1. I once wrote a story about a rubber duck that was kidnapped. I was in middle school at the time. Years later my dad still talked about that story and wanted me to find it so he could reread it. I tend to keep everything I’ve ever written and even have my first poem, but I can’t find that story.

2. I decided in 7th grade that I wanted to be a journalist. I was in the middle school journalism class in 8th grade. My high school didn’t have a newspaper, but I would write up articles about high school activities that were printed in the local paper, the Crawford County Avalanche, with my byline (but no paycheck).

3. In 2002 I vowed never to write for a newspaper again. I even quit my full-time job at a daily newspaper. I was tired of the long hours and the ever-growing list of responsibilities for the same pay. Plus, I was writing too many articles about the latest scandals. It wears on you.

4. In 2003, a friend that I’d worked with in the past asked me to cover the Houghton Lake School board as a freelancer for the newspaper where she was an editor. Reluctantly, I agreed.

5. By the end of 2003 I had accepted a full-time position with the newspaper. Three years went by, and I was still writing about the Houghton Lake school board, plus a bunch of other things. And I was tired of the long hours and the ever-growing list of responsibilities without additional pay and writing about the latest scandals. It wore on me.

6. In December 2005, I gave the paper my resignation with a one-month notice. In January, I agreed to stay at the paper, but officially I was “part-time.” Unofficially, I was still working 40 hours a week, but I no longer received vacation pay. (Way to negotiate! Not!)

7. In August 2005 I started to teach journalism at the local community college. I love teaching. It’s fun and exciting. Teaching journalism was all of the good stuff about journalism without being stressed by regular deadlines and evergrowing workloads.

8. In November 2005, after months of research, I applied for grad school. I became a grad student at Central Michigan University pursuing a master’s degree. In 2007, I graduaed with a MAECC — A master’s of art in English Composition and Communication.

9. To recap, I worked part-time at a community college teaching, “part-time “at a weekly newspaper reporting, and I was a full-time graduate student. I’ve never been really good at not doing something, unless that something is paying bills or balancing my checkbook. Then I am very good at not getting it done.

10. More proof that I have a problem setting limits…. I’ve been pregnant seven times. All seven times the father has been the same person.

11. I’ve had three miscarriages. In fact, my first three pregnancies ended in miscarriage. A genetic specialist determined they were “blighted ovums.” That means the placenta is there, but the baby was absorbed, leaving the empty sack.

12. I hated my body for not being able to do what should have been a basic bodily function.

13. Steve (the father of all 7 pregancies) and I had to go see a genetic specialist. They asked us all sorts of questions about family history and tested our blood for genetic abnormalities. When we went there, we found out I was pregnant again (this would be the fourth time).

14. They did an ultrasound in the doctor’s office. There was an actual baby inside the placenta this time. I couldn’t see the monitor because I’d been crying during the interview process and cried my contacts out. They printed pictures out so I could see the baby too.

15. The results of the tests and interviews revealed two major things. The first is that my body wasn’ t producing enough progesterone. I would have to have progesterone supplements in order to keep my body from rejecting this pregnancy. When I tried to fill the prescription, I learned none of my local pharmacies carried progesterone supplements.

16. You cannot believe how scary it is to be told that I need this prescription filled to keep my pregnancy and then not be able to fill it. I finally found a pharmacy that could fill it, and had to drive one-hour to a Meijer’s store in Traverse City to get it.

17. By my sixth pregnancy, only one pharmacy in the state could fill my prescription for progesterone supplements. They had to hand make them especially for me.

18. The second thing we learned is that I have an extra piece of chromosome. It’s a teeny tiny extra bit of chromosomal material on the 15th pair. They *think* it’s inactive material. The doctors were all Shocked and Awed that I was not deformed and/or retarded. I’m not.

19. My baby (fourth pregnancy but oldest child) also has an extra bit of chromosome material just like me. The specialists gave us a letter stating she had a 5 to 10 percent chance of being retarded and/or deformed. She’s not.

20. I hated being pregnant. I had a “high-risk” pregnancy and had to see specialists throughout it. Plus Steve was gone for most of the pregnancy because he’d joined the National Guard and was at basic training and AIT.

21. Tests revealed I had a thin cervix. They discussed stitching it up to help hold the baby in longer. They decided not to. The worry was that I would go into labor way too early.

