25 (not so interesting) things about me, the knitting hillbilly

July 8th, 2010 | Posted in Personal | 18 Comments »
 

I was recently tagged by my new blog friend, Erin to do this “25 things about me” type meme thingy. But before I get started I just have to show how incredibly pathetic I am by saying that I did a little dance in my computer chair when I saw that someone acknowledged my existence in this vast expansive porn pavilion called the internet, and tagged me for something. Yeah…

I know you’re foaming at the mouth right now waiting to read the facts!

It’s going to be hard coming up with 25!

1.) I’m a knitting hillbilly, as the title implies. I call myself that because a.) I knit shit and b.) I live in Kentucky in a trailer and eat grits for breakfast. Those are usually the only things someone needs to know about another person before assuming they are, in fact, a hillbilly. I embrace it.

2.) I was a hair away from never existing. My mother was 40 when a 2nd surprise pregnancy came along, and her doctor advised her to abort. Thankfully, she didn’t. I have to say that I am the most attractive of her two children.

3.) I have two much older half-siblings from my father. A half-brother that I’ve never met. A half-sister that mysteriously came into our lives for a little while and then, just as mysteriously, disappeared. My next blog post will go a little deeper into this subject.

4.) I’m a teen mom all grown up. I got pregnant at 15, married my son’s father (awesome guy, love him to pieces), gave birth at 16 and have been living happily with them ever since. My family is my everything.

5.) Every morning I wake up to my iPhone alarm, prepare to hit the SNOOZE button as always, and without fail I do a double take at the word. Maybe it’s because I’m still in my “half-asleep-borderline-zombie” fog when I see it. But it is a WEIRD looking word. It just never looks right to me. Sometimes I see it as it’s spelled and think it’s weird, other times I see it as SNOZOE or NOSOZE and don’t think it looks any better.

6.) I wrote a scathing email last year to the makers of Starburst asking them WHY oh WHY did they discontinue the sour flavors. I told them that I was angry now because they put 2 sour flavors in a pack with 2 nasty ass sweet flavors. I never heard back from them. I really really like Sour Starburst.

7.) I buy all of my clothes from Wal*Mart or second hand shops. I don’t have the desire or the money to be a fashionista.

8.) My taste in music is so strange because I don’t like any one particular genre more than the other. I have Loretta Lynn right next to Lil’ Wayne on my iPod. And I can go listening from her to him seamlessly.

9.) I often hoard the money that I make. Not to be mean or keep anything from my family (we are well taken care of), but I fear the struggling and hardship that comes with not having enough of it. That’s how I started living my adult life and I never want to go back to it.

10.) There’s a part of my brain, waaay back in the back of my mind behind the logic and reasoning zones, that honestly, sincerely believes that a zombie apocalypse is completely possible. When I find myself thinking about it, I can’t decide if I’d rather try to fight it out with all the guns and badassery I can muster, or just shoot myself in the face and be done with it.

11.) Unlike a lot of wives/girlfriends I know, I am completely 100% okay with and even excited about being home by myself. Not that I don’t enjoy spending time with my guys, but because I enjoy the silence and the time I get to relax and reflect.

12.) I once started tracing my family tree on Ancestry.com, then stopped for two reasons. 1.) I didn’t want to pay $20 a month for the service and 2.) I was afraid of what I might find.

13.) On occasion, I have horribly vivid nightmares about being murdered for no particular reason. Always in a different way. Once I dreamed that someone came along next to me in my car at a gas station and shot me in the head. As I woke from the dream, I can remember feeling the sensation of blood rushing in the back of my head and the shot ringing in my ears. Once my mind pulled itself back into consciousness, those sounds and sensations faded away and I regained myself in the dark silence. It’s terrifying. I don’t know why it happens. It affects me weirdly for the entire next day.

14.) I only write in cursive if I’m writing a check. No real reasoning behind it.

15.) Every time I leave my house, I say a quick silent prayer to God asking him to watch over me, my loved ones, and our homes. To protect us, keep us safe, and watch over us always. I’m not overly religious, but I feel close to God when I do it.

