Owning It

Wahoo for another "Owning It" post today!  We love the crazy, don't we?  :)

I'm excited to introduce you to Leigh, from Balancing By Faith.  Leigh and I have met through the blogging world and I'm pumped about her being here today.  She's a sweet mama to two who is here to share her crazy with us!  I can't wait!  Here's Leigh...

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Hi Friends!  I’m Leigh, married to my husband of 11 years, Jonathan, and mama to Ashlyn and William.  We live in the burbs of Nashville and I work for a large healthcare corporation.  I love making lists, planning and over-preparing, eating chips and queso on a regular rotation and working it off by running, torturing myself through a Jillian Michaels video or kettle bell training.  I write about our life on my blog - Balancing by Faith.  I am honored to be a guest blogger for Erika today – I am Owning It!!

This one feels really crazy, I remember starting this around middle school, so maybe I have some uncovered trauma in my life but…I have a counting issue.  I do not know why – but I count the number of sides that 3D objects have.  So I look at a box and I count in my head 6 sides.  To a telephone pole I count 1 for the circumference and 2 for the top and bottom for a total of 3.  The TV has 6 lines – 4 sides and a front and back.  I have no idea why my brain does this, but I am constantly counting in my head.  As if it doesn’t have the same number of sides they have always had??

This makes me laugh because it sounds like a lot of trouble!  You know what I mean?  You can't just walk by the telephone pole.  You have to count it.  I'm feeling for you, girl!

I can remember song lyrics like nobody’s business.  I can hear a song once or twice and I know the words – not only the chorus.  Remember Name That Tune or Singing Bee shows, seriously I would be the Ken Jennings of these competition shows (Jeopardy was not made for this mama!)    All genres, all types, I can remember song lyrics.  One of my favorite games on a road trip is “name that tune” where you shuffle the radio channels and guess the song or say the next line of that song.  It’s probably my favorite because I always win.  ;)

I have a serious fear of heights.   I can fly – but I think about it for weeks in advance of my flight and my palms sweat the entire flight.  I hate the feeling of being up high, and having no control, even worse.  I have a video from college passing out on the slingshot amusement ride.  One of my girlfriends and I were riding and I had my eyes squeezed tight – but I opened them and saw I was above any building on the horizon…and then I passed out.  Two weeks ago we went to Atlanta and no naming names – but someone thought it would be a great idea to take the kids up in the Westin elevator.  An exterior elevator – 73 floors above downtown Atlanta.  I hugged the elevator doors while my kids enthusiastically looked out.  When we reached the observation deck, which also is a rotating restaurant I thought I might lose my lunch.  So I did what any normal person would do – curled up in the fetal position in the corner and texted my mom to empathize with my situation! No heights for me! And yet I love a thrill ride or experience.  I would jump off a cliff into the lake, ride Tower of Terror multiple times, or climb a ropes course, even scared speechless.

(Social media stalker?)   This is a scary one to admit on a social site – but I am owning it.  When I meet you, there is a good chance that I already know something about you.  Where you work, go to church, friends of friends, who your kids are, etc.  I have a serious knack for people watching and remember faces very easily – combine that with social media, a few clicks here and there and there you go.  Add in the 6 degrees of separation (that are really more like 2-3) and I would make a pretty good private investigator.  Example – I was visiting my friend Natalie in South Carolina and she told me I should meet her friend Dawn, who just moved to Nashville.  Later in the day, Natalie posted a photo of our visit to Instagram and Dawn commented on the photo that we need to meet…. right away I recognized Dawn as the owner of the Etsy shop Mollie and Lou, which Erika promoted on her blog in a December giveaway.   How crazy for a friend in South Carolina, to connect me with a friend in Nashville, who was promoted on a blog in Texas!  I got to meet Dawn for lunch last week – so fun! (Dawn and Leigh pictured above.)

How fun that you got to meet Dawn??  She sounds like the sweetest!!

YIKES - I wore head gear in middle school.  Do kids even head gear anymore?  I don’t even know – but I had the metal headgear that I wore while sleeping…and no kidding that metal was not intended for mouths.  I remember feeling as if it were rusting.  I have plenty of random teeth issues too, and thanks to a lack of adult tooth I have a bridge that creates an annoying nervous tick of passing air back and forth under the bridge which you can see from the outside as my cheekbones can’t hide it.  I honestly didn’t realize I did it for years until I pointed it out to a friend after 5 years of friendship and she said “you have always done that”! 

Have you ever burned rice? Should be something easy to cook right?  Unfortunately when I cook I have a tendency to become easily distracted and yes I am known to burn rice.  In our first home we had a nice yard and plenty of birds that would visit so we purchased a humming bird feeder for the yard.  The feeder is filled with boiled sugar water to attract the birds so one morning I placed a pot of water on the stove to boil.  I got distracted and walked away and about 20 minutes later Jonathan walked into the house filled with smoke.  He grabbed the pot (which was so burned it was dripping metal drops off the bottom) and ran it outside.  There was a trail of burn marks from the kitchen, on the linoleum floor, through the carpeted living room and sunroom to the back deck.   We were very lucky I did not burn the house down – and that the floor all needed replacement anyway.

I will leave my last crazy with you in the form of a photo that will never be recreated – one in which I would never consider doing now – but as young college kids, such a memory.  We decided to dress up in colored saran wrap and go to a karaoke bar in Knoxville. We belted out our best Dixie Chicks on stage…at a karaoke bar…in Saran Wrap.  No words.  Picture evidence below, cleared by my dear friends who are Owning It with me….

This one is my favorite!!!  I must say you guys could give Project Runway a run for their money with those creations!  I'm crazy impressed!!  Do I spy a PLAID?  ha!  Love it!

Thanks Erika for letting me share today, I hope you all laughed with me over my crazy life!

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Leigh-thank you SO much for sharing your crazy!  I'm sure most of us can totally relate.  Be sure to check out Leigh over at Balancing By Faith.  The first Wednesday of every month, she has a new series, Pinspiration Wednesday.  You can check it out here and join her next week. Thanks so much for stopping by today!  XOXO