in honor of my 100th post which happened last week....i present to you.....
100 things about Carrie!
1. i was born in seattle, washington
2. my family moved to texas when i was 3 months old. so even though i'm not a native texan, i claim that i am.
3. my husband disagrees and sometimes calls me a damn yankee just to make me mad.
4. i love texas, and never want to live anywhere else.
5. and yes i have been to other places, and i still want to live here.
6. i have been to france twice - once when i was 16 and once when i was 23.
7. i studied abroad for a semester in london, england at regent's college.
8. while i was there that sememster, i also visited scotland, wales, italy and greece.
9. i have driven through or visited friends/family in all of these states: california, nevada, new mexico, arizona, colorado, oregon, washington, illinois, missouri, kansas, wyoming, utah, florida, louisiana, new york, new jersey, and indiana
10. i have worked at the same job, more or less, since i graduated from college.
11. i started as a detention officer, then became a probation officer, and then moved to the human resources division.
12. i can't believe it will be 10 years next january.
13. i always figured i'd be here for a few years, then get a "real" job in the private sector, but i'm still here, putting your tax dollars to good use by blogging while on the clock!
14. i am one of five siblings
15. i have a twin sister, whom i blogged about
here.
16. i used to wonder, sometimes, if i was really carrie, or if somewhere along the way, we got mixed up and i am really katie.
17. my brother jim is the only boy, and he was definitely treated like the prince.
18. i don't really know what that means, i guess he got in as much trouble (or more) than we all did.
19. my dad died suddenly when i was 10.
20. i often wonder how differently i would have turned out had he still been here.
21. i wish he were still here and i wish my husband could have known him, because i really think they would have gotten along great.
22. i was married once before.
23. it lasted 4 years and one month.
24. my ex is not a horrible guy, but we got married for the wrong reasons, and both made a mess of things, so i left.
25. i'm not awfully proud of that part of my life, but in the end it led me to where i am today.
26. so i think of it not as time wasted, just time spent.
27. i am catholic
28. i haven't always been a strong practicing catholic, but i consider myself one now.
29. my husband and i dove headfirst into renewing our faith when we got engaged. it's one of the things that help us get through rough spots in our marriage.
30. now we are part of the UNITAS marriage preparation process at our church, where we are part of a 10 couple group marriage sponsor program.
31. it's a lot of fun, and it helps us with our marriage as much as we help others prepare for theirs.
32. we learned about Natural Family Planning during our marriage prep, and that is what we use now - no birth control, just nfp.
33. just because we have 2 kids doesn't mean it doesn't work, because it does.
34. i love to tell people about the benefits of nfp, and how it's not as hard as it seems. and how it's not the rhythm method!!
35. i gave up drinking cokes/sodas for lent, and am having daily caffiene withdrawal headaches because of it.
37. i don't like coffee nearly as much as i like diet coke.
38. i attended texas christian university, where
kelli was my roommate (at least for my first 2 years)
39. she's the only reason i even have a blog, since i didn't know what one was until she told me to read hers, then gently badgered me into starting my own.
40. i played lacrosse there, and was captain of the team my senior year.
41. i very nearly got in 2 fights playing lacrosse.
42. i love playing sports, and i miss the competitiveness and the activity.
43. i have played softball, tennis, volleyball and lacrosse. oh, and basketball in junior high, but i sat on the bench pretty much the whole time, so i won't really count that.
44. i'm very competitive, but my sister katie is 10 times more so than me. but she's still cool.
45. jerry and i are godparents to katie's daughter lucy.
46. i am a huge houston astros fan, and baseball fan in general.
47. i can't wait for opening day. one year i even called in sick on opening day so i could stay home and watch baseball all day.
48. i believe offense is important, but defense and pitching win championships.
49. i love phil garner, but he better do something great this year with this team, because another year like last year, and he'll lose his job.
50. i think lance berkman is a future hall of famer, and i believe despite the opinion of many sportwriters and their post-season performance, biggio and bagwell belong in the hall too.
51. i really wanted to marry a major league baseball player. i even dated a baseball player in college who was drafted by the padres. he was kind of a jerk, but he did tell me that i was "intoxicating." (there, kel - are you happy!?)
52. the first day of college when we moved in together, i had brought kelli and i matching shot glasses with our names engraved on them. i think that scared her. we didn't know each other all that well before then - we had just palled around at orientation for a few days.
53. she told me to mention the "intoxicating" comment. oddly enough, another guy i sort of dated during college told me my eyes were intoxicating. so i really think that, empirically, i am intoxicating.
54. it's been a long time since i've had tequila, and i think i like it that way.
55. i used to be able to hold my liquor, but these days i am a lightweight and a cheap date!
56. what i mean by that is that it doesn't take much to get me tipsy! geez, y'all, get your minds out of the gutter!
57. i have now become the old person who grumbles out the window when "those teenagers down the street" are having a loud party.
58. i haven't called the police yet, but one of these days i might.
59. i cannot roll my r's.
60. it makes speaking spanish difficult.
61. i'm not fluent in spanish, but i would describe myself as functional. i have to be, because our nanny only speaks spanish.
62. i took 2 years of spanish in college.
63. my senior year, i was late to spanish class every time because it started at 2 pm, and days of our lives was on from 1 to 2, and i had to finish watching days before i could go to class!!
