100 things....

Well, since you don't know me, thought you'd like to know some random facts about me:

1. I have red(dish) hair naturally.
2. But it’s been chocolate brown, platinum blonde, and every shade in between.
3. Once it was even green, and yes – that was on purpose.
4. I started dyeing it when I was thirteen, and it’s been dyed so many times that I honestly don’t know exactly what color it is.
5. I love old campy movies, like Pillow Talk with Rock Hudson and Doris Day.
6. I’m a news junkie – completely a CNN/ NPR whore.
7. I have whole constellations of freckles.
8. I can’t say “Planetarium” without cracking up.
9. When I was a kid I made my face bleed trying to scrub my freckles off.
10. My middle name is in honor of my father’s mother who died when he was a child.
11. I don’t have a high school diploma.
12. But – I have a Bachelors, Masters, and Juris Doctor degree.
13. I managed to get all three before my 24th birthday.
14. I passed the bar on my first try.
15. I’m going to eventually go back and get my GED.
16. About two years ago I developed an extreme phobia to sharks.
17. My husband keeps trying to convince me that I’m more likely to die by being bludgeoned with a falling coconut. Considering that we live basically on the beach, I’m now very wary of palm trees.
18. I’m incredibly accident prone – and I bruise easily.
19. If we have a daughter someday, her middle name will be Grace.
20. I’m notorious for starting craft projects and never finishing them.
21. I prefer Dr. Pepper to Coke – and I abhor Pepsi.
22. I’m addicted to coffee.
23. I’m an only child, but I have three half sisters and a half brother.
24. My brother’s name is the same as my husband’s.
25. I haven’t seen my brother since 1998. I miss him.
26. I have two cats, both of which weigh nearly 20 pounds.
27. I had to bottle feed them when I first got them from the shelter because they didn’t know how to eat solid food - apparently I’m a good teacher.
28. I started wearing glasses in graduate school. Switched to contacts in law school. And switched again.
29. My tongue is abnormally short, the lingual frenulum is attached too far toward the end of my tongue.
30. My husband and I eloped without telling our family and were married barefoot on an island at sunset.
31. He’s 15 and ½ years older than me.
32. My first new car was stolen from my driveway before the first payment was even due on it.
33. My high school mascot was a gopher.
34. I currently live 1,400 miles away from my family.
35. I love fireworks.
36. I pierced my own belly button when I was 14. It made a puffy scar.
37. When I was 14, I also carved three initials into my inner ankle with the tip of a protractor.
38. I’m too chicken to get a tattoo.
39. I love going to look at Christmas lights.
40. I’ve only seen ‘real’ snow once – on a trip to Arizona.
41. I get obnoxiously loud hiccups almost daily.
42. I am pro choice, and trying to conceive for a LONG time.
43. I have an annoying habit of chewing on ice.
44. My husband is the best friend I’ve ever had.
45. My mother was convinced that I would grow up to be an arsonist.
46. I used to torch all my toys in my easy bake oven.
47. I still have the first book I ever read – “Tip”.
48. I’ve willingly eaten rattlesnake. And yes, it tastes like chicken. Rubbery – but still chicken.
49. I have been in beauty pageants, and yes, I used aqua net hairspray and put vaseline on my teeth.
50. I consider myself a feminist.
51. I eat mustard with my french fries, which I like a little burned and soggy. I hate ketchup.
52. I firmly believe that “well done” meat is sacrilegious. If I wanted to eat a hockey puck, I would.
53. I love going fishing.
54. Thunderstorms scare me, but not hurricanes.
55. I already have laugh lines.
56. I’d say I was a horrible procrastinator – but I can do that later.
57. It’s possible for me to get sunburned just driving to work.
58. My childhood nickname is Woody.
59. I know what government cheese tastes like.
60. I’m allergic to bee stings.
61. I love dark bitter beer, dark chocolate, but like my coffee milky and sweet.
62. My toenails are ALWAYS painted, but never blue, green, purple, etc.
63. I have a temperature tolerance zone of about 5 degrees.
64. I used to have about 180 pairs of shoes, now I only have about ten.
65. I love listening to Ella Fitzgerald, old George Straight, the Beatles, and Green Day.
66. I’m starting to develop a weird crush on “Detective Stabler” on Law & Order Special Victims Unit.
67. I really like pink grapefruit jelly belly candy.
68. I love the smell of wisteria, ripe peaches, and fresh baked bread.
69. Rubies are my birthstone and my least favorite gem.
70. Red is perhaps my favorite color, but I like blue and green a lot.
71. My favorite colors in the crayon box were midnight blue and indian red.
72. I had to use Crayola® crayons or my hands broke out into a painful rash.
73. I’ve had brain surgery.
74. I’ve been in a drug induced coma.
75. Both happened before I was three months old.
76. #74 happened when a nurse overdosed me on sedatives meant for my mother to calm her down after #73.
77. The doctors tried to convince my parents to take me off the ventilators because they felt that I would grow up severely retarded.
78. Terri Schiavo’s story made me want a living will. And yes, I obviously know doctors can be wrong.
79. I wanted to be a doctor, but was pretty horrible at chemistry.
80. So I became a doctor’s best friend/worst nightmare – an attorney.
81. Favorite quote: “Don’t wait for your ship to come in, swim out to it.”
82. I believe in Christian family values.
83. Which includes the values that all people, regardless of sexual orientation should be able to marry and raise a family.
84. My biggest fear is failure.
85. My disappointment with South Florida is the utter lack of true Mexican food.
86. I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket with a lid on it. But I love to sing – alone – in the car.
87. My heritage is Native American, German and Irish.
88. Thirteen is my lucky number.
89. I actually got pulled over for going one mile over the speed limit.
90. I’m divorced.
91. I once broke a cello by bashing it in with my head. It’s a rather complicated story.
92. I often talk in my sleep – with my eyes open.
93. I used to sleep walk.
94. I abhor people who smack when they eat. It drives me insane.
95. I bought a truck that was a standard without having a clue how to drive it. I learned. Quickly.
96. I love gourmet food, but every once in a while, only Velveeta® shells and cheese will do.
97. I always wanted to be a trapeze artist in the circus. My brother and I would make trial runs on the clothesline after watching circus of the stars. I’m amazed we didn’t die.
98. I have three dimples when I smile.
99. I have a hard time sleeping if the sheets aren’t cold.
100. I still have hope.

