3a.m. Ramblings

It's almost 3am and I'm still wide awake. I have to blame it on a couple things:

1. I took Excedrin Tension Headache medicine tonight. I swear it's the only medicine that not only takes care of my headaches, but does it in a matter of 15 minutes or less. It also has caffeine in it, and usually when I get headaches that are bad enough to cause me to medicate, it's in the evening. So that affects my bedtime, obviously.
2. I ate a few handfuls of chocolate chips. Not only bad for losing weight, but it also added additional caffeine to my evening, which I didn't consider at the time when I collapsed under chocolate temptation.

So here I am, 3am. Sitting in a dark room at my computer because I had to give up on sleep. What better to do than blog out some of the random thoughts floating through my head?

My sister Jacy tagged me to share 6 facts about myself or my spouse. Since that seems awfully close to another recent meme I participated in, Six Quirky Things About Me, I'm going to go with a more husband-driven approach. It seems appropriate, since he just got back home from New York, and his birthday is coming up in a few weeks, as well as Father's Day.

So, here we go. Six facts about my husband, Jesse.

1. When he was 1 year old, Jesse lost half of his thumb. His older sister shut a heavy window-seat lid on his thumb, and it came off right at the top knuckle. I can't even imagine how traumatizing that might have been for a 1-year-old, as well as for his mom. But aside from making certain gaming controls a little bit harder, he loves his stubby little thumb. It's great for scaring kids with a more "real" thumb-disappearing trick, and I have to say, it's also great for a nice solid pressure-point massage. He can really get a lot of pressure behind that one remaining knuckle. And people never notice it's missing until he points it out.
2. When Jesse relates about his decision to become an engineer, he always tells about a time when he was about 6 years old. There was a broken glove box in one of his family's cars, and he asked his dad if he could try to fix it. He took the lock apart, found a spring inside that seemed broken, and realized he had seen a very similar spring before, in the type of pen with a button that you click at the top. He took apart a pen, grabbed the spring, and put it into the glove box lock. Put the glove box back together, and viola! Glove box is fixed. And he was only 6 years old! He's always loved to take things apart to see how they work, and then put them back together. Engineering is a natural evolution for him, really.
3. Jesse was a pole-vaulter in High School. He went to State with his Track and Field team, had his pole-vaulting picture in the paper, and everything! I know for sure that he placed in State, but I can't remember what. I want to say it was either First or Second. He also had longer, shoulder-length hair and a scruffy goatee when he was in High School. It's quite a trip to look at those pictures of him in the newspaper... just a totally different version of him than I'm used to! He did try to grow out a goatee for me one year around Thanksgiving (so I could see what it looked like), but only lasted about a week and a half before the itching was driving him crazy.
4. Jesse served an LDS mission in Brazil for two years. He was in the Salvador area, mostly in the very rural sections of his mission. He, like most missionaries you meet, loves to talk fondly about his many different experiences in the country. Still, I think the ones I hear most frequently involve the crazy things they did in their missionary apartments - like making trails of lighter fluid on the tile floors and lighting it on fire, or adopting a (wild!!) pet monkey, and the companion he had that could smell cockroaches if they were anywhere near him. And of course, the time he vomited his entire meal because of being overheated in the sun, after having gone a week without eating because of a stomach bug. It was so upsetting to him, he was so ready to stuff himself since he was feeling better, but his body just couldn't take it! Also, he and my brother-in-law, Steve (Jacy's husband), met each other on their missions. I remember calling my sister and telling her about Jesse soon after I had met him - while Steve was in the room - and I described his half-thumb, and suddenly Steve jumped into the conversation: "Does he have "clown hair," too?!?" I had to laugh, and said, "Yeah! He does!" (Jesse described it to me himself that way, when we started dating! If his hair starts getting long, the sides grow almost straight out and almost upwards near the crown of his head, giving it sort of a clownish shape.)
   
5. Jesse loves to cuddle. I've always loved snuggling up with my husband, of course. But sometimes his love of hugs and cuddles makes things difficult, especially with young kids in the house. I often end up feeling "touched out" by the end of the day, between nursing, holding kids on my lap, and so on. And so I've got a history now of just not wanting to be touched at all once Jesse is home from work. Luckily, I haven't gotten to that point yet with child #3, which I hope will keep up. Because Jesse does love that physical closeness, and he's a wonderful man to be patient and understanding when I just can't bring myself to accommodate him. I remember even after we were first married and lived with Jesse's parents for a few months, he would often lay his head on his mom's lap or shoulder, which I found very endearing (I've always heard you can tell how a man will treat his wife based on how he interacts with his mother). And when we went couch-shopping for our first home, we tested each couch we liked, to make sure it was roomy enough to fit both of us for TV snuggle time.
   
6. Jesse has a crazy memory. I swear he can remember every factoid he's ever heard, even if it was only once and long, long, long ago. He'll bring up the most random things in conversations, and talk about them like he's just an expert. He can watch a history show, or the type of show that shows how different things work, or read a book that describes something in detail, and so on, and he'll just have that knowledge he gained ingrained into his memory forever. Myself, family members, and friends are always astounded by what he can remember. And I'm sure it all influences his skill at Engineering. The more you know, and the better you can remember details, the easier it is to solve problems, right? (And yet, when it comes to remembering significant conversations from recent time, or the way a specific event happened in our lives, he always forgets the most important details.... Men! What can you do?? Though, I do have to give him credit - he tends to remember how my childbirths went, and our children's' baby stages much better than I do. I often ask him to recall details for me that I've long forgotten.)

And there you go. Do you feel like you know Jesse a little bit better now? Even if not, it was fun to talk about him. I don't do it enough on this blog. And hey! It passed some wide-awake, middle-of-the-night time for me!

Technically, I'm supposed to tag 6 more people. Jacy already tagged my other blogging sister, and I've picked on Summer every time I've been tagged so far, and Allyson from Laughadaisy is quitting blogging (so sad!!), and I'm just not sure how the majority of the rest of my friends with blogs feel about tags. Memes are somewhat like email forwards: either you love 'em, or you hate 'em! Since I can't think of 6 people (by a long shot!) that I'd feel comfortable tagging, I'll just pass on being specific this time around. But if this is a meme that any of my readers would like to participate in, please do! I'd love to learn more about you or your spouse.

I should probably head back to bed now, and see if I can get some sleep before Alex wakes up to nurse, and then the sun rises, and my morning starts. As it is, tomorrow will be... interesting... on such little sleep. ;)