You Have a Question, I Have an Answer and More

In honor of my 28th birthday: I give you a list of the most random 28 things about me that I've never written about before. Since I think I've blogged about most aspects of my life on here, making this list was really hard, I had to dig deep for some of them, ha! Ya'll know almost everything about me, hence the randomness of the list, but I think I managed to do it!

1. I am very claustrophobic. It started when I was on a ride at a theme park and when it was over, both my seat and shoulder harnesses wouldn't open. There was some "mechanical difficulty" and I couldn't get out. To make matters worse, in trying to free me, the ride operators accidentally pushed down on my shoulder hardness too hard- just enough to make it click down a notch and get stuck there, and it very hard for me to breath. The whole incident only lasted around five minutes, but it was long enough to make me forever claustrophobic.
2. Oddly enough, I still love all roller coasters and theme park rides, I'm not afraid to ride anything. But put me in a small elevator, or a large one with a lot of people, and I break out in a sweat- mentally preparing my escape route should something happen.
3. In high school and college I would always wear my glasses when I wanted to be taken seriously at things like Model UN Conferences, job interviews, meetings with professors, traffic court, and whenever I had to give a speech or presentation. (It worked like a charm)
4. I can do a very impressive British accent. During one Model UN conference, I pretended I was from England for four entire days! My team was the UK delegation and my accent ( coupled with an extensive background story, complete with British pop culture, common idioms, and slang) gave us a huge edge over the competition. I never dropped the accent, even when we were in the hotel room, because I didn't want to get out of the habit. And let me tell you, it was HARD to stop talking that way when the conference was over. I thought my friends and family were going to kill me.
5. I get very car sick driving in the mountains, but nowhere else. Well, unless the person driving is an accelerate-break kind of driver, and then I'm a mess.
6. I've never had stitches.
   
7. Although I did have staples for my c-section, but that's it.
8. I'm allergic to almost every antibiotic in existence. One very bad reaction when I was a kid landed me in the hospital on IV steroids. I have to be really, really sick for the doctors to prescribe me one because they don't want me to build up an immunity to the only ones I can take.
   
9. I love to drive. Long road trips all by myself, listening to my iPod, NPR, or an audio book is how I like it.
10. I can still walk on my hands across a room.
11. I had (have) my high school's record for the sit-n-reach. I can also put both legs behind my head.
12. During my teenage rebellious years I pierced my own ears when my parents wouldn't let me get a second earring hole. Once I saw how much I liked the second one, I got brave and did a third and fourth one in my left ear a few months later. I eventually let those close up, but I still have the second holes. And none of them ever became infected!
13. I was grounded for that incident for a LOOONG time.
14. I met James Brown on a trip to New York while eating dessert at the Plaza Hotel. He wore a gold lamé suit and was so nice, he even took pictures with us.
15. I don't like ice cream. I'll eat it on some things, but I never crave it. And when I do eat it, it's only vanilla.
16. I would love to live a small town, with twinkle lights on the trees, and little local shops you can walk to- where there's an actual community instead of suburban sprawl. Let me know if you know where one of these towns exists, please!
17. I love crossword puzzles but I hate sudoku,
18. I know all the of the US Presidents in the order of their terms. When I can't sleep I go through them all.
19. If that doesn't work I name the US states and their capitals by order of their entrance into the Union. Then I do it alphabetically.
20. After watching two of my grandparents suffer from Alzheimer's, I'm terrified of it happening to me. That's why I do many crossword puzzles and mental activities that exercises the brain.
21. My favorite one to do, and the most difficult, is to turn one hand clock-wise while also turning the opposite foot counter-clockwise. So right hand turns right and left foot turns left- and then you switch them. It took me awhile to be able to do it!
22. I am a firm believer in high thread count sheets. They are a little costly, but they last forever and get better with age. I never buy anything less than 500, but I prefer 800. It's the one real luxury I allow myself these days.
23. I didn't have curly hair until I was around 8 or 9 years old. Before that it was stick straight and would NOT even hold a curl. I could sleep in rollers all night long (which I did many times) with loads of hair spray, and within two hours it would be straight again. Then it just changed, becoming a frizzy mess first, then wavy-ish, and finally curly.
24. And then after all those years of wanting naturally curly hair, it happened; which of course meant I wanted straight hair again. I shudder to think of all the money and hours I spent over the years on straightening products and hair straightners- trying to tame my super thick, very stubborn hair into submission, before finally embracing the curls.
25. I've gotten 3 speeding tickets, the last of which was my senior year of college.
    
26. But I've never successfully been convicted of speeding. I appealed my way out of one and for the other two I found legal technicalities to argue my way out it. For one of them I requested the police officer's radar calibration records and it turned out he hadn't calibrated it at the beginning of his shift. I probably wouldn't have gone to such great lengths if it weren't for the fact that my mom said she'd take me off of their car insurance if I ever got a speeding ticket on my record.
27. I have never found a four leaf clover.
28. And finally... When I first watched The Wizard of Oz (age 4) I became terrified of becoming a "dwarve," ( a dwarf, or little person) as I called it. I thought I would stop growing and be like the Munchkins. For at least a year, every night, I'd make my mom promise me that I wouldn't stop growing , that I wouldn't be like the Munchkins.