An explanation of the Conspiracy

All my life I've been petrified of clowns. Horribly afraid of them. I love horror/mystery books, but one page into IT, and that was well - pardon the pun - "it" for me. Goodbye Stephen King and your creepy ass clown. (That was more than a decade ago, and I still will not walk in front of drainage ditches on the street.)

One lazy summer afternoon while basking in the sun on a secluded beach my husband and I started talking about great names for a rock band. We started bantering back and forth about this - and we still do from time to time. One of the best he came up with was Underwater Clown Conspiracy. I decided to use it for my blog name because - well:

a) We live in Sunny South Florida, and well, I'm also afraid of being underwater now. Two snorkeling trips, two sharks, and two panic attacks later I don't like going in the water.
b) As previously established, I hate clowns. They're just creepy.
c) I'm a *gasp* lawyer, and yes - a bit of a conspiracy theorist.

And well, it just sort of summed up how I felt about what's going on in our lives right now. You see - a conspiracy is as so eloquently penned by Justice Jackson, "[an] elastic, sprawling and pervasive offense, ... so vague that it almost defies definition. Despite certain elemenatry and essential elements, it also, chameleon-like, takes on a special coloration from each of the many independent offenses on which it may be overlaid. It is always 'predominantly mental in composition' because it consists primarily of a meeting of minds and an intent." Krulewitch v. United States, 336 U.S. 440 (1949) (Jackson, J. concurring).

How horribly ironic of a case name, for fate has indeed been a 'cruel witch' to us. You see, we've been married almost two years and have been trying almost half of that time to become pregnant. We had the meeting of the minds, we had the intent. The problem is - we have never managed to complete the underlying "offense".