One hundred things about me!

I got some encouragement from Tina, who did one hundred things on her blog called 'the other Tina.' I thought my one hundred things might be boring, but Tina said do it anyway. So here goes!

One hundred things about me!

1. I was born in May of 1961 in the old Dear Born hospital. Which, I think now is a parking lot.
2. I was born raised and still live in the same small town of Madera California, and I have never (sans camping and vacation trips) lived anywhere else.
3. I have one brother and one sister, so. . .one each!
4. My dad was married before, and I have a brother who is thirteen years older, and my sister is a year and a half younger then me.
5. I'm the middle child to my dad, and the oldest to my mom.
6. I usually tell people who get confused about this; that my brother's parents are divorced, mine and my sister's did not!
7. My dad had a lot of hobbies, but he loved fishing the best.
8. I use to stand up next to my dad at the kitchen sink, when I was just three years old, and watch him gut and clean the fish he caught. So stuff like that doesn't gross me out.
9. My dad taught me how to fish, and one time I actually caught a fish with two mouths. My dad talked me into releasing it back into the water.
10. We use to go camping a lot, but I had to go to summer school. And that interfered with all my dad's camping and fishing plains.
11. Starting in the third grade I was then diagnosed with a learning difficulty, I'm technally educationally hadicapped.
12. I had some awful teachers that didn't help my learning problem.
13. My third, fourth, and fifth grade teachers who were about to retire, and just didn't care.
14. One actually put a dunce cap on my head, because I didn't know the answer to a problem, and encouraged the class to make fun of me.
15. My mom still remembers one of my teacher's saying "I hate the kids and the kids hate me!"
16. Still another teacher lined our desks up to the grade we were getting, and proudly proclaimed who her favoites were--the 'A' students! No surprise there!
17. I was blessed with a wonderful sixth grade teacher Mrs. Bozio! Who was a great help to me, as she actually made learning fun!
18. Mrs. Bozio was young energetic and had a lot of wonderful ideas to help us to get excited about learning! 'I' would shrink in my seat when the teacher asked a question, would in mrs. Bozio's class jump up and say "I know it! I know the answer!" Just goes to show how much good a good teacher can do!
19. Also when I was in the sixth grade the science teacher adminatered an IQ test. And he would have everyone come up one at a time so he could whisper our IQ results to us. When it was my turn, the students were so quiet you could have heard a pin drop. Then he whispered 85, and the room went wild with laughter! Then the teacher said, "I'm sorry." I guess he was sorry for making me a laughing stock.
20. For the rest of the year I heard "see that tree or rock Janice? it's smarter than you are." Or "if your IQ was two points lower you'd be a rock or a tree."
21. That was so mumiliating, but it gets worse.
22. I was the target for every bully in the school, and it was a Mexican school. And I was just one of a hand full of white kids there.
23. I was called 'cry baby Janice', because they would torture me until I cried. I've been made fun of, beat with sticks, and stones.
24. When I went to bible class the Sunday school teacher would talked about people being stoned in the bible, and I would sit there and think I know what that feels like.
25. I asked a girl why she was hitting me, and she said"because your prejudice." Then I said, "I am? But who is hitting who?" Then she laughed wildly like I had just said the funniest thing in the world.
26. My dad had arthritis so bad, that he retired when I was almost twelve.
27. I also lost my dad's oldest brother, my uncle Basil from lung cancer and he didn't smoke.
28. I saw the Grim reaper in my bedroom after my uncle died. He doesn't carry a sickle.
29. I went to Thomas Jefferson for junior high, which is a school I refer to as 'feely meally high,' because us girls got felt up just trying to get to class.
30. I was almost raped because two boys wouldn't leave me alone, and I was too embarrassed to say anything.
31. Then a teacher Ms. Williams who caught on to what almost happened said, "you have to tell someone when you are being bother like this. This should not be allowed. This your body, and you have a right to say who can touch you and who can't! It's up to you to tell someone--a teacher, parent, or another adult somebody to make it stop! So these young men will know, that they can't do this to you."
