#explorewithinmymind

Tag, you're it! Here are the rules: Each tagged person must post ten things about themselves. You have to choose and tag ten people. Go to their blogs and tell them you tagged them. No tag backs!

I shortened it because it seemed really long and I didn't want to take up your entire dashboard. I'm considerate like that. You're welcome.

1. From the age of 15 to the day I found out I was pregnant with Evie, I used to party a lot. I drank every weekend and a few times during the week, including "Thirsty Thursdays", where we would play Three Man (if you don't know how to play, you have to learn! Best drinking game ever!). I also used to do a copious amount of....drugs. In my teen years, it was a lot of experimenting and finding out I didn't like most of them (especially pot. My brain cannot handle that stuff.) By my twenties, I honed my drug taking to the things I was actually a fan of, which was opium or anything opiate based and cocaine (except heroin. I never touched that stuff). And I did this all while getting A's and B's at the university at Buffalo. (Me leaving had nothing to do with the partying. I had to get out of my mother's house and I couldn't do both. Living there led me to the partying.)

2. After I had Evie, I never touched any of that again, except for the random pain killer when I needed it. This has been a huge lifestyle change. I've lost my taste for alcohol, which is weird. Well, not my taste for it... it still tastes good, but I've lost my affinity for the way it makes me feel. I don't like the way I feel when my thinking is impaired. 

3. The first time I hung out with Eric, we had a peanut butter war with my friend Ashley and her then boyfriend Weasel. I have pictures somewhere. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get peanut butter out of your ear and hair? You have to shampoo your hair like twelve times to get all that shit out. So there you go ladies! Want to land a specific guy? Smear peanut butter on his face. If he returns the favor, you've found a keeper!

4. I implanted the idea of getting tattoos in every serious boyfriend I've ever had because I think guys with ink are the hottest guys on the planet. I'm not sure if any of them regretted getting the tattoos after we broke up but I doubt it.

5. I've never been dumped. This is not as fantastic as it sounds. I've broken a few hearts and I've never really gotten over the guilt from two of them.

6. I think people who have more than one kid are either crazy or way better people than I am because I couldn't handle that shit. What's even worse is, Evie is like an angel. Seriously, she's freakishly good and she's still exhausting. I don't even want to know what it's like to have a three year old and another baby. How do those people get enough sleep to stay sane?

7. I got myself into $10,000 worth of credit card debt by the time I was 20 and then dug myself out by the time I turn 22. (I blame the credit card people outside Subway at UB giving away free subs for filling out credit applications. If I don't have enough money for food I probably shouldn't have a credit card.) Now I have zero credit cards and while it makes me feel like a kid going to the store to buy a toy when I pay with cash a lot of the time, having one would probably be way too dangerous for me, at least for now.

8. I drink $15 an ounce tea, regardless of how much money we don't have. I just can't go back to tea bags after drinking loose leaf white ayurvedic chai or organic white peach blossom tea and no one can make me!

9. I don't feel like an adult. I feel like an 18 year old who happens to have the responsibilities of a 27 year old. I'm not sure if I'll ever feel like an adult and it makes me wonder if other people do at some point and I was just stunted somewhere in my screwed up childhood or if 60 year old women still feel like they're young too. Is there an invisible line you cross that makes something click in your mind and start thinking you're a grown up? I figured if there was one, it would have been getting married or having a child and neither one of those took for me. If everyone feels like this, it makes me want to give celebrities and politicians more of the benefit of the doubt. A little bit. Ok, not that much, but a little bit.

10. For the first time in my life, I think I look good. Not that I looked any different before. I just feel it now. I probably looked even better before and I just didn't realize it, which is kind of sad because I wish I would have been able to enjoy it. I think I look good naked too, except for the skin that was left from having Evie (well, it probably was the 70lbs I gained, not her). Even that's not that bad though. I have stretch marks but they're faded so I don't think about them and I'm way too pale but I don't care. That just means my skin will age better.  I may even venture into bikini territory this summer! Eric had a lot to do with me feeling this way. He's constantly telling me I'm beautiful and I think he finally said it enough times that it sunk in. I think seeing myself in Evie helped a lot too. She looks a lot like me and I think she's the most beautiful thing on the planet so if I follow that logic, then I can't look half bad.