25 Things About Me You Didn't Know

So my cousin Calliope tagged me on Facebook for this thing she did, where you are supposed to write 25 random things, facts, habits or goals about yourself. So here we go....

1. I am so near-sighted that if I am not wearing my glasses or contacts, in order to see something I have to hold it about two inches from my face. Doh!
2. I have never had a tooth cavity in my entire life. (Must be the well water from the acreage growing up, right mom?)
3. I didn't have my first "real" kiss until I was 16 (in grade 11).
4. I went through a phase in high school, around grade 9, where I was obsessed with anything to do with the 60s. I wanted to be a hippy, so I wore bell bottoms. I learned the words to almost every Beatles song. I went out and bought books about that era and studied them like I was going to be tested. I watched the movie 'Hair' a million times, memorized all the songs, imagined myself being in the movie, doing the things they were doing. Maybe in a past life, I was a hippy!
5. Speaking of past lives... I am CONVINCED that in a past life, I was killed in a car accident. As a teenager, I was terrified of driving, even though I took a driver training course (which I was white-knuckled through the entire time). Even thinking about driving a vehicle gave me the shakes and brought on an anxiety attack. I finally got my drivers license at age 22 (even though I failed the first two times!). Thankfully, I can now say I am a MUCH better driver and no longer get stressed about it, although I won't be driving in a major city like Calgary or Edmonton any time soon, haha!
6. Here are all the careers I've been interested in over the years: theatre set designer, actress, botanist, environmental conservationist, artist, costume designer, fashion designer, being in the Peace Corps or Greenpeace (I don't even know if there is such a thing as the Peace Corps), interior designer.
7. I can remember the exact moment and what I was doing when I found out I was pregnant at 17. Tyler and I were living in the apartment across from the Telus building in downtown Red Deer. I had been really grouchy for the past week and something Tyler did or said that morning set me off into a screaming fit. After I chilled out, I thought to myself, "What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you acting like this? Is it hormones or what?" Laughed a bit, then the word hormones sort of bounced around my head and like a light going on, it hit me. Immediately I went out to the drugstore across the street, picked up a test, ran home and did my thing. I can remember sitting on the edge of the tub, holding the test in my hand, terrified to look at it. In typical self-absorbed teenaged fashion, all I could think about was how my 18th birthday was in a week and how I wouldn't be able to go out to the bar if I was pregnant. When I finally did look at it and I saw those two lines, I was in denial. I kept double-checking the package, just in case two lines meant not pregnant. I probably sat there for about five minutes in a daze, zoned out, just staring at the wall. Then a vision of a fat little baby with wispy hair, lying in a crib cooing and giggling, flashed into my mind. I saw myself picking the baby up, rocking it back and forth, kissing the soft sweet cheeks, and Tyler coming up behind me and wrapping his arms around both of us. In that moment, I knew that this was meant to be, this was what I'd been wanting and waiting for, I just hadn't realized it. Suddenly I was filled with excitement and happiness, so anxious to see my precious baby and hold it, that I wanted my baby NOW. I walked out to the livingroom, still dazed, plopped down on the sofa and said to Tyler, "Sorry I spazzed out there. Its because I'm pregnant." He just sort of collapsed on the couch beside me. We looked at each other, unable to look away, both of us looking for something, some emotion, on the others face that would signal what the other was thinking. For a second, fear flashed through his eyes, then mine. Then, at the exact same time, we started to smile.
8. I have this obsessive habit of setting the alarm clock and having to check at least four times that it is set properly. I check the time to confirm that its right, then I click the button to the 'on' position, then I make sure the volume is clicked to 'ring', not 'on' (otherwise, instead of an alarm sound, the radio comes on but really quietly). I do this four more times, just in case.
9. Contrary to the majority of you out there, I have no desire to vacation in Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican, or any other hot-spot out there. I used to think I would enjoy it, laying on the beach all day reading and sun-tanning, drinking frou-frou drinks with the little umbrellas. Then I realized I would be incredibly bored after about two days of doing that. Plus, that commercial that comes on TV that shows you all the ways you can get Hep C or whatever disease it is, from vacationing in places like that. NO THANK YOU! I'll take a trip to cold damp Scotland over Mexico any day. Tramping through the centuries-old graveyards, reading the headstones, running my hands over the monoliths at Stonehenge, feeling their power... that's my idea of a vacation. (Of course, Ty would be fishing in Loch Ness, trying to reel in ole' Nessie, haha!)
10. Whenever I am around someone with a Newfie accent, inevitably I start talking with the accent after a couple of minutes. Its kind of embarrassing! I always think that they will think I am mocking them, but its completely out of my control, I can't help it! Its something to do with the lilting tone of their voice, the way they pronounce certain words. I just find myself talking the same way. I wish I had an accent!
