5 Random Things: Heritage

Whooo, 5 Random Things post! Long time no see, randomness.

This time's theme: Heritage! However I want to interpret it, because reasons.

• I am utterly fascinated by genetics. If I had been better at science and I knew what jobs were available to study how we're made up via DNA, I would probably get a job in it. The only thing I really remember, though, is how dominant genes and recessive genes work. Considering brown eyes are dominant and will ALWAYS win over light-colored eyes, the only way light-colored eyes can happen in a child of a dark-eyed parent and a light-eyed parent is if the dark-eyed parent has a recessive gene with their dominant gene. That means my Mexican-American dad with the dark brown eyes has a recessive gene somewhere in his bloodline that allowed me to inherit my German/Dutch-American mom's hazel eyes! WEIRD.
• Speaking of other weird stuff I've inherited, my curly hair is something of an anomaly that we can't exactly figure out WHERE it came from. Mom's hair is stick straight, and my dad's hair is mostly straight as well (there's a very loose wave in it, but having seen him with long hair I would not call it "curly" or "wavy"). Our suspicion is that I have a trait that skipped a generation - my maternal grandpa had a very distinctive wave in his hair (but it wasn't long enough for us to tell), and my paternal great-uncle also had a wave in his hair... so it's from SOMEWHERE, but we're still not sure from where!
• I'm totally angling to inherit the ring I borrowed from my maternal grandma for my wedding; she had it made from her engagement and wedding ring. My grandpa and she were married for over 50 years when he died in 2003. My mom currently has it, and as long as I don't piss her off, I should get it. It's more for sentimental reasons than for money reasons; our family has so few passed-down heirlooms that I want all I can get (so I can lock them away forever!)
  

  

  The ring - I wore it on my right pinky finger for my "something borrowed"

• Do you know the difference between ethnicity and race? I didn't for the longest time - I used to get so confused on forms when it asked if I was Hispanic/Latino (which, as a 50% heritage, would be a yes), then ask me what my race is - and my only option was "white, not hispanic". It was like, whaaaaaa? So it turns out I'm racially white and ethnically hispanic/latino and caucasian. SO CONFUSING. Plus according to the U.S. Census, Hispanic/Latino IS considered a different race. WHAT THE HECK. This is the burden of multi-racial kids - having to pick a side. 
• When I fantasize about what our kids will look like, should The Hubs and I be so blessed as to have them naturally, we have decided that we hope our kids inherit The Hubs' lovely blue eye color and totally adorable dimples along with my eye shape and chubby cheeks. Both of our smiles are nice, so we're not being picky, and we're both brunettes so our kid would be stuck with that hair color (but will probably start out blonde like we both did). It's nice to fantasize about. 

I mean, come on, look at how cute we were - how could our (hopefully future) kiddos NOT be adorable?

Moi at 1-2 years old

The Hubs at 1 year old

5 Random Things: Guilty Pleasures

It's taken years, but I don't embarrass easily anymore. It's a habit I broke in middle school, and THANK GOD, because when I do get embarrassed it is traumatizing - I think embarrassment is equated with shame in my twisted brain. (Seriously, there are events from years ago where I was caught off-guard and it resulted in embarrassment, and they still haunt me to the point where my chest tightens upon recollection.) How did I stop getting so embarrassed? I trained myself to make my first reaction to be laughter. You can't get embarrassed when you laugh it off, or at least I can't. Once I learned to laugh it off and accept my dorkiness, it took (and still takes) a LOT to make me feel embarrassed.

That said, while I'm not embarrassed to like these things, they're not exactly things I share, either. ;)

