100 things

1. My mother is 19 years older than me; I have close friends who are older than my mother.


2. I have 5 siblings, my half-brother is 3 years older than me and incarcerated right now, 2 half-sisters who are 6 and 8 years younger than me, and 2 step-brothers who are 6 and 10 years younger than me.


3. I got married when I was 18 years old…the day after my high school graduation.


4. I was very smart in school…There were only a few tenths of a point separating me from the valedictorian…although I officially ranked 7th.  


5. I have never met my biological father.


6. I have 3 children, Aidan, 5, Alora, 2 and 10 months, and Aralyn, who is 8 months old.


7. In all, I only labored for about 14 or 15 hours total.  2 hours, 6.5 hours and 6.5 hours respectively.


8. Aidan was almost born in the car on the way to the hospital, Alora was born in my garden tub, and Aralyn was almost born in the tub, but came instead right beside the tub while I squatted.


9. I have been pregnant or breastfeeding or both for just over 6 years now.  


10. I am always reading a book, sometimes more than one…right now it is Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell and The Bad Place by Dean Koontz and First Man of Rome by Colleen McCullough.


11. I have never had someone that was close to me die…the closest to that has been my Papaw, who died when I was about 9 or so, I was close to him when I was young, but then his Altztimers got worse and we moved and didn’t visit him as much.  


12. My first stepfather is a drug addict and is now clean, but spent some years behind bars for related crimes.


13. My step-father now is the only real father I have ever had…it is hard for me to call him “Dad”, since the other man I called by that name totally wasn’t worth it.


14. I was born in Hobbs, NM, and later lived in Midland, TX, Clyde, NC, Asheville, NC, and now Barnwell, SC.  Even though it is only a short list of towns, it has involved about 15 or 16 moves.  The house I am in now is my longest stay.


15. My grandmother is a breast cancer survivor and now fighting emphysema


16. Adam and I will be married for 8 years this May 31st.


17. I have never tried any type of drug or smoked any cigarettes, although I have had plenty of opportunities and my parents are smokers.


18. I now get sick when I stay at my parents’ house for too long because of the smoke.


19. I was nicknamed Rapunzel while in high school because of my below waist length hair…which I cut half-way through my senior year.


20. When Adam and I met, we looked like hippies, he wore tie dye and had shoulder length hair and I wore some “peasant-y” things and had looong hair.  


21. Adam and I dated for 2 years before we married…it was long distance that whole time.  


22. When I was younger there was nothing better than to climb a tree with a book and read for hours…I have now traded in the tree for a nice hot bath!


23. I have dreams of being a missionary someday…maybe they will come true.


24. I am a Native American…registered with the Chickasaw nation.


25. I was engaged at the age of 15 to a guy that I didn’t marry…thankfully.


26. Adam and I have had 7 pets since being married…5 have been hamsters, the first 3 dies, and the last 2 got violent, so I let them loose, we had a stray cat for a while, but Adam was allergic and we had a dog.


27. We paid WAY too much for the dog…she disappeared 2 new years ago…we live in the woods and we think she must have been found/got by a pack of coyotes.


28. The first time I ever flew was 2 summers ago when Adam and Aidan and Alora and I all went out west to visit some of my family.


29. I have never been out of the US


30. I went to the Grand Canyon when I was 6 months pregnant with Aidan, the only regret I have is that Adam wasn’t able to be with me.


31. I sometimes wonder what my other siblings (on my bio-father’s side are like).  Maybe someday I will search for them.


32. I don’t have any desires to find my bio-father, unless it will lead me to my siblings or something like that.  


33. I cloth diapered Aidan, but just couldn’t do it with more than one child…too much laundry.  I loved doing it with him though.


34. I have been in 4 wrecks…1 with my mother, 1 was me driving, and the other 2 have been with Adam…the ones with Adam were not our fault, the other 2 were!


35. I was once in a blizzard in Asheville…I think 1992?  It was one of the most fun times of my life!


36. Aidan was a surprise that we didn’t know we wanted until he was on the way.


37. He was conceived at my parents’ house…brother’s bed…day after Christmas…my family knows…eeek


38. Adam and I have never had a crib in our house…we co-sleep.


39. I think my youngest brother likes my son more than he likes me…they are the best of friends.  


40. I never know what color my eyes are….they were mostly blue as a child, but change to green and gray sometimes too.


41. All of my children have blue eyes, and Adam too.


42. I like to crochet, but don’t have enough time for it.


43. I like to sew, but am no good and don’t have enough time for it


44. I like to cross-stitch, but don’t have enough time for it


45. I like to paint, but don’t have enough time for it


46. I like most crafts, but don’t have enough time for them…or money either, they can be pricey too.


47. I have never broken a major bone…just my nose and my tailbone.


48. One time that I broke my nose, I was walking home from school with a heavy backpack and using a stick to pretend to be blind…hit a crack in the sidewalk, fell on the stick and the backpack slide up my back and knocked my head back into the stick.  FUN!  And just the kind of stupidity you feel you were justly punished.


