35 Things About Me

In honor of my birthday week (and completion of my 35th year on earth!), thirty-five things you might not know about me...

1. I have a late October birthday, which means I started kindergarten at age four. Of course kindergarten was much easier back then (now it's basically what first grade used to be).

2. Starting kinder at four meant I left for college at age seventeen. I always felt I was just a little ahead of the game and I loved it.

3. I began playing the saxophone in 5th grade, and started marching in band in 7th. I was the shortest and tiniest of the wind instruments so I marched in the front right spot and got to sport the school's competition number on my shoulder. I always used my dad's saxophone from when he marched back in the day! I still have it in our guest room upstairs. 

4. Real books are my jam. I just cannot do E-readers - I need the paper and the weight of a real book, being able to sense where I am physically in the story, and yes, I even enjoy the smell of those paper pages!

5. I was named "Best Personality" of my graduating high school class 😊

6. I was five when my youngest sister was born, and I desperately wanted my parents to name her Jem (after Jem and the Holograms, obvi).

7. I scooped ice cream at the local Baskin Robbins all throughout high school. I'd like to say this is where my ice cream addiction came from, but I think it's actually the opposite and I sought out the scooper job because of my love for ice cream. I started the job when I was just fifteen and would bike to work. My high school besties called me "Sugar" (and still do) because of the job. 

8. I've been scuba diving with sharks - the big, legit scary ones! Scuba diving might be my favorite thing ever. I'm twelve kinds of grateful to my husband for introducing me to the sport.

9. I'm obsessed with almond extract. Once I purchased a container of it while I was out just so I could smell it. Give me all the almond croissants, please. 

10. I have a sixteen year-old jean jacket that I still wear. 

11. For my sophomore and junior years of college I lived in a three bedroom, two bathroom apartment I shared with six other girls. It was falling apart, and definitely sported black mold on the bathroom ceiling (which our landlord just cut out one day, exposing all the beams in the ceiling) but it was right on the bluffs overlooking the Pacific and we thought it was just the best thing ever. Once a squirrel entered through an open window and came into the living room of said apartment, hopped up on the coffee table and began eating from the bowl of green M&Ms placed there. The green M&Ms were an error - my mom had ordered a small package of pink M&Ms to be sent to me, but I was accidently shipped a ginormous box of green M&Ms. We had green M&Ms in that apartment forever. 

12. Valentine's Day is my favorite holiday: chocolate, pink, flowers, hearts... everything I love rolled into one celebration!

13. While pregnant with Parker, I didn't paint my nails or so much as take a Tylenol, and I delivered drug-free with no epidural. It was my California hippie shining through :)

14. Speaking of California, no matter what state we live in, I will always root for my California teams (even if they don't televise the games where we are).

15. Speaking of T.V., we don't have one. When Parker was born we kept the television off during his waking hours (as per recommendation of the AAP) and then when we moved to Alabama, Max and I agreed we wanted to keep our mostly screen-free policy with him, so we just never set up the T.V. I still sneak and stream shows on my computer when Parker's asleep - laundry plus The Real Housewives is my favorite combination!

16. I'm a total rule follower, and it bothers me much more than it should when other people do not follow the rules.

17. My resting heart rate is in the 40s. I recently found out it's due to a congenital heart abnormality - it's nothing to worry about, it just explains why I'm a bit slow 😉 (Unfortunately I also recently discovered that I have Mitral Valve Prolapse, meaning one of the valves in my heart isn't closing like it should. It's working good enough for now and let's hope it stays that way!)

18. I finished my masters degree at age 22. This and the ability to drink milkshakes in record time are the only things I'm fast at. 

19. I've taught three different grade levels at four different schools in two different states, but first grade will always have my heart!

20. I keep renewing my California and Arizona teaching credentials. You know, just in case. 

21. I was a vegetarian for nine years. I started in seventh grade and called it a New Year's Resolution, but really I was just a bit grossed out by fatty and grisly parts of meat. 

22. I'm still "weird" about meat to this day. Just a few weeks ago I quite literally spat out my piece of Wagyu beef nigiri because I couldn't get past the texture. Bleh.

23. My feet shrank while I was pregnant.

24. My family lived in the Bay Area during the big Loma Prieta earthquake of '89. I remember distinctly being at the kitchen table and doing my homework when everything started shaking, and my whole family had to run outside. We were far enough away from the epicenter that it wasn't massively impactive for us, but we did all sleep in the living room together that night as the aftershocks kept coming in. Oddly enough, I skipped all California earthquakes for over twenty-five years after that (being in the car driving during them so I couldn't feel them, or out of town when they occurred) and it wasn't until this past Christmas when were were at my parents' house for the holiday when I finally experienced another one! Still not fun.

25. Every single day there is a Tiffany ad on the top right page inside the New York Times. I love checking what it will be - earrings, a necklace, a key chain. If my mom comes across a paper before I do, she'll text a photo of the cover so I can guess what it is, then she'll send a picture of the ad. 

26. This "game" started with my roommates back in college when I had to get a subscription to the New York Times for a Globalization class, and I realized there was a Tiffany ad in the same spot in every single paper. 

27. I had four different jobs over the course of my college years: Teaching Assistant at the Children's Center (the preschool for children of faculty and students), coffee cart worker on campus, Orientation Advisor (assisting the incoming students with registration), and Nanny (caring for an elementary school student and driving him home from school and to after school activities). 

28. My coffee cart days were short lived since it was a second job and I preferred working with children. I also could never ever bring myself to charge full price to anyone and always offered some kind of discount. 

29. If I could open any business it would most definitely be a flower shop, though I know I'd lose all my money (see #28 above). 

30. I adore pink Gerber daisies with lime green middles. Max internet stalked me when we were first dating, found out this fact, and gave me a bunch of them on our fourth date.

31. I used to be a runner! The longest race I ran was a half marathon. Alas, I'm apparently a running snob, because if I can't run along the Pacific Ocean or through the trees of California, I don't want to do it.

32. I've always loved "doing school" so my high school GPA was consistently 4.0 or above (thanks to weighted AP classes), and I finished my bachelors degree with Honors (literally a hundredth of a point away from High Honors, gah!). I still have nightmares about being halfway through a semester and realizing I've missed every lecture and every assignment for a certain class 🙈

33. I have a phenomenal autonomic response. If my body senses danger, it sends all my blood to my legs so I can run away (you know, fight or flight). Unfortunately, I sense danger at inconvenient times like while getting my eyes dilated or when my blood is being drawn. Since I'm not running away, and all my blood has rushed to my legs, my blood pressure drops to nothing and I instead pass out. Great in stone-age times when the tiger chasing me thinks I'm dead and diseased, not so great in 2017. My cardiologist says it's an extra healthy quality 😂

34. I road tripped with a friend across the country the summer I was twenty-three. This was pre-navigation, people! No google maps, no iPhones, just paper and getting lost. And it was amazing. We drove ocean to ocean (California to Massachusetts), and made a ton of stops along the way: Yellowstone, Mount Rushmore, the Chicago bean, Yankee stadium, Fenway Park and so much more. It's the best way to see America!

35. Every year for my birthday, I order my favorite Baskin Robbins ice cream cake (the one with all the mini cones on top). Max lights the candles, Parker blows them out, and I just couldn't be happier!