Random 25 Things

There is the thing going around on Facebook that is a list of 25 Random things about you. It took me so long to write it, that I must use it on my blog too.

1. I always thought I was laid back, but I am finding out that I am a bit more tightly wound than I thought. For example, I never want anyone to think that I am unorganized. So I will do almost anything to STAY organized so that I won’t be found out.

2. You will never see me wear tennis shoes with jeans. I consider this to be “mom gear” and I have hated this look since middle school. I never wear tennis shoes except while exercising. If you see me wearing tennis shoes, do me a favor and don’t point it out because you can be sure that I am plenty aware of it already and I am only wearing them out of necessity. Like, I forgot to pack another pair of shoes in my gym bag. That is the only scenario that I can see myself wearing tennis shoes with jeans.

3. I have a problem eating around people. Especially when it is quiet. If you are a loud or a sloppy eater…I am not going to be a happy person around you. I also have a problem with people that chew gum loudly, or just chew Big Red or any other cinnamon flavored gum around me. God is attempting to stretch me in this area because I can hear my son eating no matter where I am in my house at all times. How can I break him of this habit gently?

4. I cannot go to sleep without reading at night. It doesn’t matter if it is a book, Pottery Barn or Reader’s Digest. I just have to read something to settle myself down. But I do love to read and would rather spend a better part of the day curled up with a good book. It doesn’t matter what type of book, but I struggle with anything that has to do with “Christian growth” which is unusual I guess since I am a Christian and I like to “grow” but anything that has to do with that and is popular tends to grate on my nerves and makes me crazy. I like books with great stories, not books that tell me how much I am blowing it all the time.

5. I love watching TV. Almost all of it. My kids do too. On my DVR right now is The West Wing, The Biggest Loser, Friday Night Lights, The Office, 30 Rock, ER, Grey’s Anatomy, Saturday Night Live, Antiques Roadshow, Go Diego Go, The Wiggles, LazyTown, Max and Ruby, Backyardigans and Dora the Explorer, the South Carolina/Florida basketball game. Still to come this year, the Amazing Race. It is a power struggle daily to get to watch what we want to.

6. When I was growing up, it used to make me crazy that my dad always had to get a workout in EVERY SINGLE DAY. I felt like we never did any of the fun things that my friends families did because Dad had to go to gym. Now, I do the same thing. I feel like a crazy person if I don’t get a run or some sort of workout in nearly every day. I can miss a day or two, but not three. When I played soccer, I could go for weeks without working out, but now I just can’t make it through the week without working out.

7. I played soccer in college. It’s not a random fact. The random fact is that Matt didn’t really love that I played soccer. I am pretty sure that he would have loved it if I had been a sorority girl with A D Pi. I shaved my head my sophomore year, I bulked up my junior year and I could run under a six minute mile by my senior year. But Matt fell in love with me anyway. You know what that is called? God is in charge and not us. You can’t make someone fall in love with you. Matt was the best for me and I was the best for him. I loved playing soccer and I have no idea why God gave me the ability and dedication to be able to play at South Carolina. Except maybe to meet Matt Sloan and to have to the life that I have. I love that part of my story more than anything.

8. I was born in Las Vegas: then I moved to Woodbridge, VA, Kansas City, KS, Berlin, Germany, Seoul, South Korea, Fairfax, VA, Carlisle, PA, Staten Island, NY, Columbia, SC, and now Asheville, NC. My dad was in the Army. By far, I have loved living in Asheville the best of all places. It is home to me. I have lived here twice as long as I have lived anywhere else in my life. So of course this feels like home. My best memories growing up were in Berlin because it felt like such a different place and time. We lived there while the Berlin Wall was still up and we knew that our dad was there to defend against Communism and the Cold War. It was crazy. I still have some pretty crazy dreams from where my imagination took me while I was a child living miles away from soldiers that were ready to shoot anyone running towards freedom.

9. I lived in New York City for four years; while I was a high school student but I have never been to the top of the Empire State building. Same thing goes for Statue of Liberty. You never do touristy things when you live in a touristy city.

10. Since I did live in New York City, I found that I love eating Jewish food. Potato Knishes, bagels with lox, Matzo ball soup. Everytime I go the grocery store and I see the “Jewish section” I look longingly at the food, but I know that I am too much of a Goy to do anything good with those ingredients and so I move on sadly.

11. I have only knowingly broken one bone. I say knowingly, because I am sure that I have broken several toes and my nose in soccer injuries. But I broke my elbow on the last day of preseason my Junior year of college. I don’t know who to thank for that inury, Jessica Freas or Coach Sue Kelly. Freas is the one who threw me. But coach Kelly is one who decided it was a good idea to play “Combat” on the last day of preseason. It was awesome to be 20 years old and have a Gamecock cast like a nine-year old boy. That sucked.

