It might not have escaped you, if you’ve been reading my blog for any amount of time, that I have the mouth of a sailor.  And I have young children.  And I live in a very conservative little suburb of the notoriously “red” state of Utah where that kind of thing is generally frowned upon.  I know I am different than most people I meet because I do not sensor my expletives even around my children. *gasp*  It might further surprise you to know that Big Sister – who turns ten in a few weeks – has not repeated them.  Well, except that one time when she was three and it was Daddy she was parroting at the time, thank god!

I was not the first of my siblings to have children and I had two adorable nephews years before I had kids of my own.  It was very hard to take hearing my oldest nephew, who was about four or five at the time, come up to me – constantly – and hit me while telling me I was bad because I had said a bad word. 

First of all, I don’t really believe in good and bad as all-encompassing labels.  Every action, every reaction, every situation always has multiple sides to it and each party involved is justified when deciding his/her own actions.  Just because the majority of people in a community or a society have agreed to view a thing as unacceptable does not make it bad.  (Getting off my soapbox now but this distinction will help illustrate what’s coming…)

From that moment on, I vowed that I would never label expletives as “bad words” regardless of who says them or in what company they are said.  Of course at the time I had no intention of ever pro-creating.

And then I got pregnant and people started talking about how I’d have to clean up my language and how everything would change and blah blah blah.  And the rebellious bitch who I am at my very core said “oh yeah?  Wanna bet?”  And I never did. You’re probably wondering how both statements can be true – that I never have filtered myself around my children AND that they have never developed the same habits.  But both are true nonetheless.

You see, instead of labeling all my favorite colorful words as ‘bad’, they have been dubbed ‘grown up words’.  And you have to be a grown up to choose whether you say them or not.  Ingenious, I know.  This way, Hubby and I say whatever is our nature to say – never directed AT the kids, of course – and the kids don’t have to feel conflicted inside knowing that Mom and Dad are “good” people but they say “bad” words.  Plus, I’ve eliminated what I call the forbidden factor: that phenomenon when you tell a kid they can’t do something and that just makes them want to go out and do it even more.  Of course, it also means that the kids will know exactly how to effectively use all the grown up words by the time they can choose to say them.  But, so be it.

I love pasta – but I don’t eat it very often.  When I do, I choose red sauce over my preferred cream sauce because I can’t afford ten hours on the treadmill to burn off that one meal.  My Dad is of Italian descent and he lived there for a time when he was younger before he met my Mom.  Which means the family recipe spaghetti sauce he passed down to me is authentic.  I love to make a big pan of sauce – simmered for hours so the flavors come alive (my mouth is watering as we speak) and then eat spaghetti all week – lunch and dinner.  Unfortunately, Hubby chose to spend his money in college predominantly on alcohol and thus ate a lot of ramen and spaghetti.  Which means he doesn’t ever want spaghetti.  *sigh*  Oh well, more for me!

I love eggs.  I could eat eggs every meal of every day and never get sick of them.  I love them scrambled with onions, omelets, over hard, hard boiled… just as long as the yolk is cooked and NOT runny and slimy.  *ick*  Eggs are probably my biggest source of protein since I don’t really love meat besides fish and fowl.

I’m a sucker for baked goods… cake, cookies, brownies.  OH.MY.GOD. I love brownies.  Again, I don’t indulge very often but there’s a side of me who wishes I wasn’t so responsible.

I also love chocolate – especially when mixed with peanut butter.  Show me a candy bar with that combination and I’ll show you a candy bar I’ve had a love affair with at some point in my life.  Currently, the Lindor chocolates that are little bit size balls sold individually are my nemesis.  They have them right by the cashier in the cafeteria at work and I break down and buy one almost every day.  

I hate diet drinks.  If it’s got chemical sweetener in it, I can taste it a mile away and want to hurl once the liquid passes my lips.  If I were dying of thirst – literally – and the only thing available was a diet soda, I might waste away before I gave in and drank one.

I hate coconut.  Not sure if it’s a taste or a texture thing – either way, I’m not a fan.

I hate walnuts and almonds.  I used to think I didn’t like ANY nuts until I tried cashews and found they are delightful.  Peanuts don’t count because they are really a legume and not a nut – and I like them, too.  Walnuts, though.  Bleck!  And why do people insist on RUINING a good browning by putting walnuts in them?!?  Seriously, people, enough already!  And don’t get me started with all the things slivered almonds show up in. UGH and they are so hard to pick off, too!

I hate bloody rare beef and I refuse to handle raw hamburger.  If it doesn’t come home from the store already nice and neatly formed into a patty before needing to be cooked, Hubby gets the honors.  The slimy feel of raw meat just makes me queasy.  And while I love a bite or two of a really great steak, if it’s rare I can’t even look at it.  Hubby, on the other hand, is a carnivore and has no problems.  Yuck!

I have a talent for spotting bullshit and calling it out.  You may not think of this as a talent, but I have found it comes in quite handy and not many people possess it or embrace it.  Does this talent get me into trouble?  Sometimes.  Will this talent potentially inhibit my ascension to an upper management position with my current company because I’m not willing to bum pat and kiss ass while I propagate the bullshit?  Maybe.  Would I trade this talent?  Not in a million years.  You have no idea how free it feels when you have not only spotted bullshit but have brought it out into the light of day so everyone must acknowledge it for what it is.  There are never elephants in the room when I’m around.  Do I come off as abrasive to people?  Possibly.  Do I care?  Nope.  One of my favorite quotes is (paraphrased) ‘Always tell it like it is because those who care don’t matter and those who matter won’t care.’