• I consider myself a bit of a movie connoisseur, and I do have degrees in English and Theatre Arts - both subjects that focus on analyzing art. I appreciate a high-art film as much as the next pretentious snob (which I can be sometimes). Yet one of my favorite movies is "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar". I also can watch "She-Devil" and "Troop Beverly Hills" on repeat. I am fully aware that they're terrible (and I know "To Wong Foo" gets SO MUCH wrong about drag queens and small town folk that it's embarrassing), but gosh darn it I just love 'em. 
• Fun anecdote from an article I read in a movie magazine when "To Wong Foo" came out - it was a behind-the-scenes featurette talking about when they were filming the opening crowning ceremony. Apparently Wesley Snipes' little boy was on set, and Snipes challenged him to discern the real ladies from the fake ones - the article claimed the little boy got confused quickly. That always tickled me!
• Some of my favorite shows are "Game of Thrones", "Mad Men", "Community", and "Parks and Recreation" - all well-reviewed, highly regarded series. My other favorite show?  "Bridezillas". I'm only slightly ashamed.
• I can't drink them as often as I'd like because they send my sugars through the roof, but I loooove me some Mike's Hard Limeade - the Black Cherry Lemonade is also delicious, but Limeade is my favorite! I consider it a guilty pleasure because when it comes to alcohol, The Hubs and I have high-falutin' tastes (him in beer, me in wines and hard liquors).
• Same for food - not that we eat lobster and caviar or anything, but we tend to eat grown-up food. Except for when I get a craving for cheese dogs wrapped in crescent rolls. Even better with some Kraft Mac n' Cheese (Spirals only - they taste better than the regular macaroni, and you cannot convince me otherwise). My poor grown-up tummy cannot handle either of these meals very well anymore, so they are infrequent indulgences, but they are an enjoyable guilty indulgence when I'm willing to chance it. 
• I'm a picker. Scabs, zits, and anything that looks like it's where it shouldn't be. Mainly on myself... although I have to confess it took some tense sitting-on-hands to stop picking at The Hubs early in our relationship. I can proudly say that I haven't picked anything on him in YEARS. He's very grateful. :)

5 Random Things: Physical Health

I haven't done one of these in a while and considering I have a lot of weird ailments, I thought it might be an interesting topic. :D Here's why I'm a freak!

• I don't think I'm the only person this has happened to, but as I grew up I out-grew my allergies. Which, thank GOD, because they were so bad when I was a pre-teen that I had to get weekly allergy shots to keep them at bay because if I didn't, I would literally have to stay home due to sheer misery. My head would get so heavy that I couldn't move, UGH. Now I can use over-the-counter stuff to keep my hay fever at bay, and usually Fall and Winter are allergy-free seasons for me. Also, any other allergy sufferers still traumatized by their first allergy test? O.M.G. My mom had to squeeze my hands as pretty much every test spot on my back turned bright red and itchy and I screamed and cried. (She felt TERRIBLE.)
• I have slipped caps in both of my hips. It wasn't diagnosed until it had gotten pretty bad, so my legs are turned out really weird. You can't tell unless I point it out, but I notice my legs stand weird. My feet are pretty much in permanent ballet position 2. :) They put two pins to stop it, one each, but without fixing the slips, and now the bones have grown OVER the pins so it won't be fixed. So far there aren't major complications other than one leg is a little longer than the other (the worst one), and I haven't been able to ride a bike since I was 12 due to my legs being turned out weird. It is what it is at this point.
  
  
• I am in treatment for PCOS, which also has the "funsies" tie-ins of hypothyroidism and type 2 diabetes. With medicine, I've got my A1C (the diabetes number) just under the lowest "danger" number, but it still needs improvement which I need to improve with diet and exercise. My thyroid is finally getting to the "magic number" which will give me permission to start trying to get pregnant. The next checkup is in July, so one of my focuses now that I have the free time is to get my eating under control and exercise more to help up our chances. 
• Despite being "morbidly obese" for most of my life (a term I HATE, btw - it sounds like my fat will become sentient and kill people), I actually was a fairly active kid. My bike was my independence and I rode it EVERYWHERE, including daily swim practice when I was 9-11. I also took dance classes when I was little, which I loved and wish I did more of. 
• I've been on crutches four times in my life, all before I was 18 - two for hip surgeries (The initial pins and then a second surgery to remove a bone spur that developed in hopes it'd give me more flexibility - it didn't), and once for when I tore two ligaments in my right ankle during volleyball practice, literally two days before the first game. SO ANNOYING, and I was in a weird, smelly fiberglass cast. My foot swelled up and looked like Sherman Klump's foot for the first two weeks! The following summer, less than a year later, I re-injured the ankle AGAIN in a game of tag at summer camp, and had to finish the week in crutches, then crutch around for a few more weeks. *sigh* Swear, as a teenager I was a walking calamity. 

Whooo, I'm just a MESS, ain't I? 

