I got tagged :)

I have to start today's blog by saying that it is a fantastic day today! It is so beautiful outside! It's 60 degrees and sunny. Super fantastic. It is really nice to have a couple of really nice days ahead of us. Lord knows soon enough (next week possibly?) we'll be covered in snow. These days feel like a little break from the cold weather ahead. I can look back at this post in January and find some hope in my heart that the world will indeed thaw out once again.

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I've been tagged by Evonne! I must say, I've spent the last 20 minutes trying to think up things for this, too. It was not an easy task. My life is not super interesting!

1. Link to the person that tagged you.

2. Post the rules.

3. Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself.

4. "Tag" 7 people at the end of the post and include links to their blogs.

5. Let each person know that you tagged them.

Okay, 7 random or weird things, coming up, in no particular order. :)

1.When I was 12 years old, I won a writing contest for the USDA, and made the front page of the Flint Journal, as well as sitting in a "real life" press conference with reporters asking me lots of questions. This was totally random, and I had "friends" who were quite upset with me over it. The USDA was apparently reviewing the country's school hot lunch programs, and they were using the city of Flint as a model. The opened up a writing contest to elementary students, asking them to write what they thought of the school lunch program. Well, somehow, I ended up winning this contest. I received a plaque (it's in my closet collecting dust as we speak, haha) and a $50 savings bond. Whoever judged the writing contest picked two winners, which were myself and it just so happened a friend from the same school. We were both told that we had won, and were also told that the USDA reps would be coming to our school to have lunch with us. The problem was that no one bothered to tell us when! Of course, the day the USDA reps came to have lunch with us was the day I wore an old sweater to school, and brought a packed lunch versus getting hot lunch. So I was quite embarrassed at 12 years old to have to be interviewed live on the news with an old sweater and messy hair. I was super embarrassed as well when the USDA reps were asking us our opinion on the school lunch while I was eating a turkey sandwich from home! My mom was very upset that she missed me being interviewed live on the news. I was also mortified that the newspaper said on the front page that I was a 12 year old fifth grader. I was not in the fifth grade, I was in the sixth!! People would think I got held back or something, because who ever heard of a 12 year old being in the fifth grade??? Add in the fact that the snotty girls who already didn't like me (this was the time in my life when I was actually quite popular) started saying I copied someone elses essay... and yeah. These are all the silly reasons why to this day, that plaque is collecting dust in my closet, and that savings bond I won is in a shoebox in my closet.

That was much longer than it needed to be. :)

2. I once had a skull fracture! This was actually as a baby. It happened when I was only 2 months old. I was born in January, so this was the middle of March. Apparently it was still pretty cold that year in March. My mom had taken me to my grandparents' house for a visit. At the time my aunt lived with them, and she had some annoying dog that often tried to make a break for freedom whenever anyone opened the door. Anyhow, my mom has told me that as she was leaving, she was carrying me in a baby carrier. She had taken one step on to the porch, when my aunt's dog tried to make a break for it. The porch was quite icy, and as soon as the dog plowed in to my mom, she slipped and fell with me in her arms. Of course she tried to protect me, but she couldn't stop the carrier from hitting the porch with a thud. Even though I was in the carrier, the force of the fall caused me to have a skull fracture. My mom still feels guilty over that to this day, even though I am perfectly healthy and had no problems from it. The doctors told my mom that it was quite lucky that I had been born premature, because if I had been a full term two month old, my skull would have been much harder and I may have had brain damage. The creepiest part of this is that my mom said before that she had had reoccurring nightmares that I fell from her arms and kept hitting something red. My grandparents' porch was cement that was painted red at the time.

3. Okay this one is a little less involved. :) I really really despise the color navy blue! Which is very ironic because my summer job involves me wearing it on a daily basis for months. The reason why I hate the color navy blue is because my mom used to dress me in it as a toddler. She apparently thought I looked great in the color, because I had navy blue dresses, a navy blue t shirt, a navy blue blouse, etc. Meanwhile, she would usually put my sister in yellow. I was so upset because I wanted to wear yellow! I thought that blue was a color only for boys, and that everyone must think I looked like a boy. As a result, I still have a hatred for navy blue, and I have to resist buying everything in pink. :) I actually am not very fond on wearing navy blue or black. I like lots of color.