Now, for those of you who were hoping for “normal” talents… I play piano, I play guitar, I draw (better than my Sister but not better than Hubby), I run, and I write fiction. 

Here’s another thing that you may find quirky about me!  I’m struggling with this post since ‘everyday’ has such a specific meaning and if I take it literally, meaning every single day, I can’t come up with much to include.  So, since I am a literal kind of girl, I thought I’d break it down into weekdays and weekend days and give you two very different lists which still meets the criteria.  (Someone needs to remind me this is merely a blog challenge designed to get me posting about things I don’t normally post about so you all can get a glimpse of me and that there are no right or wrong answers here!  Sheesh, I can be so uptight sometimes!)  Then I started the lists and found they were kind of boring and that the things I really do every day would be harder to come up with but might be a much cooler list.  So, here they are:

I wake up before eight AM – seriously?!? When I realized this is true I cried a little.  I am a night owl who officially never lets herself sleep in anymore, even on the weekends.  Even crazier, I usually wake up earlier on the weekends so I can go running.  Case in point was just this past Sunday when Hubby and I consciously decided not to set any alarms.  And I was still awake and up by 7:45.  Insane…

I play Words with Friends on my phone.  And, this is the ONLY game I play on my phone.

I think about running and whether I’ll be able to fit a run into my crazy day.  I successfully find time to run an average of three times a week and I cross train or lift weights three others – something I can do much easier in the time allotted for the fitness center at work.  There is only one day a week that I do not work out but even that day I’m thinking about running and whether I really HAVE to rest.

I tuck my girls into their beds at night.  Even Big Sister has not rejected this practice by deeming it not cool in her ‘tween years.  YET…  Even if I’m not there when they go to bed and Daddy, grandma or the sitter does it, I still make a point to visit each of their rooms, make sure they are covered up and kiss them good night. Maybe they will look back on this as the one normal thing their crazy Mom did when they are talking to their therapists.

I check Facebook.  Yes, everyday.  Even when I swore it off and vowed never to waste another hour on it again.  I limit it to once a day to make sure I haven’t got anyone to wish happy birthday to and get the status updates of the people on the list of real friends who’s crap I care about seeing.

I drink water.  At least ninety ounces, sometimes more.  Some days I hit that mark easily, sometimes it is a chore but every day I’m committed to proper hydration.  It makes such a difference when I work out and I always know if I’ve been slacking because I feel it.

I think about my novel.  I wish I could say that I write every day.  I’m getting there but some days the things I count as “writing” are really just moments of day dreaming about the world I’m creating and wondering about what makes my characters tick.  While in my mind that counts as working on my novel, it is not really writing new words every day.

I stay up too late.  What can I say?  There are never enough hours in a day to squeeze in everything I want to do.  Most days I sacrifice sleep for doing more of the things I want than I would if I went to bed on time.  Do I pay for this every morning?  Yes.  Yes, I do.

Which leads to the one thing that surprised even me since it did NOT make the list of things I do every single day:  drink coffee.  I realized that I don’t drink coffee on the weekends consistently.  While you can set your watch to my daily java consumption on work days, I just don’t need it to get through the weekends when I’m not surrounded by bullshit.  Maybe that’s because I can always squeeze a nap in between football games on Saturday and Sundays now that it is that season again.

Books that have not been made into audio books that I want to read.  Seriously, why isn’t every single book just automatically made into an audio book for people like me?

It was seven and a half miles into my second leg of Ragnar.  I had already run six miles that morning and the leg had been rated Very Hard.  I thought it was because it was extra long but it was because it was also a lot of rolling hills.  It was excruciating and I didn’t think I could go the distance.  And then I crested a hill overlooking a beautiful valley and “our song” came on my iPod and I knew that Hubby was at the next exchange waiting to take the baton from me and cheering me on from there in spirit.  

I’m not gonna lie – I cried like a baby for the next two miles.  

Had it been another song would I still have cried?  Perhaps eventually since that was the most painful two miles I’ve ever run, but since it was that particular song I didn’t wait.  Anyone who things that running is only a physical sport has never done any endurance running.  It is one part physical, four parts mental.  And yes, there’s crying in running!

My heritage on my Dad’s side is Italian and I have always been drawn there – as if my blood somehow longs to return home again.  I love the food, I love the wine… I even tried to teach myself the language in fifth grade as part of my gifted and talented program project.  (Yes, I’ve always been an overachiever.  Why do you ask?)  Maybe someday I’ll work at a job where I have enough vacation to take an extended trip – and lots and lots of disposable cash on hand!  Or maybe when the kids are grown and I’m a full time writer I can do it from there instead.  Either way, bring on Italy and soon…

at the beginning of the summer right after I got my feathers in my hair.  Can you see them among all the crazy curls?

5. Learn a foreign language – preferably Italian

Putting these down in an actual list makes me feel like I need to check them off.  You know what they say… someday will never come unless you are doing the things you want to do then now.  Or maybe that’s just me that says that?  Now I’m not so sure but it’s true nonetheless.  What’s on your bucket list?

This was the sunset of the best day we ever spent at the beach.

And this is still the coolest picture of animals with attitude I’ve ever captured…  Can’t you just see the mischievousness shining through in the one giraffe that’s looking at the camera?  I know it’s a female and that she doesn’t take crap from any of the others.