5 Random Things: Obsessions

It's been a while, so... yay, time for 5 random things! This week's theme: OBSESSION (by Calvin Kline).

This was literally the third thing to come up on Google Images when I searched "Obsession".

1. I love drag queens and I am ADDICTED to "RuPaul's Drag Race". Like, I watch the re-runs from previous seasons when there's nothing good on TV. To be fair, I'm a full-on ally to the LGBTQ community, but drag queens are like a whole 'notha level for me, and I've been a RuPaul fan since "Supermodel" came out when I was a pre-teen. My bachelorette party was even at a drag bar - and I didn't even plan it! My bridal party (one of whom was a gay man) knew me THAT WELL. While I don't know the struggles of the average LGBTQ and can never claim that same pain, I think what makes me so attracted to drag queens is that idea of changing who you are temporarily into who you want to be... like, taking on a whole new persona and escaping themselves for a little while AND making people love you while doing it! Man, I want to be a drag queen. Michelle Visage gets to be one, why can't I? *pouts*
2. I have been obsessed with getting my weird curly/wavy hair texture to look good... and it finally does! It'll get its own post, though - yes, it merits its own post. Seriously, it looks SO GOOD now. 
3. I am in full-on OBSESSED mode on Sunday nights again. Seriously, Sunday nights are my favorite nights of the week, at least TV-wise. I get my double-dose of awesome in the form of "Game of Thrones" and "Mad Men". My friend T got me into the book series that "GoT" is based on (A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin) right around the TV series was getting ready to start airing; I read the first book before the first episode, and I was HOOKED. I moved through the first 3 books in about 4 months - and they are DENSE books. I've read the 4th one in the series, but it was such a let-down after the 3rd one (which is basically all climax and pay-off from the first two books) that I haven't bothered with the most recent book in the series; T re-read the 4th one recently and said that he thinks I should give it another shot. The show is hit or miss on my overall satisfaction (I'm one of THOSE fans), but I really do enjoy the show and the roles are, for the most part, PERFECTLY cast. Plus we're hitting Book 3 in the show version and it is already getting SO GOOD.
   As for "Mad Men", the fabulous bloggers Tom and Lorenzo kept talking about it after the first season, so when AMC had a season 1 marathon pre-season 2, I checked it out and got hooked. I'll confess, at first it was the pretty costumes and attention to detail that kept me watching; it really feels like you're watching a live feed via a time machine. But the story... oh my GOD, THE STORY. I've said it before and I'll say it again, "Mad Men" is a slow-burning mile-long fuse that is attached to a sh**-ton of dynamite. This season is only in the 4th episode and I'm already going WHAAAAAAT and doing head-snaps and finger-shakes.
4. I know I'm not new or unique in this, but OMG I cannot stop with Pinterest. If I'm ever bored, I just go kill a couple hours on there. Sheesh. I have over 1300 pins. The amount of pins I've actually used/tried? I think maybe 10 to 20... and mostly recipes. Seriously, I have some GREAT craft ideas pinned, I need to get crackin'.
   
   
5. Internet memes and .gifs are my life. Hence my other favorite websites, Tumblr and Buzzfeed, which have plenty of both. Seriously, I have a GIF file with 170 gifs in it. Sometimes I just look at them because they're all funny or awesome. 

Wow. All my obsessions are kind of... um, ridiculous. Ah well, that's how obsessions work, right?

5 Random Things: Religion

Let's try this again! Religion has been popping up lately, so let's do 5 random things about moi and religion.

 

Found on Tumblr, no idea the creator - if you know, tell me!

• I was baptized twice - once as a baby in a Lutheran church, and again when I was 8 and I was "saved". The second time was a Baptist church. 
• Why Lutheran the first time? Well, my parents at the time weren't religious, and my birth father still isn't. Mom was raised Lutheran, though, and he was raised Catholic and HATED it, so Lutheran was a decent compromise. Plus I suspect the idea that SIDS was fairly prevalent back in the 80's that they needed a little assurance that I'd go to heaven should I fall victim. 
• Because I was a huge book nerd even at 8 years old, my then-pastor half-joked at my baptism that I knew enough about the bible that I could take over one Sunday. I knew ALL the stories. Considering how many crazy stories there are in the bible, though, can you blame me? The children's version I had used pretty illustrations and interesting story versions that were cleaned up for child consumption, obviously, but I still knew most of them.
• I was the only middle-schooler on our youth group's bible trivia team for the summer camp we went to - and I was pretty kick-ass at it. 
• I haven't practiced any particular religion since I was 17. My reasons for doing so are my own, and it'd take too long to explain. My not being religious, however, doesn't mean I'm a hater towards religions. Christianity is not my thing, nor any other religions, but it ain't my job to tell you what to do with your life; if it makes you happy and gives you peace, then it's a good thing (unless you use your religion to judge other people's life choices - THEN you're an asshole). 