11. I bite my fingernails whenever I am nervous, scared, stressed, or angry.
12. I am NOT a squeamish person (hello! I'm a mom of four - you don't want to know how many times I've been peed, puked and pooped on, not to mention all the snot and slobber that's been rubbed on my shoulders over the years). But, the sight of blood on the floor does me in every time. Its fine if the blood is on the body part its leaking from or on clothes or a washcloth, but for some insane reason when I see it on the floor, where I could possibly step on it, it totally freaks me out!
13. I find that doing housework is sooo much easier if I'm talking on the phone at the same time.
14. I am most attracted to men with dark hair and eyes (maybe that seems obvious, seeing as how I married your typical tall, dark and handsome man), which makes my obsession with blond-haired, blue-eyed Brad Pitt a total mystery to me.
15. I have a very weird phobia of what I call "re-breathing", meaning breathing in someone else's "used" air, air that they are breathing out. If I even think I am re-breathing, my lungs seize up and I start panicking, I literally cannot breath. Its funny but at the start of my relationship with Ty, you know, that lovey-dovey honeymoon stage, we'd cuddle in bed, heads close together, and I would struggle to hide my panic when his breath would hit my face. I didn't want to offend him or have him think I was a weirdo, plus I was loving the cuddling. Years went by and I kept this hidden from him. It was only a couple of years ago that I confessed to Tyler my weird phobia and guess what? Turns out he has the exact same phobia! All this time he'd been hiding it from me, for the same reasons I hid it from him! How crazy is that? So now, sometimes when we're lying in bed, he'll hug me or I'll hug him, faces close together, and its like a contest to see who can last longer. He always wins because I'll make it to like a minute, then start freaking out and hyperventilating, him holding me closer and me trying to shove him away, both of us laughing hysterically. Yeah, we're weird.
16. When I was in elementary school, from about grades 1-3, I wanted to change my name to Victoria because I thought it was the most beautiful name ever, like a princess.
17. I get so embarrassed by some of the horrible singers at the American Idol auditions, that I have to hide my head behind a pillow because I just can't bear to watch them embarrass themselves like that.
18. I am not allergic to anything.
19. I have few regrets about anything I've done in my life, but the ones I do have are: being mean to Levi when he was a little boy (Trapper and I would lead him into a field then run away, screaming "Coyotes!", stuff like that), not being a better sister to my brothers during their teen years (I was too busy with my own life, raising my child, and thought that they didn't need me, now I regret not being more involved in their lives), and of course, not realizing that my dad had a mental disorder and that was the reason for some of his "mean" behaviour to me over the years. I should have realized that the extreme ups-and-downs of his behaviour were more than just his personality, that they signified a real problem he was having, and I should have been more understanding and empathetic.
20. My mother is my role model. I look at her life, the many things she's had to deal with over the years, and how she's always retained her core of strength, love and perseverance. She is the most amazing person I know: the strength and beauty of her soul; her unique, one-of-a-kind personality; her capacity for unconditional love, understanding and acceptance. She is just as much my friend as my mother.
21. My favorite food (at the moment) to snack on is caramel-and-chocolate-chip rice cakes. Its a new obsession.
22. I cannot stand TV crime or doctor dramas, like ER or Law & Order. The exception is CSI, but I only like the original series and the CSI Miami series, not the New York one.
23. My all-time favorite foods are: buttered toast with honey, mashed potatoes with salad mixed in, bbq-ed chicken (Ty's secret recipe), and All-Bran flakes cereal with milk. Foods that make me gag just to look at them, let alone eat them? Blackberries (they're like black raspberries on steroids, they look like huge steaming piles of ant egg clusters, pulsating with ant ooze), raw oysters, liver (it glistens!), and sausages (I like breakfast sausages, but the other kind, the big fat ones, even the smell of them cooking makes me gag).
24. I am convinced that Courtney Love played a sinister role in Kurt Cobain's death (don't believe me? Watch the documentary "Kurt and Courtney").
25. And the last informational nugget I'll pass along: I have an instinctual bias against 'authority', meaning anyone who tries to tell me what to do. If you TELL me or ORDER me or even FORBID me to do something, my hackles rise up and my mind screams rebellion. I cannot stand being told what to do. But if you were to ask me nicely, make it a suggestion laced with many 'pleases' and 'thank yous', I might consider it.

So there you go. 25 things about me you probably didn't know. And if you did know a few of these things, well, that just means you're obviously very close to me. You have no idea how hard it was to come up with 25 things! I was really struggling for a while there, haha.

Love you guys! Muuuahhh!