Whew, I am tired- if you made it through that list I'm pretty impressed. I've been thinking about doing a question and answer post for a long time now. So if this lengthy list of Katie Randomness didn't answer your question for/about me, please ask in the comments! I'll answer all your questions in a post later on this week. Since there are some things I just don't write about on this blog, if I don't feel comfortable with a public answer, I'll send it to you in an email. So feel free to ask all those questions you've been wanting to know :)

Freckled Relics

Meet Strawberry Shortcake, Internet. I've had this plate since I was a little girl and it's my all time favorite. Where I go, she follows. This may sound strange, but it's one of the only "artifacts" that survived my childhood intact. Through a combination of forgetfulness, scissors (for cutting dolls hair), drowning (for when my toys would accompany me in the bathtub) moving a few times, yard sales, and moths, I only have a few of my toddler/childhood possessions.

I have a Big Bird chair that Spencer now sits in, my stuffed dog animal (no, I don't sleep with it), and my plate. Obviously I outgrew the chair, and it would be a little sad if I still slept with a stuffed animal, but Strawberry Shortcake is still perfectly acceptable! But it's not just a plate for me, SS was one of my favorite characters because she had freckles. You see, I had (have) a ton of freckles. As I've gotten older they've faded a bit. but I still have about 5 times more than the average person.

Spencer with my Mr. Big Bird chair last summer.



I hated my freckles from the moment I knew I had them and most of the other kids didn't. I hated being called Freckle Face and Dot Face- which happened every day. Kids can be really cruel, and I soon began trying to find ways to remove them. When I was three, my mom found me trying to scratch off the freckles on my arm. She tried to tell me they were cute and that I would look funny if I didn't have them on my face. But there was nothing she could say that made me feel better.

For some reason my freckles aren't showing up very well in old pictures of myself, but if you look at the larger version, you can see them a little bit better.

Realizing she needed a new strategy, my mom went about finding famous freckles. This was how I came to love Strawberry Shortcake even more than I already did! Of course Punky Brewster helped out a lot too- I L.O.V.E.D Punky Brewster and that's how I got my nickname, Punkiepie. I was always hearing how much we looked alike and that I could be her little sister, which made me feel super cool! It may sound insignificant, but it really helped me to know that even though they had freckles, everybody liked SS and PB.

It took me a long time, a long long long long time for me to call a freckle truce. And looking back on those years when I was made fun of teasing, I realize that it actually made me a much better person. I have a lot of faults, but one thing that I'm proud about myself, is that I've never made fun of someone. When I was in 2nd grade, we had a new student from Scotland in our class, and the kids were just awful to him. I don't know why he ever came back to that school after his first day, but he did, and I became his only friend. I defended him until my classmates stopped their taunting but we stayed friends even after it wasn't a necessity. When his family eventually moved back to Scotland, he gave me his most valuable stamp from his collection (yes, I had/have a stamp collection, and no I wasn't a dork) and a kiss on the cheek (my first).

Freckles are certainly not the worst affliction for a child, and looking back, I realize I should be grateful for that. So that's why I still keep SS around, even though she is 25 years old (I got it as a present on my 2nd Birthday). From the ages of 3-5, it was the only plate I'd eat off of, which makes it all the more amazing that it survived me, especially considering that there used to be a matching cup and bowl that didn't make it!

Look at all those freckles! I was 23 here, and this was the last year of my life that I actively sought out to become tan. The next summer I started using self-tanner or I went and got a spray on tan. Now, I'm pretty much just embracing the pale!

So what about you, do you still have anything left from your little kid years that you use? And what made it worth saving all these years?

Aging, Via the Hot Guy Down the Street

My parents have lived in the same neighborhood since I was 10 years old. It was the kind of neighborhood everyone wanted to live in; a pool, playground, tennis courts, and games of flashlight tag during the summer. One of our favorite things to do as we got older was boy hunt. I think I was around 12 when one of my best friends told me she had seen the "hottest hunk ever" outside of the house that was down the street.

12 years old- the way I remember it

I wasn't sure if I believed her, this was the same girl who convinced me that oral sex was a type of kissing, which I believed for quite an embarrassingly long while. (I had a Godly mother, and asking her was NOT an option) She was adamant though, he was the hottest guy she had ever seen, besides Charlie Sheen, who she had met once and was madly in love with him. The topic was forgotten until a few months later when another friend of ours confirmed that there was "a super hot dude" living in that house. She said he was in college, her older sister knew him

Over the next couple of years, before I was driving, I would hope to catch a glimpse of this boy/man, but I never did. His car would be parked outside, but he remained my elusive girlish crush. I forgot about him as I got older, but because I had made a point to see if he was outside each time I passed his house, it became second nature. I wouldn't even think about it, but when ever I'd drive by, I would always slow down and do a quick inspection.

Today, as I was driving, something caught my eye, something raking leaves in a blue windbreaker.

Could this be it?

The moment I have been waiting for since I was 12 years old?

I slowed down to an embarrassingly slow crawl, and as I drove by he looked up and waved!

WAVED! At me!


As I waved back, trying to take in the moment, something seemed "off."

Yes, the person who waved at me was indeed, a "super hot dude." But he was OLD! All these years I had been waiting to see the hot college freshman, it never really occurred to me that he would become a middle-aged man.

Don't get me wrong, this man was definitely handsome. He looks like the kind of guy who could pull a MacGyver with a q-tip and string. But, he was not the young stud I had envisioned all these years.

In my mind, there are some things that don't age. If I imagine playing flashlight tag, we are all 12 years old again. Even though I still know, and see, those people regularly, I always picture us as kids growing up together.

I'm 27 years old, no spring chicken, but it still surprised me that the "hunk" was obviously in his mid to late 30's; a MAN! All these years I had failed to notice when his parents moved out, or when parties stopped happening there, or when the swing set was put up. He was an adult and so was I.

Has anything like that ever happened to you? Where something completely minute in the grand scheme of things turns out to be a giant spotlight?