4. I am the first in my father's entire family to graduate from college. No one before me has even gotten an associates degree. In my mom's family, me and my cousins are the first generation to graduate from college as well. I have friends who are shocked by this, because their parents are college professors or doctors or lawyers. Everyone in their family has gone to college. I'm very proud of my accomplishments, but I feel like it puts a lot of pressure on me to do "something" with my life. It's strange that my family worked so that I could get an education. An education is supposed to open your life to more options, right? Only now my mom doesn't see it that way, she sees college as a means to quickly finding a job that pays more than working at McDonald's. She thinks I should want any job that pays well, even if that means spending the rest of my life counting floor tiles. Ah... insert "Ironic" by Alanis Morrisette here.

5. There are many, many vegetables that I've never tasted. I grew up in a house to where my parents were very adamant that their children shouldn't be forced to eat anything they didn't like. My parents both came from very old school southern families that had the philosophy of "if you put it on your plate, you eat all of it." So my parents probably no doubt thought they were being very cool parents by letting their kids eat what they wanted. As a result, I eat very few veggies. I do wish my parents had made more of an attempt to get us to eat more things, because now as an adult, I feel like my taste buds are not willing to give things a chance. Also, if my parents didn't like something, we simply never tried it. My mother hates cauliflower, so I've never ate it. My dad hates brussel sprouts, so I've never ate it. It was just a few years back when I tried spinach for the first time! (Actually, I really like spinach. Go figure.)

6. In elementary school, I had the same teacher for three years. Luckily for me, the teacher I had for three years I adored, otherwise it may have been a painful three years. The first year I had this teacher, Mrs. Tharpe, was in the third grade. At that time she had a 3rd/4th split class. The next year, I ended up getting placed in her class again, when she had a 4th grade class. The next year, 5th grade, I was actually in another teacher's class. Mrs. Tharpe ended up having a 4th/5th split class that year. My mother was very unhappy with my 5th grade teacher (who ended up being our neighbor, randomly enough) because she never gave us any deadlines for work. She just let us turn it in whenever we wanted. My mom felt like that was way too much freedom for a fifth grader (I have to agree, I had no motivation to get my work done even though I had been on the honor roll year after year), so she complained to the principal and I was moved back to Mrs. Tharpe's class.

7. Okay, don't think I'm a total nutter for this... but I have random deja vu moments. It's a little bit more than that actually... like intuition I guess? I've always had a talent for reading people. I think it's because I'm usually more quiet and I just have a habit of paying attention to body language more than what is being said. Anyhow, yeah, I'm really good at stuff like that. Also, I used to have a lot more deja vu moments as a child than I do now. I've had those moments where I'm in a situation that is very familiar, and I feel very certain that I've dreamed this before. It is never anything important, and I usually feel like I've only seen a quick glimpse of something in a dream. My best friend thinks I am nuts if I mention that I feel like I've "seen" something before. I'm also usually pretty lucky... my sister comments on this frequently. She says I always pick the right number... or win at bingo... or something like that. It is kind of true I guess, for instance, when watching things like Deal or No Deal I almost always can predict whether the contestant is making a good choice. Also... I actually woke up in the middle of the night when my grandfather died and gasped. I actually said to myself that my grandfather had died, and then I was very calm and went back to sleep. It wasn't very long after that when we received the call that he had passed away. So yeah, I don't know how to explain it, but this is why I do believe in God, because random "psychic" moments hit me sometime. I feel like a real nut just saying that! Let's not call it psychic, let's say, more enlightening moments.

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Great, now you all are thinking I'm a total nut. :) Really, I'm not, and I don't take those things too seriously. It's just something that happens every now and then.

Sorry guys, I'm not tagging anyone, because pretty much everyone I know who blogs has been tagged in this already!