Thursday's Things to Love

1. My sister got some fantastic news this week. I can't reveal more but I'm sending her lots of positive vibes and sending lots of prayers to the big guy in the sky.
2. When I come home from work and the first thing I see is a huge smile from Stephen and hear an enthusiastic "Hey Stinky!". (Don't ask about the nickname...it's a long story)
3. The great country CDs my sister made for me. I love listening to them at work...it's a bunch of old songs we grew up listening to and they put me in such a great mood!!
4. I'm getting a hair cut and color tomorrow. Just a trim and the color will only be a couple of shades darker than my natural color but I haven't had someone else color my hair in years and they always do a 5 minute head massage when they shampoo your hair...feels soooo good!!
5. Even though it's freaking cold outside, I'm in such a great mood (which has a lot to do with #1).

And, just for fun, I'll post my "25 things about me" thing that's going around on Facebook:

1. I get claustrophobic when I’m around a lot of people. If the Metro’s super crowded or I’m at an event where there are lots of people packed into a space, I get anxious.
2. After 3 years of freezing at work, I recently bought a space heater. One of the best investments I have ever made! Space heaters are prohibited so I hide mine every day when I leave work.
3. I broke one of my dad’s plows when I was around 11 or 12 and never told him. He told me not to turn too tightly or the outside disk would break off but after several hours of going around a field in a circle, I turned too tight and the outside disk broke off. I hid the broken disk on the edge of the field and when my dad said something to me about the missing disk, I acted like I didn’t know what he was talking about. (I’m not a very good liar so he probably knew I broke it but I’ve never confessed to the crime.)
4.My favorite fruits are bananas for everyday and fresh pineapple for special occasions.
5.I stuck my sister in the fridge when we were little. At first, it was an experiment to see if the light went off when the door was shut and later, she liked being in the fridge so much I would put her in there. (She claims she went into the fridge unwillingly and that I forced her but I don’t remember it that way…that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)
6. I love to read. It’s not unusual for me to read at least one book a week. I stick mainly to fiction with a little nonfiction thrown in. Right now, I’m reading “The Boleyn Inheritance” on the Metro and “Pompeii” at night before going to sleep.
7.I created my own library around age 10. I made labels for the spines of the books, check out cards for the back, and dreamed about digging a hole in my bedroom floor to create a reading pit like the one at the Anadarko Library. I forced my sister to come and check out books so I would have customers.
8.My favorite books of all time are the Little House on the Prairie books. Every few years I’ll go back and reread the series.
9.My favorite flowers are tulips and daisies.
10.My grandma and I write each other letters every week. It’s a way for us to stay connected and there’s something cathartic about putting pen to paper.
11.I am an early morning person. I like getting up early and having things accomplished before most people are out of bed. But after 3 pm, my brain stops functioning efficiently.
12.I believe in God/a higher power but am extremely discouraged by organized religion. Nothing makes me more upset than people arguing over doctrine when they could spend that time and energy actually helping people.
13.I have always wanted to go sky diving.
14.I love to run and will run at least one full marathon and one half marathon this year.
15.I worked at Braum’s for 4 years and when I first started they had these old registers where each ice cream flavor had its own number. (So when working the drive-thru you don’t have to try to remember 5 different cars’ worth of ice cream flavors…the flavors show up on the order screen.) Chocolate chip was 17, Chocolate chip cookie dough was 20, and Rocky Road was 35. Yeah, I was a drive-thru rock star!
16.My favorite zoo animal is an elephant. They’re so funny looking but incredibly intelligent.
17.My favorite color changes nearly everyday. Some days it’s purple, some days it’s pink, sometimes it’s red.
18.I went to school at Bryn Mawr College (a small, all-girls school in Pennsylvania) for one year before finishing at OSU.
19.I have a weird thing about words—words that have more vowels than consonants are “good” words and I like those words. I started doing this when I was younger because I was bored and now I do it without even thinking about it.
20.Similarly to #19, I have a thing about numbers. I like numbers that are divisible by both 2 and 3 (and, by definition, are divisible by 6). Again, started when I was younger and now it’s automatic. There are all these rules I have about adding or multiplying multi digit numbers together to get a number divisible by 2 and 3.
21.I won a “Clean Office” award at work two years ago and since then have purposefully kept my office dirtier and messier.
22.The greatest present I ever received was a Barbie doll house my mom made. The premade plastic houses were too expensive and the Barbie dolls couldn’t even stand up all the way inside the house so she made me one with cardboard boxes, leftover carpet and wallpaper, and lots of love. Best present EVER!
23.I love office supplies. When we get a new shipment in at work, I’m the first in the supply closet picking out new pens and folders even though I use the same pen everyday and only need a new folder once a year.
24.I have a very Oklahoma State themed office and it annoys me to no end when someone comes in and says, “Oh, you went to Ohio State.” Um, no, you idiot. Can’t you see the orange and black and the Cowboys?
25.I have always wanted to be on the show Supermarket Sweep. My sister and I used to strategize about what we would grab during the Big Sweep and how we would win. Alas, the show is no longer on TV. And now that I'm on a budget, I'd love to go into a supermarket and throw the most expensive stuff in my cart. “The next time you’re at the counter and you hear the beep, think of all the fun you could have on Supermarket Sweep.”