Welcome

Relax. Pull up a chair. Put your feet up. Welcome.

My name is JoAnna. That's what my family calls me. When I was younger I wanted nothing more than to be called "Jo." My family isn't into nicknames. No, that isn't true. It's my parents. My parents are not into nicknames. So I was JoAnna all through my growing-up years. But when I moved away from home to go to college, I realized I could be anything I wanted to be. And while other people were being doctors and engineers and astronauts, I was finally being Jo, for the first time. Nothing fancy, nothing special. Just Jo.

And I loved it.

And don't get me wrong, I'm still JoAnna too. And in recent years, I've gone back to being JoAnna just a little more. I've always been about half and half anyway. What name I was called has been dictated by how or from where a person has known me. Also, I am fluent in American Sign Language. It's way easier to sign J-O than J-O-A-N-N-A. Obviously. Jo is just easier to remember too. Being a girl named Jo is not quite the same but in a similar vein to being a boy named Sue. When I introduce myself it catches people off-guard to see my face and then have to mentally connect it to a name that traditionally belongs to a boy. This must help them remember it more easily. Which actually isn't awesome because I don't tend to pay attention to names and I always seem to be the one that forgets someone's name when they remember mine.

Off-topic: My dog is barking. I know, I know. It doesn't sound like big news. But my almost-2-year-old Rodesian Ridgeback mix, West, almost never barks. And at this exact moment when I have decided to write this blog post, he's at the front window and he just. won't. stop. There's nothing out there. I've looked. And looked. And looked. He's making me quite crazy, and not in a good way.

Ok, back to me. (Now that my stream of thought has been completely derailed. Thanks, West.) So, I'm JoAnna. And I'm Jo. And something most people might not know about me is that I love points. That's right, points. I might say I get a little obsessed with them. What points you ask? ANY POINTS. Can I be more specific? No, because I literally love ALL points. If something as points, I'm there. Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario were, and still are, two of my very favorite video games (coins are the same as points to me). I guess you could say I love competition. And I do. But really, I love points. Scores. Coins. Lingots. Wampa fruits. Anything you can collect to show all the work you have done.

Why am I telling you this? Because that's the reason I'm writing this blog. I'm part of a family fitness challenge. It lasts 10 weeks. We are just about to start week 5. And on top of the fitness goal you have to meet each week to get points, there are all these other wellness categories too. Each category has multiple activities worth 1-20 points a pop. So updating this blog, once a week for a month, is worth 10 points. In a list of things that are mostly worth 1 or 5 points, this is pretty big. So I'm doing it. We are teams of two. I'm on a team with my mom. She and I have a reputation of doing pretty darn well in these challenges. I haven't done a stellar job the first three weeks of this, but there's plenty of time left and I'm not gonna let my mother down. Even though she didn't want me to be named JoAnna, I still want to make her proud. (She wanted me to be named Elizabeth. But my dad wanted to name me after the Cool and the Gang song, Joanna. So my mom settled for naming me JoAnna, with a capital "A" and no space, because her mom's name was EmmaLou, with a capital "L" and no space. And my middle name is Elizabeth. But don't worry, after me they had another girl and named her Elizabeth. Elizabeth Ann. And then they went on to have eight more kids, through various means, with more overlapping names. So it really is a happy ending for my mom as far as naming her children goes.)

There. That's why I'm here. Tune in for more useless ramblings each week. Nothing special, just Jo.