22. I didn’t. Even without stitching, Autumn (my oldest child) failed to arrive on time. When I was well over two weeks late, I had to be induced. Once again my body had failed to do what it was supposed to do naturally.

23. However, it wasn’t all bad. Autumn waited for her dad to get back from AIT before being born. He was there in the delivery room. He got back just days before my original due date.

24. I never did go into labor naturally. All four of my pregnancies ended up being induced. I didn’t have any pain medication for any of the deliveries. Steve was there for all of them.

25. When I was 17 weeks pregnant with Autumn, we learned she was a girl. At that point, Steve and I decided on her name. She received Christmas presents in 1993 and Easter presents in April 1994, and she regularly wrote to her dad, updating him on my doctor appointments, long before she was born in May 1994.

26. Our oldest daughter, our fourth pregnancy, was four months old when Steve and I got married on Sept. 10, 1994.

27. Steve and I were together for more than five years before we married. I was a senior in high school when we started dating. He was a junior. We were high school sweet hearts, but he went to Houghton Lake and I went to Grayling.

28. Our first house was a trailer from the 50s with a small addition. It was the 90s when we lived there. The addition wasn’t sealed from the weather, and there wasn’t any drywall or insulation in the addition. Our cat could let itself outside, and back. It would just crawl up on the roof of the trailer and squeeze out through the gap where the addition met the trailer. The gap was wide enough that it really wasn’t much of a squeeze.

29. Steve’s dad referred to our first house as “the stabbing cabin.”

30. When we first lived there I would spend $20 a week on groceries and I refused to buy Steve his favorite cereal — Corn Pops because they were over $5 a box. He insisted, “I gotta have my Pops.” Tough.

31. We ate dinner with his parents a lot. I remember going grocery shopping with my mother-in-law and being in awe. She wouldn’t look at the prices. She’d just walk up and down the aisle, putting things in her cart. Whatever she happened to want. My jaw about dropped when I saw the bill added up to about $100.

32. Last week my shopping bill added up to $371, much to Steve’s dismay. It was unusual, but a typical grocery bill for us is over $100 and less than $200. I once figured out that we spend more on food a month than we do anything else including our mortgage payment.

33. Steve and I fondly recall our life at “the Stabbing Cabin.” The bathroom was so tiny we couldn’t shower together. There wasn’t enough room. We tried though.

34. We heated primarily with wood heat, but the wood stove wasn’t big enough to maintain a fire all night long, so we’d wake up to a freezing house. But the rent was $150 a month, and it was OURS.

35. One morning we had frost on our TV screen and ice floating in the toilet.

36. We moved out of the Stabbing Cabin when we learned I was pregnant with Autumn. We moved to a place where the cat couldn’t let herself out and the heat worked all night long. The rent wasn’t even that much more. It was around $180 a month for the one-bedroom.

37. Just before we got married, we bought a two-bedroom trailer on about an acre of land. We had a land contract. We moved in around June 1994, just a few months before we were married.

38. It felt huge compared to the tiny places we’d lived in before. But it didn’t take long before we filled it. By 1997, we had three children. All three shared the second bedroom, which was a decent size.

39. My childhood was a great preparation for living in a small space. I knew how to cram lots of stuff into small places. Growing up, my parents bought and sold used items, setting up at flea markets, auctions and yard sales. It was often my job to make everything fit into the vehicle. As a result, I learned how to pack well.

40. In 1997, we bid on a house that had to be moved to make room for a new highway in Cadillac. Our original bid was $700, but the person mentioned he didn’t think we’d get it for that price.

41. After worrying about it for a few days, I called back and upped our bid to $1500. I also mentioned Steve’s grandpa was a house mover. The guy I talked to wasn’t encouraging, but I knew the house was meant to be ours.

42. It wasn’t long before we received a phone call from the guy. MDOT had changed their schedule and our house had to be moved within a week or it’d be torn down. He called because he knew my grandpa was a house mover. Could we move it in a week? If so, it was ours for $1500.

43. The house was over 30 miles from the land we wanted to move it to. Steve’s grandpa had retired from house moving, and Steve’s uncle had taken over the family business. His uncle, however, was already a year behind schedule and didn’t have time to move our house. We’d have to find another mover.

44. In less than a week, while caring for three children ages 3, 2 and 4 months, I had found a house mover and all of the other things necessary to make it happen. It was not easy. Steve’s aunt and uncle played a pivotal role. They have a business building houses and they agreed to give us the construction loan if we managed to secure a traditional mortgage once the house was in place.