49. I find myself growing more and more conservative in my thoughts on modesty and purity.


50. I find myself growing more and more liberal on my thoughts about church and worship.


51. I don’t know where that leaves me


52. I love to sing and love music of almost any kind.


53. I love to water ski, but have never been snow skiing, and must admit it seems a bit scary to me.


54. I love rollercoasters.  My first date with Adam was to a theme park, Carowinds.


55. I haven’t been on a rollercoaster since getting pregnant with Aidan.


56. My middle name is Dael…named after my uncle Dale. (I know, tell my mom, she is the weird one)


57. I have never accidentally written my maiden name, Busby.  I guess I was just so glad to be rid of it since the father who gave it to me never had anything to do with me


58. Adam would love to have 3 more children, and I could be finished, if it were just up to me…maybe one more?


59. For a while in my early teen years, my parlor trick was to imitate Jodie Foster’s portrayl of Nell from the movie of the same title…”Tay en a wee-en”


60. I was super skinny in my youth, I had an uncle who told me that if I stood sideways and stuck out my tongue I would look like a zipper.


61. I think in my whole life I have ever only worn 2 bikinis…one that was a little string bikini when I was about 4 and one when I was about 14…it was crochet and multicolored…you couldn’t pay me enough to wear something like that now.


62. I played soccer in high school for 2 years


63. I loved it, even though we only ever scored about 6 goals and never won


64. I always wanted a Victorian doll house when I was little…maybe my girls can have one for me.


65. I was born the day before Halloween in 1979, so my mother called me a little witch.


66. My sisters called me “Sissa” ---Alissa and Sister


67. My mother and I talk on the phone almost every weekday…she has a toll free number, so that helps.


68. I forgot to send my brother a Christmas card this past year…the one that is in prison


69. When I was young, my 1st stepfather was in a rehab for a while, and I hated that smell…I will smell it sometimes and it makes me sick


70. I hate the taste of fake grape…like candy and such…it reminds me of being sick and taking Dimetap.


71. I would love to loose about 30 pounds


72. I have never had a cavity


73. I have way too many shoes, and would love to own more


74. I am not a big purse person…although I do think they are cute


75. I love horned toads…I loved catching them as a child.


76. I lock myself out of the house all the time and have to climb in a window or break in some other way.


77. In elementary school I got to be on an Odyssey of the Mind team and loved it.


78. I also was on a team 3 years in high school too!  It was great.


79. I think my family was disappointed in me for not going to college…they had big plans for me, I think


80. I don’t regret not going to college…I can still go later if I want.


81. I have only ever really had one paying job…working at JC Penney…I didn’t like it much


82. I have a first cousin who helped someone rob a bank.


83. I have an umbilical hernia


84. If I have to have surgery for it, it will be the first surgery I ever have.


85. I over-think things, especially when I need to confront someone about something.


86. Adam and I have both lost our wedding bands, him while working out in the rain one night, and me while swimming during my pregnancy with Aidan…so much for swollen fingers


87. I wish I could sign (as in sign language) fluently


88. I wish I had taken a useful second language, like Spanish


89. One of the times that my mother and my sisters and I moved, it was from Midland, TX to Clyde, NC (western Texas to western NC) in a car with 2 mice in a cardboard box.


90. The mice survived until my mother “baked” them in the sun one day a year later while we were cleaning out their cage.


91. She bought me 2 more mice to make up for it, but one of them ate the other.


92. My grandmother was home alone with them when it happened and she has never forgiven me or my mom for it.


93. My ears are not the same…one is bigger than the other


94. I have a really small wrist, I wear a 6.5 inch bracelet and really small fingers, 4.5 or 5 ring finger.


95. I am pretty good at calligraphy


96. I make my children’s birthday cakes, so far we have had an alligator, Blue (Blue’s Clues), a train, a butterfly, Bob and Larry (Veggie Tales), Dora the Explorer, and an Incredible cake (The Incredibles)


97. I have a huge box of love letters that Adam and I sent to one another while we were dating…I love to look through them on occasion


98. I have a string of pearls that my 1st stepfather’s sister had been given from her mother.  She passed away from a rare lung disease and her mother got them back.  My grandmother (still call her that) sent them to me as a wedding present…I will always cherish them.


99. I don’t have an engagement ring…Adam and I were never really formally engaged….we just knew we were going to get married.


100. This list was really hard to come up with, and nobody will probably read all the way down here, so #100 hardly matters, right

But just in case it does…I love to lay out in the grass and look up at the clouds…it fills me with a wonderful feeling.