always been crazy

The Friday Five for July 9 2021

1. What was your favorite past time in high school? Movies! Hanging out with my friends, obvsly, but we watched a lot of movies. Most of the time, we would stay at my friend Danielle's house because her mom worked nights, so there'd be a dozen or so teenagers there all the time. She'd leave for work around 10:30pm and be like "I'm locking this door, and whoever is here right now had better be here when I get back in the morning." Like we couldn't just do whatever while she was gone. Even if we couldn't go out the front door, we had been sneaking in/out windows and jumping off balconies in our apartment complex for years by that point. In the winter time, Dani's mom used to keep a crockpot of vegetable soup going, and when it got low she'd just add more vegetables. So many great winter time memories outdoors. But we would rent movies to watch in between rewatching our faves - I honestly can recite every line of Friday because I think we watched it every weekend, and Dani's little sister was obsessed with Poetic Justice so we watched that one a lot too. My bff Janet and I would go to the 99c movie theater on the weekends and watch whatever was playing, no matter if we'd seen it already or not.

2. What is your all time favorite board game/card game? Rummy. Countless nights with various people staying up late and playing rummy and just hanging out. Other favorites: Uno, Apples to Apples, Ticket to Ride. Does Yahtzee count? Long standing habit to carry a deck of cards and some yahtzee dice with me whenever we go on trips or whatever.

3. What is the last movie you saw at the theatre and what did you think of it? I saw Black Widow last Thursday! I enjoyed it! Will probably see it again this week. I tend to have to see Marvel movies, and some other ones, more than once because of the boys' schedules. Movies have always been our thing. I'm going tomorrow to see the new Boss Baby movie (ugh, definitely not my choice, but Tuesdays have become movie-with-Illiana afternoons) and on Wednesday to see Trolls World Tour at the kids summer express movie.

4. What is something (no matter what kind of mood you're in) that makes you happy the moment you do it, see it, or hear it? this is a complicated one that involves too much thinking at the moment, idk.

5. Do you believe that crop circles are made by human or alien? Definitely aliens. Nah, really probably just some bored teenagers or something. But a couple weeks ago I was watching a bunch of Mysteries of the Missing type shows on Discovery Plus and was like "It's aliens. That one is definitely aliens. It's always aliens!" Except that island that disappeared, that was on the back of the Great Pink Sea Snail.

The Friday Five for March 5

1) Where in the entire world would you love to be vacationing right now?
2) Where in your own home country or state would you love to be vacationing right now?
3) Where would you love to vacation later on this year when the weather is different?
I'm going to combine these three questions. Honestly, I'd like to be anywhere but here. In the before times, I thought that fall of 2020 was going to be my time to travel. The littles would be in kindergarten, my youngest would be starting college, I'd have a lot more time for what I wanted to do. There were vague plans of visiting North Dakota, New Mexico, the Pacific Northwest, Texas - all to spend some time with my favorite people.

4) Where are you likely to vacation this year?
Pittsburgh, where "vacation" will be hanging out in my bff's living room for the weekend. Potentially Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg - we've talked about getting a cabin for a week there in late summer/early fall, depending on how things go.

5) And next year? Next year is a National Youth Conference year. While it doesn't really count as a vacation because I'll be kinda working, it's not here and it's always a trip to remember. So, destination is Colorado State University in Fort Collins. But we're driving, so it'll be an adventure!

The Friday Five for March 12

1) Have you read more books, or fewer books, this past year than usual? Definitely more.

2) What book are you reading now (or what book did you read most recently)? Right now I'm listening to the audiobook for The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich, which I'm almost finished with. I'm reading Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe and Tower of Swallows from Andrzej Sapkowski's Witcher series.

3) What is the best book you read in the past few years? I've really enjoyed the Witcher series books. I also really liked the Passage trilogy from Justin Cronin, Dread Nation by Justina Ireland, Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel, and The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark by Trae Crowder, Drew Morgan, & Drew Forrester.

4) Do you read more than one book at a time, or just one? Multiple. I usually have at least one audiobook, one ebook, and one physical book going at a time.

