12 Random Facts About Me

In an attempt to make my blog more personal, check out the list below of random facts about me!

1. I’m the youngest child of four, resulting in me being infinitely spoiled by my grandparents as a child and having to learn from my parents at a young age that I, in fact, cannot get everything that I want.
2. Speaking of being the youngest, I always joke about getting the hand-me-down genetics.  To an extent though, I truly do believe it.  I’m only 5 foot half an inch, and I stopped growing in 8th grade.  My two brothers (the oldest two siblings) are both over 6 foot and my older sister is inches taller than me.  So, hand-me-down genetics, right?
3. Being the youngest influenced my parents to bless me with eight names.  Just kidding!  I only have four names but that still confuses everyone- one first name, two middle names, and my last name.  To make matters more confusing, I go by my second middle name.  How?  Two words- my grandma.  She was a saint and helped my parents with me when I was first born (remember, I’m the youngest so my parents were dealing with toddlers and a pre-teen) and she was really in love with the name “Emily,” so when push came to shove, my parents just threw that in after my other middle name because I was the last kid.  I have a hunch that as soon as I was born, my grandma immediately started calling me Emily and that’s how I became stuck with it.  It’s actually a pretty cool story.  Also to note, I have the same name as the royal toddler (Charlotte Elizabeth).  The only difference is the Emily vs. Diana as the second middle name, but I still think it’s pretty cool.
4. I started karate when I was 11.  Chugoku Kenpo Karate, a Japanese style, that literally means “Chinese secret science of the law of the fist and empty hand.”  Also, I was one step away from black belt (in my style, that means a three-striped brown belt) and didn’t move forward to my black belt only because of timing (I was in college, it was difficult to cram all of the testing into summers and holiday breaks).  But I’m very close with my sensei and she’s like a second mom to me.  She’s the first person in the first row on the left.
5. I have done other sports, too!  Karate was my first love, but running is a close second.  I did cross-country and track from middle school through college.  In fact, I just ran my first half-marathon in my hometown last weekend!
   

   

   Two hours and nineteen minutes later…

6. And that handsome man in that picture is my fiancé, who I met in college and have been dating for four years, engaged for two, and who I’m getting married to in just 17 short days!  And in reference to my names that I listed earlier, I told Kyle I was going to hyphenate as a joke to just continue the ridiculous length of my name.
7. Speaking of weddings, I have a kickass pair of heels that I splurged on (treat yo’ self!) but I actually HATE shoes.  I mean I love the heels that I got and I really am looking forward to wearing them, but I hate anything being on my feet, unless they’re sandals where my feet can breathe.  (This means I hate socks, too!). As a side note, when I say “splurge” I really only mean like $60, which is WAY better than what I spend on running shoes (~$100) but it still doesn’t sit well with me to spend that much on one thing.
8. I love walking and running and hiking and traveling to new places.  I’ve been to several states in the US, but I’ve also fortunately had opportunities to travel to England and Germany.  Next on my bucket list: Ireland, Italy, and Switzerland, hopefully!
   

   
9. Here’s a weird one for you that I’m sure not many people can relate to: I HATE cheese.  Absolutely hate it.  Hate the smell, hate the taste, hate the texture.  I’m un-American (my fiancé’s words, not mine).  I’m not sure what happened.  I used to love Mac and cheese as a kid, along with cheesy pizza, but something clicked one day and I gagged when I bit into a previously thought delicious slice of Papa John’s pizza.  To the people who love cheese but cannot have it due to their digestive systems, I’m the worst, and I apologize for my un-Americanness.
10. Speaking of weird things, I have an irrational fear of…..water.  Yep, you read that right.  Whenever I go into a pool, or an ocean, I have to stay in a level where my feet can always touch the ground.  I know what you’re thinking- can you swim, can you tread water?  I can do both of those things.  However, for whatever reason, the moment I’m in a body of water that’s deeper than neck level, I freak out because that’s when I have to be on tippy toes and any further I feel like I’ll drown.  You guys probably think I’m so weird by this point.
11. But something that’s pretty cool and un-weird is my love for tattoos.  I love how the same designs (i.e. Harry Potter tattoos) can mean something completely different to another person, and I love how you can express what you’re feeling on your body.  I have two tattoos, and they’re both for my grandma on my dad’s side who passed away of lung/metastasized breast cancer.  She lived in Texas so I only met her a handful of times before she passed away, but she made a huge, positive impact on my life.  The first tattoo I got was a flower that was designed by my sister.  The second tattoo was from my favorite book, “Slaughterhouse-Five,” and it lists the famous quote, “So it goes…”  My sister and I got that one together in almost the same spot on our bodies.  She has also designed another tattoo from Slaughterhouse-Five with the quote “Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt” in remembrance of my grandparents on my mom’s side (yes, the grandma who gave me my name).  But that is a story for another time.
12. Lastly before this post gets absurdly long, I clean when I’m upset.  Why?  I have no idea.  I supposed it relieves stress?  Any psychologists have any idea why I do this?

