10 (somewhat) interesting things about me!
This is another prompt that gave me pause. I know, most people find it easy to talk about themselves, me? I'm not sure I can think of 10 interesting things about me, but I'll do my best! This time, I'm trying to choose things that are a little more random and/or not something that everyone knows about me. So, here goes nothing. In no particular order, here are 10 (somewhat) interesting facts about yours truly.
1. When I was in first grade, my parents noticed that I wasn't progressing in the education arena as expected so they had me tested. What they learned would change my life forever. Among the tests, they found that I have a high IQ (I'm by no means a genius, but I am a bit higher then average) and that I wasn't preforming at that level due to a language centered learning disability. At that time, they didn't want to name that disability, worried that it would only serve as a label I'd be forced to live under but those who knew me best had suspicions and a number of them even had the education and knowledge to back it up. My special education teacher, an amazing woman we will call Mrs. D, acted upon her suspicions and centered her plan for me in her classroom around effective and successful methods used with those diagnosed with Dyslexia. Since my childhood, I have done extensive research and spoken with others who know learning disabilities and am very confident that I do, in fact have dyslexia and, likely, also discalcula (a learning disability primarily effecting numbers and math).
2. Due to my struggles with language and what is believed to be dyslexia, I could not read until I was in 5th grade. I hated to read, but I loved to make up stories. Reading was just so hard for me and seemed to be impossible to complete the amount others were asking with the information I was expected to retain still kept. My mother tells stories about how she had to basically physically restrain me to get me to read for my homework, though some of my favorite childhood memories are laying in my bed with my mom while she read to me each night before bed. I got to choose the book and she would read a chapter or two each night. I often picked Baby-sitter's club, Baby-sitters Little sisters and the Boxcar children though those were not the only books we read. It was during this time that I learned I share a birthday with Jordan Knight, member of New Kids On the Block (the first band I really loved and became a fan of! I even had the T-shirts, the bedroom set, Joey's hat, the over-sized buttons, ect.!).
3.I absolutely adore nutcrackers. Yep. You heard that right. Nutcrackers. I have my theories as to what triggered that, which mostly centered around my parents' divorce and my mother's dedication to make the first Christmas without my dad in the home amazing despite what was happening to our family, but the obsession has survived since I was eight years old! That's almost 30 years of collecting I currently have totally run out of room for them all but my collection comes it at over 100 nutcrackers. Some stay out all year, others come out only for Christmas, and I still add to my collection when I can! I also really love the ballet!
4. I'm not very musically inclined, but I love music. While I am tone deaf, I did play the saxophone for about two years. I struggled with learning how to read music and resorted to writing the name of the note above it on my music sheets so that I could play without having to struggle with figure out each note as I went. I quite playing when my band instructor told me he was going to stop working with me if I didn't learn how to site read the music. The task was too daunting and I didn't believe I could do it, so after struggling for a couple of weeks, I decided to just stop playing. I sometimes regret that choice.
5. I truly believe that everything in my past is what got me here today. While not all of my choices were the best and while not everything turned out as hoped, it got me here, to the best place of my life. Because of that, i don't have any regrets of what I've done. My only regrets stem from "what if's" in things I didn't do and opportunities I didn't pursue and I find that I often make choices with the, "Well even if I fail, at least I can live the rest of my life knowing instead of wondering" mentality. However, I do recognize that if I had done some of those things I didn't, it would have lead me in a different direction and I may never have ended up here, so I don't put much stock in regrets.
6. The biggest item on my bucket list, is to make a positive difference in people's lives. If I can do that for just one person, I feel like I've succeeded. My biggest dream is to get to do this to hundreds of people in my life time.
7. I am fascinated and slightly obsessed with serial killers. Hold on! Don't run away. Put down the phone. There's no need to call the authorities. This fascination comes from a psychology and sociological background. I could never do what they do, and am often sickened by their actions, but there's something about the mental workings behind it, the question of nature vs. nurture intrigues me. I search for answers to currently unanswered questions like, "How? How does a baby grow into such a monster? How can their circumstance in life, good, bad or indifferent, result in the creation of a serial killer sometimes but not others? It's obvious that to me that it's a combo of nature and nurture, but, then, which is the bigger part? Where is the tipping point? And, is there a way to help these people sooner? To intervene before they become the serial killer and save all of those innocent lives? So, I read about them, watch fictional shows like Criminal Minds and find myself sucked into streaming exclusives like The Assassination of Gianni Versace and The Act.
8. My top 3 favorite T.V shows right now are, in no particular order are:
Gilmore Girls
Bones
Being Human U.S
The characters have become my best friends. They give me comfort and make he laugh. These are the shows I go to when I need inspiration, am going through a hard time, need something that I enjoy but don't have to put a lot of attention to or just because I love them. However, the first T.V show that showed me that T.V shows can make a huge impact in your life, and be the place where you best friends live was Dawson's Creek! While I still consider it one of my all time favorite shows, it is no longer the Dawson Leary's Spielberg theory answer for me. (If you don't get that reference, you haven't watched enough Dawson's Creek)!
9. In recent years, I've developed a love for cute owls. I attribute this to the fact that my grandmother always liked owls and she was a huge influence in my life. She was like a parent to me. She babysat me, was who I came home from school to and, growing up, she did everything with my mother and I. Everywhere we went, she went. My husband and I even chose to get married on the same day her and my grandfather got married, February 16th. We lived next door to her from the time I was 4 until I was 21, then we all moved in together in the same house. We lost her a few years ago. She was 99. Both of my daughters seem to have also made the emotional connections with owls as well.
10. I don't like chicken. I have gotten to the point where I can eat it if it doesn't taste like chicken, but over all, I usually don't eat it at all. This dislike of chicken developed when I was in high school. Chicken had never been my favorite food but I didn't dislike it. But then my father and I went down to Florida to say good-bye to his mother, my grandmother. She had lived in Florida my whole life, and I had lived in Iowa so we didn't see much of each other. I saw her maybe once ever five years or so. My most happy vivid memory of her was when I was visiting Florida and my grandma took me to a Chuck E. Cheese like place. I don't remember the name of it, but we battled each other at ski-ball. I think she kicked my but, but I got to turn in the tickets and became the proud owner of some brightly colored stuffed fish. I'm not sure why that's what I chose, it was. Anyway, years after the ski-ball war, she was diagnosed with cancer. It progressed and we knew she was loosing the fight so we went down to see her for, what we knew would be our list time with her alive. She had an almost nonexistent appetite and wouldn't eat anything other then chicken so for that week, we had chicken almost every night for dinner. We did go out to eat a couple of times, but that's ok, because the fact that we had chicken left overs almost every day for lunch made up for that much appreciated break in chicken consumption. It wasn't even six months after my father and I returned home that my grandmother lost her battle with cancer. By that time, I was still sick of chicken, but the lose of her just made it worse. It linked chicken to my dying grandmother and, then, to the lose of her all together. That was almost 20 years ago and, to this day, I still dislike chicken.
So there you go! 10 things about me, with some bonus hidden tid-bits among the numbered stories. I tried to choose items you may not know about me from just my posts. What are some fun, random, interested facts about you? Let us know below!