Why the thoughts on religion seemingly out of nowhere? Because The Hubs and I have been asked to be the godparents to a dear friend's 2-month-old. I KNOW, RIGHT? It's our first time being asked, and you could've knocked me over with a feather. We've agreed to do it, and the parents still want us even though I pointed out that whole "not being religious" thing; their reasoning is that while yes, we're not religious, we ARE good people, and that's just as important to them. Now I just have to hope I don't burst into flames when I enter the church. ;) Seriously, though, we're so excited and honored to do this for our friends. 

5 Random Things

The weird thing about trying to have a public blog and a public profession (let's face it, esp. in an age of social media, teachers are always under public scrutiny) is that I'm not nearly as open online as I used to be, and DEFINITELY not as open as I am in real life. So there's stuff about my life that I rarely ever mention on here - partly out of that "No incriminating details" credo, but also because it rarely comes up!

Plus it'd be fun to occasionally post 5 random things, either about myself or whatever theme I can come up with. Of course, I've tried this "regular theme posts" idea before so I'm not committing to anything yet, but it's certainly an idea to try and run with.

So here's my first 5 random things: 5 random facts about me!

1. I'm not much of a collector, but I do actually have two collections: Shot glasses and Kinder Surprise toys. Shot glasses because I like souvenirs but most are tacky tchotckes, so this is a way to buy something to remember the trip while also having something functional and not that space-consuming. Kinder Surprise toys because I first read about them in JANE magazine, and was utterly fascinated that there was a chocolate with little toys inside them that I would never be able to purchase because apparently the USA FDA doesn't trust American consumers enough to NOT EAT THE PLASTIC EGG INSIDE. It was so insipid that I HAD to obtain one. Now it's another go-to souvenir, this time from friends and family who travel out of the country! The toys are usually pretty damn cool, too, although I lost my favorite one ever - a break-dancer who stood on his head, and the head had a magnet in it that made him spin when his magnetic boombox got close to him. Yeah, it was awesome. I still miss it.
   

   

   My shot glasses!

2. This Valentine's Day will be my 10th Valentine's Day with The Hubs! More on that Thursday or Friday, including the not-super-romantic-but-still-amusing history of our first V-day.
3. My feet are weird. Well, re-phrase: The actual part that constitutes the foot is fine, I even have lovely high arches that I think make them kind of pretty (you know, for feet). I have two weird toes, though. One of my big toes had two ingrowns, one on each side of the toe, and to fix it growth inhibitor was placed on both of those sides, and now it grows in kind of weird. It's not hideous to look at, but it is weird and slightly noticeable (if you look for it). The other weird toe is the "pointer" toe that's ever-so-slightly longer than my big toe and its twin on the other foot. It's like an eighth of an inch difference between the two toes, but it's enough to weird me out!
4. My favorite childhood cartoon of all time is "Jem and the Holograms". BEST. SHOW. EVER. I seriously had almost every doll and outfit they made for this show, including the new members when they came out - I never owned Shaina or Pizazz, but I did own several of the Jem variations. Yes, yes, envy me. My mom loved the dolls, too, and used the excuse of their having more realistic body proportions to buy them for me. Man, I miss those dolls, so much that I don't even care that the show was basically created to market the dolls and most of the plots don't make any sense. BEST SHOW EVER!
   

   

   It depresses me that this show hasn't had a resurgence yet, and "My Little Pony" HAS.

5. I have a weird penchant for bad Meryl Streep movies. Like, seriously, I love "She-Devil" (which I'm watching on Netflix as I type) and "Death Becomes Her". All my high-falutin' tastes are complete B.S., give me a cheesy Meryl Streep movie any day.