Birthday

In honor of my birthday, 41 Random Things About Me:

1. I love the smell of bus exhaust. Now why did I open with that one?
2. I dislike people with entitlement issues. Especially the ones who don't think they have to stand in line at the yogurt store like everyone else.
3. Speaking of yogurt, I am addicted. My favorite: vanilla and chocolate swirled together with so much graham cracker that the mixture resembles spackle.
4. I used to be a classical pianist, with a penchant for Chopin.
5. I play baseball better than many men do, and definitely do not throw like a girl.
6. I am obsessed with my sons' feet, which is unusual because I grew up not liking feet much at all.
7. Watching my husband swim the butterfly gets me hot.
8. I love the sound of clinking pool balls.
9. I am in search of the perfect slice of pizza, though I admit Casa Bianca comes pretty close.
10. My theatrical resume of shows I've turned down is more impressive than the one of shows I've actually done.
11. Every Christmas, I absolutely must watch every vintage Christmas special ever made. This has become easier and less embarrassing now that I have kids.
12. When I am almost done with a bar of soap, I take the remains and press it into the new bar of soap. This saves lots of money, or so I tell myself.
13. I love theme parks and rollercoasters, writing and receiving long letters in the mail, and getting a really good deep-tissue massage.
14. I was painfully shy in high school.
15. I believed in Santa until I was eleven. I still have a hard time accepting the truth.
16. I wore braces for three years in middle school, including a neck gear at night.
17. I have almost every letter or card ever sent to me pressed into binders in my garage.
18. I used to write long, elaborate fiction stories and read them to my roommate Bonnie when we lived in New York.
19. I hated living in New York.
20. I went through a rebellious period post-high school, wherein I dyed my hair purple, drove without a seat belt, and shoplifted a buttermilk donut.
21. I come from a long line of great debaters, and relish a good debate.
22. I used to pretend to be deaf in malls. I would make my friends sign to me. I also once trick-or-treated while pretending to be blind. I got a lot of candy that year.
23. When I was eight years old, I worshipped Stockard Channing.
24. "Felicity" is my favorite TV series ever.
25. I absolutely love my TiVo, and don't know how I ever lived without it.
26. I don't drink. Never really liked the taste.
27. My favorite subject in school was astronomy.
28. A high school boy once threw a can of baked beans at my head. I used my aforementioned talent for baseball to catch the can with one hand before it hit me. The group of boys he was with all laughed. This became known as "The Baked Bean Incident", and traumatized me for many years.
29. I once got my left middle finger slammed into a locker. It still lists slightly to the left because of this.
30. I have very long curly eyelashes, and thus have never used an eyelash curler.
31. I think they should bottle the smell of snow, and the smell of Pirates of the Caribbean.
32. My grandmother taught me the time step in the kitchen of her home in Conyngham, PA.
33. I love everything morning; the yawning, the smell of coffee, the newspaper, the cereal, eggs, toast, bacon, pancakes, scones or waffles, the snuggling in bed, the coziness.
34. If I am home, I am usually in my pajamas.
35. I have the best mother on this Earth.
36. I have three fathers, and it gets very confusing for people. Father #1: Bio Dad, who despite his best efforts didn't see himself rising to the occasion of parenthood, and split when I was three. Father #2: Dad, who adopted me when I was six, raised me, and helped shape me into the human I am now. Father #3: Jeff, my mom's current husband, who seems he was always in our lives and hearts.
37. I pick at my fingers, and have done so since I was four. Nasty habit, but hey- see #26. At least there's that.
38. My husband and I are both Geminis. He always says, "The four of us are having a swell time." Ain't it the truth.
39. The two most incredible days of my life are the days I gave birth to my two baby boys.
40. If anyone had told me when I was twenty, "In a decade, you will marry that guy you saw in Forever Plaid, then both of you will decide you don't really want to pursue musical theatre anymore, you will live in a beautiful house, have two sons, and never want for anything more than just being together"... I would have thought they were absolutely nuts.
41. I believe you never know what grand adventures await you, and you can never imagine the person you will turn out to be as a result. But if you are lucky, you will thank God for every twist and turn in the road, for it brought you to here. And here is a miracle.