16.) I rarely follow recipes when I cook, unless it’s something I’ve never ever made before. My mother taught me to be a “taste cook”. I eyeball ingredients, taste, add something, taste, add something, rinse and repeat until I get it just right. Most of the time I’m awesome at it.

17.) I’m horribly bad at math. It was always my weakest subject in school. My favorites were English and History. Guess that’s why I blog and watch History’s Mysteries instead of solving quadratic equations in my spare time.

18.) I never buy eggs. My parents have free range chickens that produce OODLES of eggs on a daily basis and they give them away to everyone they know.

19.) I rarely drink alcohol. Not that I’m against it (my husband is a loyal Miller Light guy). I just can’t drink very much without feeling sick. And hot and sweaty. Not that sexy.

20.) At times I feel like my flaws define me. Petty, vain, insignificant physical flaws that mean absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. I don’t wear tank tops because I have freckled shoulders and a few faded stretch marks. Stupid shit like that. I’m hoping one day when I’m old and quirky that I won’t put so much value into things like that anymore.

21.) In MY house, toilet paper and paper towels roll over, not under. EVER.

22.) I’ve, been, known, to, overuse, the, comma. But I try to keep this habit in check.

23.) Since being an adult and having my driver’s license, I’ve only pumped gas one time. That’s it. We’re a one car family and that’s just something my husband has always conveniently done. The one time I did, I was driving my mom’s car to the grocery and absolutely could NOT make it home without getting gas. I almost panicked because it felt like everyone was watching me fumble around with the thing like an idiot. It sucked and I almost cried.

24.) As a child I took piano lessons, but not for very long. A year or 2 at the most. Now, I love the soothing sound of piano so much that I wish I had kept doing it. In my defense, my teacher was an eccentric old woman who gave lessons in a little windowless room in the back of a music store. She was nice, but I don’t think the material was stimulating enough to keep me interested. I want so badly to pick it up again and learn my own way. I have the potential. I just don’t think I have the patience.

25.) I’ve never changed a flat tire or had monkey sex with a gorilla.

WHEW. That was a tough one. But I DID IT.

I now tag these lovely people and I can’t wait to read their lists, should they decide to indulge me! Can they top my Freddy Kruegerish nightmares and lack of hot gorilla action? We soon shall see.

Carma @ Carmasez
Nicole @ Nicolisode.com
Melissa @ Melography
Catie @ Catielove.org
Erin @ Caotica and
Kasie @ KasiePea.me

Voice activated texting is the next big thing

July 6th, 2010 | Posted in Daily Grind | 11 Comments »
 

Josh and I were watching the news the other night, listening to the reporters endlessly lecture about the dangers of texting while driving. Seems like that’s the hot topic every single night these days. To me, the dangerous consequences of texting and driving (or doing anything while driving other than watching the road) are common sense. The fact that people run into things and kill themselves while in the middle of a “omg i’m totally going to buffalo wild wings rite now and driving with my knees lolololol” text is not breaking news.

But I digress. So they were going on about ways to “prevent” the hazards (oddly, the suggestion of shutting the hell up and paying attention to the damn road was never mentioned) when Josh turns to me and says,

“You know, I get tired of hearing about this. Why won’t phone manufacturers just create a voice-to-text type thing so that you can talk to the phone and it will type out your text?”

“Oh, you know I think I heard about that,” I said, “it’s called the telephone. Really revolutionary. You dial this number and then you can actually friggin TALK to the person on the other end! No typing required! Like you can hear their voices and everything!”

He had a look on his face that said ‘I want to punch you in the face right now’ and ‘I can’t believe I just said that’ simultaneously.

Why make it hard by finding 5623529 different indirect ways to communicate with another person?

To sum it all up: Smart phones are both insanely awesome and incessantly annoying. And unlike every news anchor you’ve ever watched, I’m not going to lecture about not texting while driving. But I will say that if anyone ever mows me down on the highway because they couldn’t bear the thought of unplugging from their precious Twitter or funny IM with the person in the back seat, they’re going to need an app for removing shards of plastic from their ass. And remember, where others don’t, Droid does.