie. – TRUE
~ Every morning, my TV turns on at 7:00AM so I can watch the TODAY Show as I wake up and get ready for work. As I drive to work, I listen to CNN on the radio. One of my favorite things about staying in a hotel is having USA TODAY waiting outside my door for me when I wake up (yes, I’m a loser). I don’t get heated and into the politics of it all. I think it is important to know what is going on in the world around you and to constantly expand your mind. In case you were wondering, celebrity gossip is not news.

K. I’ve not had fast food since October. – TRUE
~ I love an icy Coke, hot French fries, cheeseburgers and chicken nuggets. My mouth is watering and my cholesterol is going up just thinking about it. At the end of October, in an effort to save money and eat healthier, Steve and I agreed to not eat anything that was not purchased in a grocery store for the month of November. When November was over, we extended it to the end of the year. The only exceptions are for date nights. We are in negotiations about what to do in 2010.

L. Clutter gives me anxiety attacks. – TRUE
~ I can go days and weeks, when I am blind to clutter and messes. I think it’s a survival technique, but then the day comes when I freak out because there is too much crap in our house, and there is no where to put it. I kid you not, I have left my house hyperventilating because I can’t stand it. When this happens, I feel defeated and helpless. I have issues. When I regain focus and control, the house gets cleaned and things get kicked to the curb.

M. I remember things from when I slept in a crib. – TRUE
~ I do. I remember wearing footed PJ’s, jumping up and down in my crib and calling for someone to come get me out. I also remember that there was a dresser inside the front door of the house we lived in. Every now-and-then I have flashes of memory of other things from being a wee one.

N. I tend to kill plants. – TRUE
~ I have dreams of growing fresh herbs and vegetables. I have dreams of having a lush flower garden. I even have dreams of maintaining a few house plants. However, 90% of everything I have planted has died. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I water. I sun. I rotate. None of it seems to work, my plants die. I have one or two plants that seem to be doing well, but I don’t want to say for sure and then have them die on me next week.

O. I have only gotten two speeding tickets. – FALSE
~ BIG FAT LIE. I have only gotten one speeding ticket in my life, and  that was dropped to equipment failure (or whatever they call it). I was driving to Roanoke the week before my wedding in a desperate attempt to find a dress for the rehearsal. My mind was else where, and I was not paying attention to my speed. I was pulled over by a nice officer who informed me that I was speeding more than a little bit. He checked my license and then said, “I have to give you a ticket because we are doing a traffic sting this week, but here’s what you do. Come dressed appropriately for court. Tell the judge it was a few days before your wedding and there was a lot on your mind. I’ll tell the judge that you were very cooperative. You’ll get a ticket for failed equipment. No points on your licenses and your insurance won’t go up. Now, watch out for more cops because they are everywhere today. Congratulations on  your wedding. It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it.” I’ve also gotten a ticket for hitting a parked car a few weeks after getting my driver’s license, but we won’t talk about that today.

P. I forget to eat. – TRUE
~ When I’m at home, or out and about, I get busy and totally forget to eat. It will be 3 or 4 in the afternoon before I realize that I’ve not eaten all day. If it were not for the screaming headaches and waves of nausea I would probably forget to eat all together. The crazy thing is that I will fix Moanna breakfast and lunch, and still not think that I need to eat.

Q. I have a lot of debt. – TRUE
~ Even with scholarships, college is expensive. It all started with my trip to the Dominican Republic, and I’ve been fighting the cycle ever since. I paid for my study abroad trip with credit cards because I couldn’t get a student loan. I don’t regret it one bit, and I’d do it again tomorrow if my passport was still valid.

R. I knew how to read before I started Kindergarten. – TRUE
~ Before Kindergarten, I learned how to read from the books that your grandma learned to read from. I also knew how to count by 2s, 5s, and 10s. Spelling is a whole different story.