45. I would not recommend our house mover to anyone. In fact, I’d highly discourage hiring him. Our house was supposed to be on our property by the end of December 1997. On the day it was supposed to be moved the 30 plus miles to our property, the house mover tried to cancel stating an electrical company that was supposed to help move wires had cancelled.

46. I later learned the electric company had done no such thing. But I insisted, and the house ended up being moved the day it was supposed to be moved. There was even a picture of it on the front page of the Cadillac News.

47. The house was a three-bedroom home with a stained glass window in the front. The living room was 20×20, and it had a two-car garage the same size as the living room. It was more than 18 feet in height. The closets had lights. There was a gorgeous deck, and a sliding glass door onto the deck from the living room and the master bedroom. We still live there today.

48. The house mover placed our home on its foundation. Our trailer was in the back yard. The house didn’t have a roof (he’d cut it off the top four feet to help move the house under the electrical wires). He failed to put beams under the home. If the roof had been in place, the building inspector believes it would have collapsed onto itself. Along with the purchase price, and the moving price, we also had to have a foundation, plumbing, electrical and heating. We had about $30,000 wrapped up into the house by this point. The house mover put it all in jeopardy.

49. We refused to pay the house mover until he finished the job. He placed a mechanic’s lein on our title. It would have to be paid off in order for us to get a traditional mortgage. It was all in jeopardy and the jerk placed a lein on it. Plus he didn’t finish the job. Did I mention I do not recommend and do not like the house mover we hired? We later mediated a settlement with his insurance company, and got back $10,000 of his $15,000 fee. I think, if we had asked, we could have got the full $15,000. Because we had a contract, we couldn’t sue for more, but he really screwed us over. Again, I do not recommend him.

50. Because Steve’s grandpa had been in the house moving business, he had house jacks. We had to jack up our home in order to place beams underneath it. We had a ton of friends and family help with this.

51. We also had to rebuild a room the house mover destroyed (it is now my office) and get the roof back on before the snow flew. It involved a lot of negotiation and a structural engineer coming out. The building inspector threatened to condemn our home.

52. Although it wasn’t heated yet, being the stubborn sort, I hosted the Denton Family Christmas in my new house. My brothers and sisters and their family was there, along with my parents. We hung blankets up to block off parts of the house, and heated the living room. Our Christmas tree was in there too.

53. I had left my camera in our trailer so I left the party to get it. I wanted to take photos of everyone in my new house even when most of my guests were wearing their coats because it was cold out and the space heating wasn’t up to snuff. Besides, all of those people would have never fit in our trailer. There was 20 or so people there.

54. As I walked out of the trailer, I rushed down the outside steps just as I had hundreds of times. Only my foot slipped on ice and I landed, placing all of my body weight on my foot in a way that you should NOT put all of your body weight. I heard the bones break as I fell to the ground.

55. Lying on the steps, my foot screaming in pain, I attempted to scream for help. However, my family likes to talk, and it seemed like I screamed quite a bit before help arrived.

56. Steve is the one that heard me calling, and he came running. It probably didn’t take as long as it seemed. He rushed out of the party before anyone else even realized anything was wrong. He had to leave me on the ground while he went back to get someone to help him move me. It was Dec. 27.

57. Steve and my brother helped me to a car. I sat in the back seat, grimacing with every bump in the road as we drove 30 plus miles to the Cadillac hospital. I learned I managed to break my ankle in every place you could break an ankle. I expected they’d put a cast on it and I’d be done.

58. I was wrong. There wouldn’t be a cast yet. First I’d need surgery. But I’d have to wait for the new year to have surgery. They sent me home with drugs. Good drugs. I spent the next four days asleep on my living room couch. My nephew’s girlfriend watched my kids while Steve went to work. She was in high school and on Christmas Break. My parents paid her.

59. My parents also showed up at the hospital. They had bought me a pair of sweat pants to wear home. My leg wouldn’t fit into the clothes I had been wearing.

60. On January 2 I went into the hospital for surgery. They put three screws in my ankle to put it back together. I spent four days in the hospital. I had a push button that would deliver morphine into my system whenever I felt I was in pain. I don’t remember a lot about this time. I do remember I wasn’t happy with my nurses. I’m not sure why although it had something to do with the fact that they wouldn’t let me get up and use the actual bathroom. Even drugged, I do not like bed pans.

