Tuesday, April 27, 2004

100 Things

Lynn once remarked after reading my blogs for the first time that there wasn't an "About" section. Thought I'd finally jump on the "100 Things About Me" bandwagon. Here goes:

1. I can't believe I'm the age I am...and still trying to figure out what I want to do when I grow up.
2. I like to write...and seldom do it (in proportion to my passion for it).
3. I wanted to be a stand-up comic when I was a girl.
4. I also wanted to be a drummer.
5. I became neither.
6. I love to take pictures...and rarely do that.
7. My current relationship taught me about unconditional love.
8. I hate runny eggs. The only kind of breakfast eggs I can eat are fried eggs that have been smashed into roadkill or extremely well-done scrambled eggs.
9. I love to eat.
10. I hate to cook.
11. I love pimiento sandwiches. I should make one.
12. I drank vats of milk as a kid...and abruptly dropped it from my diet in my late teens.
13. I can be an extremely loyal friend. I have friendships I've maintained for decades.
14. I sometimes let people (like friends) get away with bad behavior...but once MY line has been crossed, there's no going back.
15. I was a straight A student in grade school and an honor roll student in high school.
16. I hated school.
17. I never wanted to go to college, but did dabble at a couple of community colleges.
18. I went to a Catholic school from 1st through 8th grades where I was taught by nuns and had to attend Mass every morning.
19. The nuns thought I'd be a good candidate for the convent. I still haven't figured that one out.
20. I had to play the organ for Sunday mass when I was nine.
21. I hated organ lessons and would never practice during the week. Instead I'd get up at 3 am the morning of my lesson and try to fumble my way through the week's assignments with the volume all the way down on the organ as my parents and little brother slept.
22. I love to watch sports but hate to play most of them.
23. I've been an insomniac my whole life.
24. Sometimes I like being awake in the middle of the night when others are sleeping.
25. I still love transistor radios. One resides permanently in the mountain of pillows on our king-size bed, even though there's a boom-box on the bedside table.
26. My favorite flowers are tulips.
27. I once spent two weeks in a hotel in Paris where I kept a bouquet of pink tulips on the mantle of the (non-working) fireplace in my room.
28. There are still countless places I'd like to visit on this planet.
29. Before I met my boyfriend I preferred to travel alone.
29. My boyfriend and I like to take road trips...but we've spent the past 4 years on an island that's only 13 miles long and 3 miles wide.
30. I still like to make forts. For several summers in Portland, I pitched a small tent in the backyard and used it as a reading room in daylight hours...and sleeping room at night. People thought I was nutty, but they didn't know what they were missing.
31. There was an overgrown lot across the street from my childhood home. My brother and cousins and neighborhood friends and I used to make our way through a tiny opening into the center of it. You could stand in there and be sheltered from the wind and bask in the sun and pick blackberries. It was the best.
32. Catholicism never made sense to me, even as a kid. The nuns would often write in the comments section of my report cards that I sometimes seemed to be staring out the window during religion class.
33. I find myself often staring out the window in my office, counting the hours until I can leave and go do something fun.
34. I hated when the Catholic Church switched the mass from Latin to English. Latin mass was mysterious--like participating in a cult ritual before school.
35. I have a very active imagination.
36. I missed several weeks of school in my 4th grade year. I had bronchitis a couple of times and then I got pneumonia.
37. I spent all of that time at home (as a latch-key kid) watching 60's black-and-white CBS soaps.
38. I desperately wanted a mother who wore shirtwaist dresses and pearls and pumps and stayed at home to drink coffee with her friends and neighbors.
39. My mother was our town's first beauty queen.
40. I look nothing like her.
41. My father was a coach.
42. I look exactly like him.
43. My parents were excellent dancers...with each other.
44. I have fond memories of my childhood even though I was absolutely miserable the entire time. But my nostalgia is for what occurred outside of our home.
45. We had a black Labrador for 13 years named Susie. We got her when I was one.
46. Labs are my favorite dogs.
47. My favorite season is summer.
48. I love all things I associate with summer.
49. I love living in a place where it's sunny almost all of the time and warm every single day.