32. I took it to heart, and never let anyone come near me, or try anything like that ever again.
33. Years later one of my daughter friends asked me a question. She said her mom wouldn't answer it because she said she was too young.
34. The question was "why do boys want to touch us girls on our butts or breasts?" I said something about hormonal boys, and the movies and music videos giving mixed messages on women and sex. And how that makes boys think we females aren't really human, but objects to be treated any way they please.
35. Then I asked "who's has been bothering you?" She hemmed and hawed, but it turned out it was an over sexed 16 year old male cousin. He was trying to touch her, and showing his penis to her and asking her to touch it. So I gave her 'the Ms. William's speech'. And then told her in no uncertain terms, "Tell your Mother! This can't go on, and he might rape you! Promise me you'll tell your mom!" She did and it was taken care of.
36. At Junior high the stress got to my sister and myself. My sister got an ulcer, and I got boils it took six months of penicillin to cure me.
37. I fell in love with books when I was thirteen. They don't judge you, and they are always there when you need them, and they take you away to another world.
38. Yeah, fantasy stories! That's my fave.
39. I took my first art class at Thomas Jefferson, and won a trophy when I graduated from the eighth grade for art.
40. That led me to take more in high school, and I excelled at it, and did well enough to win a plaque at the Chowchilla fair for best mod art at the fair.
41. I have the ability to learn almost anything you can do with your hands, just by watching someone once.
42. I wanted to take a photography class in high school, but my dad yelled at me when I said I might like to take pictures for a living. He said you can't make any money taking pictures, than you can doing your art work! That should be a hobby only! So I didn't take the class.
43. Learning something intellectual takes more time, as I learned slow.
44. My dad didn't want to pay for me to go to college because he said ALL I would take would be art classes. Then he sent my sister to Lubbock Christen Collage. My sister always got good grades, and she got a grant for collage. But she got kicked out before she finished her first year, something about being in the boys dorm after hours. Well, after all it was a Christen Collage.
45. I got married in December 21, 1979 six month after graduating from high school. My husband and I have been married almost 26 years.
46. When I was 20 I went to Fresno city college part time, and majored in art.
47. My Dad got colon cancer, and I quit college to be near him.
48. I felt my dad die. A piece of my heart painlessly pulled loose, and went with him to heaven. I can actually feel the hole in my heart where that piece pulled out, and it aches when I miss him.
49. After my dad's death I saw my small family fall apart. My brother got heavily addicted to drugs and broke-up with his long time girlfriend, that we all thought he'd marry. Then my sister married someone she later told me she didn't love. My mom crumbled in on herself, and I was concerned that she might follow my dad. But I didn't fall apart, but I was depressed and missing my dad, as I was the closest to him.
50. I was concerned for everyone, and I needed to be strong, for mom and for myself too.
51. It's a sad thing, but I learned not to lean emotionally on anyone. Not even my husband, he's sweet and needy but not strong.
52. I worked at the Madera Tribune as a human inserting machine. My job was to place the adds(inserts) inside the newspaper, as fast as I could.
53. I've taught craft class for the parks and recreational department of Madera, for three years.
54. My grandmother died, I mourned more for her, than I did for my dad.
55. My husband and I owned a used appliance business. There I learned people are stupid selfish and mean, at least to women in a store like that. I was talked to like I was a dog, but they would talk real nice to my husband. There I learned to be strong and stand up to people.
56. My sister came home again, and I watch her son at our store. That was until she went back to Michigan, and married her boyfriend that she had an hard off again on again relationship with. Naturally it didn't last.
57. We closed our store in 1990 because we weren't making any money at it.
58. Nine months later I found I was pregnate with our daughter.
59. That same year I also found out that my brother had leukemia.
60. Near the end of my pregnacy my brother asked if I would be a bone marrow donor for him if I was a match. I told him I'd be glad to do it. He would have to wait until my baby was born though.