61. I was on crutches until April. Did I mention Maxine was 7 months old and not yet walking?

62. The first time I was alone at home with the girls, I walked on crutches into the girls’ room, lifted Maxine out of the crib and had to place her on the ground. I then walked away, hoping she’d follow me. She cried, but eventually she crawled into the living room with me. This memory haunts me.

63. It wasn’t long before I learned to use an umbrella stroller to haul her around. I’d push the stroller, take a step with the crutches, push the stroller. It took forever, but it worked.

64. I could hear people working on the house, but I couldn’t observe because it was difficult for me to get in the house. There wasn’t any steps yet, and getting into the house wasn’t easy with three little girls and crutches. When Steve was home, he’d help me.

65. I shopped for groceries, trading in my crutches for the store-provided wheelchairs. I could only buy what would fit in the basket on the wheelchair. At times, I had all three kids with me too.

66. Maxine learned to walk at 9 months. I think it was because of my broken leg and inability to carry her around because of the crutches. Her older sisters didn’t walk until they were 14 months old.

67. I’ve had two more surgeries on my ankle since the original one. The second surgery was to remove the two longer screws, hoping it would improve my mobility. The third surgery was when I was pregnant with Justin to remove a bunch of scar tissue that was limiting my motion, and the third, shorter screw.

68. An anesthisologist refused to participate in my third surgery because I was pregnant. He lectured me for quite a while. I ended up having it done with just localized numbing and another anesthisologist.

69. When we moved into the new house in February 1998, Steve’s dad (and several other people) commented we could have another child because we had more room. Steve and I both laughed. It wasn’t happening. We had three girls. They were adorable. It was enough. As my sister Kari said, we had a full house – a pair and three of a kind.

70. No one warned us that my pain medication rendered my birth control inactive. Apparently they don’t mix well together. I became pregnant and Justin was born in January 1999. He wasn’t planned. We weren’t trying to get a boy. We’re happy to have him.

71. My right ankle is larger than my left ankle. It has ugly scars running down both the outside and inside. The scars pull when I walk through water. I can’t stand to touch them.

72. To this day, I limp in the morning. It used to be just my first step of the day would be a limp. Now, it takes several steps to get rid of the limp. My ankle grows stiff overnight, or if I sit still for too long. It aches and I think arthritis has set into it.

73. I no longer trust my ankle. Although it is supposed to be all better, I can’t trust it. I tried to learn to ski, and I was afraid to put weight on it. When I had physical therapy, I learned that I wasn’t walking on it properly. After months of pain, my body didn’t trust my ankle would work without pain. I had to relearn how to walk, paying close attention to the way my foot would touch the ground, realizing that I could place my weight on it and it would hold.

74. When Justin was born, my oldest child, Autumn was 4. Amanda, my second oldest, had only been out of diapers for less than a month. Before I broke my foot she was almost potty-trained, but I think my surgery disrupted it and it’d be months before she was out of diapers.

75. I changed diapers every day for eight years. Justin wasn’t in a hurry to be trained. He’d tell me he’d be potty-trained when he was grown up, which would be when he was taller than me.

76. I don’t think I’m a very maternal person. I am not a natural mother like my mother is. I do not baby my children. I didn’t talk to them in baby talk. But I did and I do hug them. I love them with all my heart. I think they deserve a better mother, but I couldn’t ask for better children.

77. I am not a very good cook, but Steve says I can cook well when I want to. The trouble is I so very rarely want to.

78. Last night Justin and I made cookies. Giving my history of being distracted and burning things, my husband turned over every single cookie on two cookie sheets looking for the blackened bottoms. He didn’t find one, which was unusual.

79. I have a scar between my eyes, right on top of my nose.

80. I got it when I was standing on top of a bed and walked into a ceiling fan that was on high. My husband was also standing on the bed. My mom was standing nearby on the floor, watching us.

81. It is not the easiest thing in the world to explain to people in the medical profession how you ran into a ceiling fan. More than one commented that I wasn’t that tall. I’m 5’7″ and yes, it isn’t a height that makes walking into ceiling fans a danger. So how did I do it? It didn’t have anything to do with sex, which is very good since my mom was in the room.

82. Steve and I were installing an air conditioning unit in my parents bedroom. He needed a screwdriver, and I turned around to get it. It was at the end of the bed, and I stepped towards it, looking down at the screwdriver on the bed, and not at the ceiling fan in front of me.

