B.Y.O.C. - Bring Your Own Crazy!!!

BYOC Friday….5 little questions you can copy and paste into your blog to get to know each other better and to give your blogging brain a break!


Enjoy!

1. What day of the week do you love and what day of the week do you hate?

Love - Saturday's are the best.  My 10 year old is up at 6 every single day, but he's extremely self sufficient so he gets up and watches TV or plays a video game or whatever and when he gets hungry he fixes himself breakfast and lets Brad and I sleep.  The 12 year old is not even a little bit self sufficient but will easily get trapped by the TV and totally forget he has a stomach - or as he gets closer to his teenage years, he might just sleep right on through the morning.  Sunday's are pretty good too - Brad and I have a long standing tradition of trading off Saturdays and Sundays so that one of us can sleep in as late as we want on at least one day each weekend.  This doesn't always work as our kids play year round sports so sometimes they have early weekend games which totally pisses me off!!

Hate: hmmmm.  I'm not sure I hate any days.  Maybe Tuesdays - it's still right there at the very beginning of the work week with most of the week left to go.  Monday's aren't that bad because there's a newness to it. 



2. What is your middle name and is there a meaning behind it?

My middle name is Read; pronounced 'reed'.  There is no meaning behind it, but the story of where it came from tells you something about my parents.... I'm not sure what exactly, but it's definitely something.  So - growing up there were two stories as to where my middle name came from.

Story A (the most commonly shared story) - At the time of my birth, my mom had brown hair and my dad had blond hair so they thought blending those two colors together I might have red hair and figured they might want to call me red.  As you know read can be pronounce 'reed' or 'red' - as in "Tomorrow I will read a book" or "Yesterday, I read a book".  They liked how 'reed' sounded with my first and last name better than how 'red' sounded so they went ahead and spelled it Read so they had the option just in case I didn't have red hair.

Story B (told only once by my father while he was drunk (I think)) - "We bought all her baby supplies at Read's (pronounced 'reed') Drug Store down on Main Street and needed a middle name for her.  It sounded pretty good with the rest of the name so we went with it."

My mother vehemently denied story B.

So there I am on my merry little way towards growing up wonderfuly thankful that I didn't have red hair so that my insane parents hadn't had reason to call me red and I end up in Mr. Moonyham's 7th grade science class.  At some point during the year we did a basic lesson on DNA and how traits are passed from one generation to another and it was here that I learned the impossibility of me having red hair just because my mom had brown and my dad had blond.  Man, what tools they were!!  Totally stupid!  I can't believe they thought it worked that way!  But wait!!!  Stop the presses!!  While it's true that my dad is a lawyer, his undergrad degree was in zoology.  And my 12 year old brain was plenty smart enough to know my dad had to understand how traits were passed down WAAAAAAY better than I had just learned in Mr. Moonyham's 7th grade science class.  I had been had!

 I marched home and confronted my mother with this new found knowledge - you've been lying to me my whole life!!!  It's not the hair thing is it?  It was totally because of Read's Drug Store wasn't it???  Um... well... shit.  Yes, yes it was.  And it does sound really good with your first and last name.

Read's Drug Store was in fact a lovely little store right on Main Street in downtown Annapolis (where I grew up) for many, many years though sadly it's been gone for decades.  And ammusing to me - I now do have red hair which Brad totally pestered me into trying many years ago.  I've got green eyes and he always thought I'd look good with red hair.  Finally I gave in and tried it and I've been red ever since. - I love it.



3. Since I’m dreaming of my next tattoo, I’m going to ask this one. Do you have any tattoos? How many? If you don’t have one – what would you get if you did have one?

I have one on my upper right thigh.  It's completely hidden in just about anything I wear, but it's plenty low enough that I can easily share it with whomever I want to without flashing them.  It's a couple of small yellow flowers and it desperately needs a little bee flying around them.  I've always had a thing for bees and wanted to add a bee to it even when I got it, but I was too poor back then.  It's completely on my list to add the bee one of these days, but every single time I have been somewhere - like on vacation or something and I think of it - the local parlor has been closed.  Perhaps I'll get it in Chicago at BOOBs II.  In fact as I'm typing that, I'm thinking that's a fantastic idea.  I've got plenty of time to research a good place and find the perfect bee before then. hmmmmm.  So.. anyone from the Chicago area who wants to suggest a good parlor - I'm all ears.

And just for the hell of it... a bit of my insanity.  So, I always always always wanted a tattoo.  And when I was in high school I seriously contemplated getting one (I didn't need to be 18 back then) but talked myself out of it as I am a seriously practical person and I thought - hey wait, I'm really young - what if I get this permanent thing and then in a few years I decide it was stupid that I got one and regret it.  I hate regrets.  So I made myself wait until I turned 18.  Then I got to be 18 and I still desperately wanted one, but I talked myself out of it again for the same exact reason - what if I regret it in the future... wait until you're 21.  At 21 I talked myself into waiting till I was 25.  By then I was dating Brad and just didn't get around to it.  We got married in April just before I turned 27 in May.  Within the month of getting married I or maybe it was Brad finally said enough is enough, go get the damn tattoo.  So I did and I got it where I could see it but no one else could (unless I so chose) because I got it for me and my own personal enjoyment - just a little happy thing on my leg.  But as soon as it gets warm and I'm wearing shorts - if you're hanging out with me, I am known to say - HEY LOOK!!! (as I lift up the leg to my shorts) IT'S TATTOO WEATHER! YAY!!!

4. On that same theme of dirty little secrets…how many piercings do you have? Any you wish you had?

You'll be relieved to know, I have no silly little anecdotes for this one.  Though the answer is... I guess I'm not sure.  I have gotten a total of 5 holes in my ears, 3 on one side and 2 on the other, but it's been so long since I put earings in anything but the bottom holes I would assume the other 3 are closed up.  So somewhere between 2 and 5 is the answer.  I have no desire to get any others especially not in my ta tas. 

5. Repeat question: Summarize your life in blog land and in real life.

Blogland - I'm totally excited about BOOBs II.  I love Chicago and I love all of you - what could be better!!  And now a BOOBs bee tattoo - totally fun!!

Real life - I've got nothing exciting to report here.  Brad's in Dallas being a geek at a Comic book retailers show.  He's a big comic book guy and runs the Baltimore Comic Book Convention along with a Retailer friend of his.  So they're down there soliciting sponsors for the awards ceremony and generally geeking it up.  To those BOOB committee members.  I have some experience helping put on a conference as I work with Brad and Marc each year, I'm happy to help.  We've had 2 weeks in a row of relatively low stress between us which is such a relief I can't tell you.  I don't think we've solved anything yet, but we don't hate coming home anymore and that's a very big thing.