61. My brothers doctor wouldn't even check to see if I or my sister were a match, because we were only half siblings.
62. The doctor broke my water and sent me to the hospital. After a nightmare-ish thirty-six hour labor, and much pushing on my part my cervix swelled shut! I had to have a c-section, and my beautiful brown eyed baby girl was born. I was thirty years old.
63. A month after my daughter was born, my brother got his donor(a stranger), and his bone marrow. Fourteen years later he is still okay.
64. I've had so-called friends bother me about having more children. I don't want to okay! I really don't want a repeat performance of last time. That was awful!
65. The nice thing about being forty-four is no one bothers me anymore, about having more children.
66. I developed problems with my back. From carrying my baby in my womb, then carrying her in my arms.
67. My sister divorced her second husband, and I started watching my nephew again.
68. My husband bought a computer, and I've learned about the wonderful world of computers and what I could do with them. Wow!
69. I started doing a wood craft business out of my home. I got real good with the scroll saw, and painting and lettering. I used the computer to help with my lettering, and making up orders and all kinds of stuff.
70. After three years with the last store that sold my work, they decided to close up shop. And we crafters had a going out of buiness sale, and I made 480 dollars on that last day. That was the most money I had ever made with any of my art or crafts.
71. My sister moved to Fresno, and I was no longer watching my nephew.
72. My sister remarried, and my sisters and her third husband came for dinner. I heard them talking as they left my house, "she's nice." he said, "yeah," said my sister "but she got a bad temper."
73. It seems like I do and do for people, and all that's remebered is my temper.
74. I started having problems with my hands, and I was dianoised with tendonitis. Which means my tendons are inflamed. And I stopped doing my wood crafts.
75. I tried to go to school to learn to work in an office, but my hands hurt.
76. Then my daughter started having problems in school, and was going to be held back. This was all decided by a teacher who only had my daughter for one semester. I quit school and was going to work hard to keep that from happening! She was held back anyway!
77. 1999, I decided to try my hand at writing.
78. A friend helped me by giving me a word processor, as our old computer had crashed by then.
79. I bought books on writing, and I read and read and read!
80. I started writing short stories and articles, and sending them in.
81. My husband bought us a new computer for my writing.
82. Then I took an correspondence class on writing, and later an on-line class too, and I did pretty good.
83. To date: I still haven't sold any of my stoies as yet.
84. The worse part on writing is that I had to learn the grammar, that I should have learned in school and didn't.
85. My spelling and grammar is much better after the past six years, but it'll never be perfect.
86. My sister got leukemia, that hit me real hard--I felt sick I thought I might threw-up.
87. I volunteered my bone marrow right away.
88. They took my blood at our Madera community hospital and sent it to the hospital that was treating my sister, and I wasn't a match! They used her own (adult)stem-cells(a new technology then) and now two years later she is still with us.
89. Summer of '04, I got an e-mail address for the first time! It helped me keep in touch with my sister who lives 150 miles from me.
90. I learned to use the search engines to surf the web for information.
91. When I was trying to find Mervyn's web sight to register for the thousand dollars prize, I stumbled on to Gwen's blog. She was irreverent and funny, and half Mexican like my daughter.
92. I kept reading.
93. Then one day I couldn't post a message because I wasn't a registered user. Gwen was having posting that were really ugly(trolls), so she changed who could post on her blog.
94. I couldn't post unless I signed up for a blog of my own. So I did!
95. I've had my blog, this one your reading for a year now.
96. Later I got two more; one is for my research on my family tree, and another is for my cartoons that I like to draw when my hands permit.
97. I've just learned to copy and paste using my mouse, I use it for forming links in my blog.
98. I also learned to set up links in a side bar on my blog.
99. I took a tickle IQ test, and according to it I have an IQ of 126!
100. I don't know how accurate it is, but it sure made my day!

Well that's done! Please post, and let me know what you think.