12. My sister and I talk every single day. Sometimes several times a day. I am not sure when this started. I think about the time when we started having kids. She lives in New Jersey and I love her quirks and perspective on life since they are simulataneously similar and very different than mine. We can be both very good for each other and VERY BAD depending on the circumstances.

13. I have a life-dream to go to France during the Tour De France and follow the Tour for a few weeks. I am really sad that this is not going to be the year since Lance Armstrong and Floyd Landis are going to be back. I have watched this event for years and I love it. I look forward to it all year round. My dream location is to camp out a few days prior to the Alp D’Huiz stage and party with the locals on the side of the road and run alongside the riders as they go by. I will do this one day. I can’t wait.

14. If I could do something without failing I would be a photographer. I would not be afraid to buy the equipment and would jump full force into the field.

15. I have to have my pillows to go to sleep. One, is my cool pillow (not a Chillow). This pillow never gets hot. It stays at just the right temperature all night long. It is a down pillow that I have had since I can’t remember when. My boyfriend in college tried to have my give it to him as a sign of how much I loved him. I gave him the pillow when I left for college. The first time I saw him; I got the pillow back. I didn’t love him that much. I also have a rice bag that I drape across my eyes to go to sleep every night. I love the weight of the rice and how it blocks out all the light in the room. Once, on a trip; we left the pillows at home in a packing oversight. We had Becca Short Eby and Anne Marie Anderson OVERNIGHT the pillows to us. Yes, it was worth it. I had the worst night sleep of my life and I was horribly embarrassed by the fit that I threw when I realized that I left my pillows at home. If my house was on fire, I would rescue my kids, my pillows, my computer. In that order.

16. The greatest place to play soccer in America is at the Graveyard at the University of South Carolina.

17. I like starting and finishing projects. I don’t like to leave things half-finished. It makes me feel frustrated and unaccomplished. I am a driven person and so usually once I start something, I see it through to completion. Usually this is an asset, sometimes this can work against me because I can get tunnel vision and am unable to focus on anything else until I am done with my projects.

18. I took Russian in college because I cheated on the French placement exam and ended up placing in French 300. Lesson learned. Don’t cheat on placement exams.

19. If I don’t write things down, I tend to forget them. It’s nothing personal. My kids have eaten my brain and so have the Wiggles. I can’t concentrate well anymore.

20. My family had a trait that we call “The Hurricane”. We spaz out and make a mess around us when we are in public…usually with food. I have knocked over so many food displays at events, I can’t really talk about it. Except to say, as a child at camp...we had to come up with nicknames and the best I could do was "Whitewave."

21. One of my oldest friends Robin and I fell in love one summer at Young Life camp. We were “friends” but then we were in a cabin together and stayed up late every night laughing at the most ridiculous things to the point that high school girls were asking us to be quiet so that they could go to sleep. . We have been great friends ever since. I asked her move to Asheville because I didn’t want her to live in Columbia and me in Asheville. I am so glad that she agreed. I count on sitting on the beach with her as a 60 year old laughing my head off at her and with her.

22. One of the sweetest places on the earth during a rainstorm is my grandmother’s house, in the purple room playing spades with my cousins on a summer afternoon.

23. I met Mayor Giuliani my senior year of high school. I worked as a reporter for our “Teen Section” and they had all of the senior reporters do a story on the mayor. We got to meet and lunch with the mayor for a couple of hours. He was a really nice POLITICIAN. It sounds so jeef to say “Teen Section” reporter, but I had to write an article several times a month and it taught me more about the news business than any class that I ever took. It also helped me to become the women’s Sports Information Director at UNCA because I knew how to write articles and how to edit copy. It has taken me places.

24. My mom’s cousin was on the run from the DEA for 16 years. He was wanted for involvement in some kind of drug smuggling ring around the time I was born. He was captured when I was 16. My family had a code name that they used when discussing him. He was called, “Cochise” His real name? Michael. The amount of time he served? Nine months. He ran for 16 years to only have to serve nine months.

25. I was named “Class Individualist” by my senior class. I sure wanted that to be true and I think that I have carved out my own path that NO ONE else could have or would have taken. But I don’t think that this is exactly what they meant. I dressed like a clown on a daily basis in high school just because. It probably should have been someone else’s award who was much cooler AND actually more original than me. But I made such a scene with my wardrobe, I guess they had no choice. Now, I dress in all of those clothes that I wore in high school as costumes for Young Life and we laugh-A LOT at me and my past.