5) How big is your to-be-read pile (or list)? Too big! It's never going to be finished, lol. I have a handy dandy spreadsheet of books I'd like to get/read, and there's probably a thousand books on there, and I still pick up books I think I might be interested in if I see them. It's a problem.

The Friday Five from Jan 1

1)What was the best thing about 2020? Not necessarily the best, but one of my favorite special things from 2020 was being part of a virtual campfire singalong with the band Kansas during GISH in August. But there were some great things in 2020, like the weekend at States for wrestling (and the family time that weekend), my youngest graduating high school and starting college, several loved ones getting married, we added like 5 new furbabies to our family. Lots of good things.

2)What lessons from 2020 will you carry into 2021? Roll with it. There are so many things we can't control, gotta be adaptable. (to be fair, that was our lesson for 2019 too, lol, and it carried over and worked so well in 2020)

3)How did you spend your New Year's Eve? Hanging out with my kiddos & their girlfriends. Reading. Watching some GBBO.

4)Legend says what you did at midnight on New Year's Eve/Day is what you'll do all year. So what did you do? I was laying in bed with a book, cuddling with the furbabies and listening to the kids outside at the fire. Not a bad way to pass the time; I'd definitely take it.

5)What are you most looking forward to in 2021? Hugs. Seeing people outside my circle. Going back to in-person church. A couple weddings, a couple babies.

The Friday Five from Jan 8

1) What act of kindness have you witnessed (or done yourself) recently? It feels like it's the opposite of humble to talk of an act of kindness that I did, but it's what comes to mind. On Christmas Eve, I had to go to the humane society to pick up a couple of foster cats. It was pouring down rain and cold and gross. As I was leaving, there was a man walking in the rain and I waved at him just to be polite but he started talking to me and said he was trying to get to Walmart to meet up with someone for a job. From there to Walmart is about 20 miles. So I offered him a ride. Which actually doesn't feel like a big deal, so idk. But I haven't been many places to be able to witness any acts of anything, lol.

2) What is your favorite memory? Favorite memory altogether? That's difficult, idek. I've got a lot of great memories that I can call up, I'm not sure if I have one that's more favored over the rest.

3) What activity always seems to energize you? Exercise? Lol. I always have trouble getting motivated to walk or hit the treadmill (or go to zumba, in the Before Times), but once I do it, I feel fantastic and have so much energy.

4) Did you do something recently that made you laugh at yourself? What was it? I laugh at myself all the time. I'm an idiot and do lots of laugh-at-able things!

5) What is your favorite inspirational quote? I should have a good answer for this, but I don't. So I'll go with this, from my all time favorite song (Soulshine by the Allman brothers): "You gotta let your soul shine!"

This week's questions from thefridayfive - these questions were written by lillibet.

1) What would/did you name your first child? My first child was named Kelly Marie, after my stepsister Kelly, who passed away when we were 17 and with the middle name Marie because it is a family middle name in both my family and her father's.
2) What do you think makes a good name for a baby? Um. It has to sound good together, like flow when you say it (because you're going to be saying it a lot, and using that middle name for when you mean Serious Business).
3) What do you think makes a bad name for a baby? Eh. Personally, I don't like super unique spellings of common names, names that are super difficult to spell, or people who arbitrarily name their kids one thing but never intend to call them by that name and use a middle name instead.
4) What's a name that you love, but would never give a child? Why? Not sure.
5) Did your parents do a good job naming you? Sure.

ETA: When Harley was pregnant with Illy, and she first told us she was going to use the name Illiana, I wasn't sure about it, but after 7 years, I love it. With such a big family, we sometimes have to go out of the box to come up with names (which doesn't always work, lol, because we have about a dozen variations of Jo, Joe, or Joey in our immediate family, and then we have a Harley, a Hallie, a Haley, and a Hollie, as well as an Illy and a Lily, and a Jayden, two Jordyns, a Jordan, and a Jaylyn. It's definitely easy to write the wrong name or call the wrong person sometimes!)