50. But that's about all I love about this place, except for the stunning beaches.
51. I love to dance...and haven't in years. (Noticing a pattern here?)
52. I still remember my first dance lessons when I was 4. I can't remember the teacher, but I remember the room.
53. I was a ballerina in the kindergarten circus we staged for our parents. A high school friend has home movies of us dancing--I'm the one keeping the correct time. (But the highlight of the circus was the ringmaster who picked his nose while making introductions.)
53. I had a boyfriend in kindergarten named Clark. He had a crew cut and was a very bad boy. He used to get sent to the principal's office for a spanking almost every day (when corporal punishment was still acceptable). I thought he was great.
54. I'm really smart.
55. I often do stupid things.
56. I could easily give up TV if I could still occasionally watch some good comedy.
57. I love to laugh, but few things make me.
58. I love to make my friends laugh.
59. I've become a bit of a recluse.
60. I love to read and enjoy few things more now than escaping into a good book. But I didn't enjoy reading until I got sober.
61. I haven't had a drink in 14 years.
62. I have a lot of embarrassing stories from my drinking days, but I'm not going to share any of them here.
63. I love cranberry sauce.
64. I prefer white meat over dark.
65. I'm obsessed with pie. If I could eat only one kind of dessert for the rest of my life, it would be pie--just about any kind.
66. I love the taste of coffee, but didn't start drinking it until I was in my 30's.
67. My mother and I used to have a lot of tea parties when I was kid.
68. I adore my nieces and revel in their differences. In the tiniest way, it makes me understand how a parent could love each of her children equally, while still enjoying their uniqueness.
69. I'm a really fast typist.
70. I hate to type for anyone except myself.
71. Many people don't understand that what inspires me is not the talents or skills I can use in a given moment, but whether or not the matter I'm using them on interests me.
72. I have lots of ideas. Some of them, if I do say so, are even fairly clever.
73. I don't do anything to act on them.
74. I love to walk. It's frustrating to live in a place where there are no shoulders on the roads and the downtown sidewalks are teeming with slow-moving tourists.
75. My favorite fruit is the orange, but I rarely buy them because I'm not good at picking them.
76. I love banana milkshakes.
77. I was a cheerleader.
78. I'm a hypochondriac who never goes to the doctor. I just wait for the terror to pass.
79. If you met my boyfriend and me, you'd guess that I would be the high-maintenance one. You'd guess wrong.
80. I love the sound of birds chirping, but can't imagine having to listen to a caged bird inside the house. It's not the cage that would bother me, but the chirping.
81. Until I stopped drinking, I had terrifying nightmares every night.
82. Now I have wonderfully weird dreams.
83. There are few things I love more than travel, but I stayed on this little rock for 3-1/2 years without leaving.
84. I hate being pinned down, in any way.
85. I'm easily moved to tears.
86. I'm very sensitive.
87. I'm painfully shy.
88. I love to perform.
89. I have no problem saying out loud what others only think.
90. I was once in a hot legs contest. I ended up as the tease (pardon the pun) on the 11:00 news on the CBS affiliate in San Francisco.
91. I like to do thoughtful things for people, especially when they least expect it.
92. For many years, I kept a little datebook that had countless birthdays and anniversaries. I spent years mailing cards to people. Now I can barely remember to buy my boyfriend a birthday card.
93. I try to purchase gifts the recipients will enjoy, but once I've given them I could care less what they do with them. They could throw or give them away and that would be okay with me. I have absolutely zero attachment to gifts.
94. The older I get the more I become aware of my choices as they relate to my ethics and beliefs.
95. I'd love to work for a non-profit that I felt was doing some real good.
96. I think every American child should be entitled to an education that includes the arts.
97. I believe every child--and grown-up!--should be told that they're creative in their own way...and that that creativity should be nurtured.
98. I think blogging is one of the coolest things ever. I can easily lose hours to reading journals and blogs.
99. I try not to forget that I'm very blessed. I've had some exceptional experiences and have been the recipient of boundless generosity and kindnesses.
100. I've learned to forgive.

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