64. i didn't start watching days of our lives until college. in high school i watched young and the restless and all my children. we had to hide that fact from my mother, becuase she would have hit the roof if she knew we were watching smut.
65. i like to be hot rather than cold.
66. really hot weather doesn't bother me - and i like when i can wear the same thing all day and not have to change or add clothing at night because it might get too cool outside.
67. i have no desire to go skiing, mostly because i don't want to spend a day getting wet and cold and sore, and i'm afraid i'll break my legs.
68. i once got so sunburned on the first day of spring break that i had to spend the rest of it in bed with a fever. that really sucked.
69. i have never broken a bone.
70. well, i think i may have broken a toe when i was in 7th grade and i kicked the coffee table on accident when i was walking by it in the dark. my toe swelled up all purple, but my mother didn't take me to the doctor because she told me there's nothing they can do for broken toes, they just have to heal. and i guess she was right, because it went back to it's normal color and quit hurting after a few days.
71. i think i also may have fractured my tailbone once when i was riding my stepson's bicycle on this bumpy trail. i kept bouncing in just the right (or wrong) spot, and i swear the next day, and for the next week after, i could barely sit down. for like a year after, sitting in any hard chair hurt so bad, and even now, (6 years later) some certain chairs really hurt my butt.
72. i separated my shoulder slightly once while playing softball. i was rounding third, and when the throw came home, i had to dive back to third and i landed flat on my arm pit and hyperextended my shoulder.
73. i was already slightly drunk at the time though (you gotta love softball leagues that allow beer in the dugouts!) so it really didn't start hurting til the next morning.
74. by then i couldn't move my arm. at all.
75. both of my children were born by c-section.
76. both times, i begged my doctor to wait another few days or so to see if i could go into labor. the first time he said no and the second time, he said yes.
77. the first time, he was right, because he said the baby was just too big, which was pretty accurate since he turned out to be 9 lbx 11 oz at birth.
78. the second time, he postponed the c section for a week. the night before it was rescheduled, i started having contractions, and kept having them all the way to the hospital that morning, but by the time i got into my room, they had petered out.
79. when sadie was born, there was meconium in the fluid already, so waiting any longer could have hurt her.
80. we didn't sign the birth certificate until the day before we left the hospital (i was there 4 days) because we weren't sure what her name was going to be.
81. i took an online iq test recently, and scored a 124.
82. i don't know how accurate that is.
83. we have 4 kids together - jerry had 2 from a previous marriage, and we've had 2 together. we all get along great, really.
84. i love to eat meat, and i don't see how anyone could be a vegetarian.
85. i make really good meatloaf, spaghetti sauce, chicken pot pie (from scratch, except for the pie crust), chinese stir-fry, and shrimp etouffee. among other things.
86. i love to cook, and i consider it the best way i can show my family i love them.
87. i like my hotdogs with mustard and relish.
88. i love asparagus and cantaloupe.
89. i teach our restraint training class here at work. it's called "handle with care" and is designed to aid probation officers in defusing potentially aggressive kids if possible, but react in a planned and effective manner if they do attack you, but without hurting the child.
90. it's fun to teach,and it's a good system.
91. my favorite birthday present i've ever gotten is when my hubby bought me our two dogs, dixie and daisy. (pictured here in the crate they sleep in, with aidan.) (no, adian doesn't sleep in the crate too, he just likes to go in there and hang out.)
92. they're almost 4 years old, and are border collie and chow mix.
93. i will freak the hell out if i see a roach.
94. i will not go to haunted houses or horror flicks. i'm too chicken. i wouldn't even go to the haunted house they put on in our elementary school gym for halloween during school, where they had you put your hand in the spaghetti and said it was worms, and all that silliness. i was too scared even then.
95. my first name is actually caroline, and my parents pronounced it caro-linn (short i). i did too for most of my life, but i have now gone to pronouncing it caro-line (long i) because it's the only way to get people to understand how to spell it. and after all, we are in texas.
96. i honestly consider my
husband to be my best friend. i have lots of other friends, but i don't have a female best friend.
97. i cut coupons, and i love to come home from the grocery store and show hubby how i saved 10 or 15 bucks with my coupons.
98. i have a hard time buying something that isn't on sale.
99. i like mayonaise better than miracle whip.
100. umm lemme see - something interesting to end on....i think it will be ages before we have a woman president, because all the women who have a decent moral compass, brains, and and the courage to do the job are too smart and can't be bothered with the pettiness and power struggle of american politics. they are too busy raising families and fixing this country from the ground up!
here's my first thursday thirteen list about
me.
he's just a kid, and he tries to stand up to tommy and jimmy, but he just gets pushed around, and he tries to be tough, but feels more guilty than anything. i think in the end, he's going to be the dynamic character, and be the one who solves the whole italian/irish problem somehow, and will bring some peace to the family. 
50. i think lance berkman is a future hall of famer, and i believe despite the opinion of many sportwriters and their post-season performance, biggio and bagwell belong in the hall too.
caught up on a few episodes of my name is earl that we hadn't seen. man i love that show. joy is so damn funny! my favorite joy quote: i win a beauty contest every mornin' when i walk out the front door!!