S. Magazines are one of my favorite things. – TRUE
~ I don’t have time to get into a book, so I read magazines, not trashy magazines either. I read REAL SIMPLE, Better Homes and Gardens, Family Fun… things like this. A lot of my alone time is spent with a magazine. Sometimes I have to lock myself in the bathroom in order to get five minutes of peace with my magazine. Is that TMI?

T. I have bathed in a creek. – TRUE
~ Not to get all Little House on the Prairie on you, but I have bathed in a creek many times, and I’ve showered in rain water. Not one of them has been a romantic situation, so don’t get any funny ideas. There were a few summers when the spring that supplied our home with water dried up. In order to bathe, I had to take baby shampoo and baby soap to the creek across the street from our house and lather up. I’ve even had to do this a few times before school in the morning. Your hair will never be softer than it is when you wash it in a creek or in the rain.

U. I do not blow my nose. – TRUE
~ Call me crazy, but I do not blow my nose. I’ve tried a few times, and all it does is trigger my over sensitive gag reflexes. I’d rather have a stuffy nose than go through a gagging fit. I also cannot breathe out of my nose when jumping into water or swimming, therefore I do not jump into water. I hope you have a life line if you plan on pushing me in because when I’m done freaking out and gagging you’re nothing short of dead.

V. I have taken West African and Irish dance classes. – TRUE
~ Irish dance, I did pretty well in. It almost looked like I knew what I was doing. West African was a total joke. My body is not made to move like that. Feel like laughing at yourself? Take a West African dance class. It’s liberating and humiliating all at the same time.

W. My favorite room to clean is the bathroom. – TRUE
~ My house may not always reflect it (parenting, crazy work schedules, church commitments and sleep get in the way of house keeping), but I love to clean. My favorite room to clean is the bathroom. I love that every surface can be sprayed and cleaned. I love that there is no vacuuming involved. I love that I don’t have to clean it before I can clean it. What I mean is, the rest of the house attracts stuff (shoes, books, toys, dishes, etc.) that has to be put away before you can get to the real cleaning. Let’s make a deal, I’ll clean your bathroom and you do my floors. I loathe vacuuming, sweeping and mopping.

X. If the sun doesn’t shine, I have no energy and my body aches. – TRUE
~ The only way you wouldn’t know this is if you’ve never met me or read anything I’ve ever written.  There is no question that I am sensitive to Seasonal Affective Disorder. If I do not get my daily dose of sunshine, I have zero tolerance for pain or stress. My pain level on a cold and cloudy day is ten fold. It’s bad, and has gotten worse as I’ve gotten older. I know that one day in the future I will have to move somewhere where winter does not exist. Poor me, I need a prescription for warm sunny days. You will be jealous when the day comes.

Y. I enjoy public speaking. – TRUE
~ No idea where it came from, but talking in front of large groups of people has never made me uncomfortable. I enjoy it. It makes most people want to throw up, but I like the adrenalin rush. Actually, I find it calming. We’ve already established the fact that I have issues, so let’s move on.

Z. I am a certified EMT. – TRUE
~ I became a certified EMT my junior year of college. As if transferring schools and working wasn’t enough, I had this crazy idea that I needed to learn something new (outside of the 21 credit hours I was taking). I needed a distraction from my daily stresses, so I added a new one. When you are in an emergency type situation, you cannot think of money, relationships, classes or the laundry. All of your energy has to be focused on the patient and taking care of them. There is no room for your personal crap, and I find that to be fantastic.

__________

Now that I’ve let you in on way too much information. And, now that you think I have more issues  than any amount of therapy can remedy. And, now that you know that I’m a grandma driving adrenalin junkie. And now that you know my bank account number and social security number (just kidding), let’s move on to the winner.

I’m so excited, I may wee my pants!

Drum roll please…

Keep it going….

A little longer…

And the winner is…

Colleen.

Collen will receive a homemade purse from Home Baked Thread.

I also want to recognize Anika and Laura for being the only two people to call out my lie.

Grandma, Mom, Auntie, Moanna… what did you think my lie was? This should be good.

This was fun. Let’s do it again sometime. Same time next year good for you?

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