 

I’d love to learn about you!  Share a random fact (or several, if you wish), or even rant to me about my un-Americanness in the comments section.  I look forward to reading them!

Throwback Thursday: Getting my tattoos

“Tattoos…are the stories in your heart written on your skin.”

-Charles De Lint, The Mystery of Grace

Four years ago, I was a quiet little freshman in college driving home on a random weekend for my first scheduled tattoo appointment.  I had a lot of cash from graduation cards from my friends and family, and I knew that getting a tattoo is where I wanted to spend some of it.

I was always told by my parents that I could get a tattoo, as long as it wasn’t something mindless and there was some sort of meaning behind it.  As long as it meant something to me, it was okay.

So I began talking to my sister, who is a phenomenal artist (I just wish she sold some of her things), and I asked her if she would be willing to draw a tattoo that would be for my grandmother who passed away of cancer.  I didn’t want to just pick out a random one at a tattoo shop.  I wanted something unique that would mean even more to me.  She agreed, so she drew a pretty flower design (the one you can see on the featured image) and I immediately fell in love with it.  I knew it was the perfect piece to describe how beautiful my grandmother was and everything I felt she represented.

The stars in the tattoo are lavender to signify the cancer ribbon that represents all cancers, whereas the pink of the flower is because her lung cancer (which is a white ribbon- I didn’t want to incorporate white into the tattoo because I’m too pale) spread to her breasts and she had to get a double mastectomy.  So the pink is to represent her breast cancer.

Tattoos are painful, but I was strong enough to not cry because of the pain.  I did cry, but that was for an entirely different reason.  My sister’s ex-boyfriend’s mom (long story, but they stayed close after my sister and the mom’s son broke up) also had cancer, and during the time I was getting the tattoo, she had started going through chemo again.  She was never one to go bald or wear some type of hat or anything to cover up her bare head.  She always wore wigs.  My sister decided to send me pictures of her trying on wigs in the middle of my session and I ended up bursting into tears because I know my grandma went through exactly what she was going through.  Debi ended up passing away two years ago, also from cancer.

That first tattoo was completed in October of 2010, whereas the “so it goes…” was done the following March during my Spring Break from college.  While I was in high school, I had to read Slaughterhouse-Five which immediately stuck with me, despite most of the books I had to read for school.  I don’t know if it was the way Vonnegut wrote it or just the content of the book itself, but it intrigued me.  And I immediately fell in love with how the character would say “So it goes…” whenever something bad occurred.  I connected with the character because I realized we can’t help when bad things happen to us.  We can’t predict it, we can’t prepare for it, and we can’t stop those bad things from happening.  What can can do is learn from it and move forward and help those bad events change us for the better.  I couldn’t help that my grandmother was sick, or that I only met her a few times before she passed away (she lived in Texas and I live in the northeast), but what I could do is remember every single positive memory I had with her while she was on Earth and I cherish them every single day. “So it goes…” to me is that bad things are going to happen no matter what, but we can move on and become stronger because of them.

This tattoo hurt a lot worse than the flower, mainly because I have less fat higher up on my body and the tattoo artist was basically stabbing my ribs with a needle.  I also may or may not have partially blacked out during this process, but this was because I hadn’t eaten much that day.  So on that note: eat before you go get a tattoo.

Anyway, that’s it for tonight’s post!  Tell me about any tattoos you have/the meaning behind them/whether you like or hate tattoos/or a book that stuck with you after you read it!