How do I make the Top Navigation Bar and Side Navigation Bar show different links

I am currently running Magento version 1.61. I am having problems with the navigational bars. Let’s start from the beginning so there’s no confusion.

Keep in mind my home page layout is 1 column which means only top navigation bar is showing.

To get a “category” to show up in the top navigational bar (ie: Home, Contact Us, Products etc.) you simply add it from the “manage categories” section and add a “root category” and enable it. Then bam it shows up in the top navigation bar. Great and easy enough. However the drawback is it can only hold up to 10 categories I think. Once you go past 10 it starts to make the pages come out looking funky. I’ve tried to edit the number of categories from 10 to 60 and it still does the same thing by making the pages look funky. Especially on my product page right before checkout. So a solution would be to add a customizable side navigation bar to hold all of your categories and keep the top navigation bar separate just for the important stuff (ie: Home, Contact Us, FAQ, Returns etc) Is there a way to do that? I have uploaded a free nav bar from magento however it copys whats in the “root categories” as well. So there is no way to separate what goes in the top navigation bar from the side navigation bar. Is there a code or directions on how to separate these?

Now if I change my home page layout to “2 columns with left bar” I get a side navigational bar from Magento’s admin directly instead of an outside source like earlier. However, that also shows the root categories that I’ve entered. If I insert the customized nav bar at this point then both Magento’s and the customized nav bar sit on top of each other displaying the exact same categories in 2 different template formats which looks even stupider (if thats a word lol.)

My question is how can i make these different. In other words, what if I only wanted “Home, Contact Us, About Us” in the top navigation bar and my product listing in the side navigation bar? How do I do this? Can I create a static block or CMS page and display it into only in the top navigation bar? As far as I know in order to get a static block page to show it needs to be connected to a “root category” which is why the “root category” gives you the option of “products only or static block.” Does it have to be a “root category” that goes into the navigation bar.