83. The blade of the ceiling fan struck my face, knocking me on my ass, and throwing my glasses somewhere. As my glasses flew off my face, they, or the fan blade, cut my nose bad enough to require stitches. It makes a good story. The air conditioning did get installed.

84. As a child, I didn’t play with dolls. Instead, I had a dog named Chrissy (a real dog), and I’d dress her in baby clothes, make her walk on her hind legs and push her around in a stroller. Chrissy was a very mild mannered dog who tolerated all of this. She also listened to all of my problems and let me cry into her fur whenever my child heart was broken. I signed the paper’s to have her euthanized when she was 18 in human years. I was also 18. We’d been together 17 years. Although she died years before my children were born, they all know about her.

85. I read a lot. I devour books, often not paying attention to the title or the author. It would be years before I realized I should really note the author so I could buy more books by them. One of my favorite authors is Jenny Crusie. I like mystery books, and if they can be funny mystery books with sass, even better.

86. My husband gets jealous of my ability to get lost in a book. He doesn’t think that my tendency to read anything that has writing on it is the best thing. In fact, at times, he insists it can be rude. For instance, when he caught me reading a newspaper when I was supposed to be visiting his family at his grandparents house. He’s usually right about these things, but I still read everything.

87. My husband once described my ideal man as having a computer monitor for a head and being covered from head to toe in words.

88. He often threatens that he is going to have words written all over his body so that I will pay as much attention to him as I do to my books.

89. I do pay a lot of attention to him, but he is a high-maintenance kind of guy. I’m not complaining. We like each other, and I feel better when he’s home than when he’s not. Even if I’m reading a book and not really paying attention to him.

90. The first time I met my husband, I was a sophomore. It was at a basketball game. I was cheerleading. He was dating one of my best friends.

91. I was a senior when he asked me out. We didn’t know each other’s last names. I said yes. As soon as I hung up with him, I called my best friend, Autumn. I was thrilled.

92. I was not his first choice. He’d already called Autumn that night and asked her out. She turned him down, but suggested he ask me, giving her my unlisted number. He was supposed to call Autumn back and let her know what I said. I beat him to it.

93. On our first date, we went to the movies. We saw “Working Girl” with Melanie Griffith. I don’t remember a lot about the movie. I was thinking about whether or not he was going to hold my hand. He didn’t even try despite my very obvious (I thought) attempts to make my hand very holdable.

94. On the day of our first date, March 4, 1989, the weather was very bad. He lived in Houghton Lake and I lived in Grayling — about 30 miles apart. As the time for the date approached, and the weather was still bad, the phone rang at my house. My dad predicted it was Steve and that he was calling to cancel. I answered. It was Steve. He wasn’t canceling. Although he did end up sleeping on my couch that night because the weather was bad, and I didn’t want him to have to drive home.

95. My dad wasn’t very impressed with Steve. It would be years before he grudgingly admitted his first impressions were wrong, and that Steve really was a very good choice for me. Me? I knew it all along.

96. I love my husband. I’ve never regretted being with him. He has always been truthful with me, even when I don’t necessarily hear what he has to say. We like each other and we like spending time together. I’m very lucky.

97. When I was a child, my dad predicted I’d be an interior decorator. He based this on my childhood passion — decorating and redecorating my doll house. I didn’t play with my dollhouse. I decorated it. I loved to decorate it.

98. I am not an interior decorator, but I love to do home improvement projects. I’ve had successful and not so successful projects. I’ve installed tile, cupboards, walls and more. I’ve painted, wallpapers, installed carpeting and more.

99. Our house has been one huge home remodeling project every since December 1997 when we had it moved here. Although at times we get tired of the ongoing projects and just stop for a while. Steve has arrived home on more than one occassion to see something that wasn’t there before. He isn’t always pleased to see I’ve tackled a project by myself.

100. My mom cannot carry a tune. She has no idea how to sing in tune or what a beat is. Despite all of that, and my loud complaints to the contrary, I love to hear her sing Happy Birthday to me each year.

101. Steve also claims he can’t sing. I couldn’t say. The few times I’ve heard him sing a single line like “little girl with a pony tail,” I think he sounded nice. But he rarely does that. He doesn’t sing out loud around anyone. He doesn’t even hum. This is, I think, slightly strange. I think he sings in his car when no ones around to hear. I can’t prove it. I can sing OK, but I would not do so in front of Simon Cowell, and I really should avoid karaoke bars too.