100 Things

edited September 4, 2010

1. I'm married, and it rocks. My husband (alias MB) is totally kickass.

2. No kids yet, but eventually we'd like to have two. I have a little boy, born January 15, 2010. He's pretty much the best kid ever.

3. We have two spoiled pets, a mean-ass fluffy white cat and a sweet black Lab mix.

4. We live in a really great apartment, but we're hoping to buy our first house sometime between next year and the sounding of trumpets. We bought our first house in February of 2008. Photos are here.

5. I'm adopted. I'm okay with it--happy, in fact--and have no angst or lingering issues.

6. I have one sister, 5 1/2 years younger, also adopted. She is fantastically, fantastically awesome.

7. Our parents fostered dozens of kids while we were growing up, so I sort of feel like I came from a big family even though there's just the four of us now.

8. I have had the same pillow since I was old enough to have a pillow.

9. I love 3/4 length sleeve shirts.

10. I love wearing flipflops, but I hate that they make my feet stinky by the end of the day.

11. I don't really like potatoes very much at all. Wendy's fries, Sam's Club potato salad, Ruffles sour cream and cheddar chips, and my mom's mashed potatoes are pretty much the only potato products that I like.

12. I actually like SPAM. I don't eat it anymore because I realize that it's disgusting, but I think it tastes good.

13. I hated Napoleon Dynamite. I'm not sure I laughed once. I also hated Reservoir Dogs, and turned it off about halfway through in disgust.

14. As a kid / teenager, I loved shitty action movies. I think I watched Under Siege about thirteen times. I can't believe I'm admitting that in public.

15. My memory is crap for math, but great at everything else. I can't remember anything from calculus class (or even geometry class), but I can watch a movie once and then quote it incessantly.

16. I really dig little kids. I know lots of people who find them intimidating and / or slightly distasteful, but I love 'em. If I had to choose a new career tomorrow, I'd probably be a primary school teacher.

17. I drink a gallon of milk every three or four days, by myself. In college, I had to do a dietary analysis for this lame-o health class we were required to take, and I think my daily calcium intake was something like 1000% of the RDA.

18. I have never been to Disneyland / Disney World.

19. I have no desire to rectify this, though I have heard that Animal Kingdom is cool.

20. I have been to 39 states, not counting Georgia, where I only sat the Atlanta airport.

21. I don't own a blowdryer.

22. Or a brush.

23. Or a single item that qualifies as makeup.

24. I didn't even wear makeup on my wedding day.

25. MB and I lived together for two years before we got married, and shared a twin bed the entire time. We were both pretty skinny back then, but not two-adults-in-a-twin-bed skinny. I am not exaggerating when I say that there was not even enough room left on the twin bed for the cat.

26. I have never been drunk. Usually when I try to drink alcohol, I just end up falling asleep after one Smirnoff ice. Boring!

27. I have a really great job, which I truly love, but I can't talk about it for fear of being Googled. Trust me, sometimes it's really hard to keep it secret. I'll never be financially rich, but my job makes me feel wealthy all the same.

28. I'll also never use my real first name, because it's not very common.

29. I am a complete whore for sales and clearance racks.

30. I am also a champion thrift store shopper, thanks to years of apprenticeship to my mother, the all-time world champion thrift store shopper.

31. I have very little artistic talent, but I can be pretty craftsy.

32. I have a somewhat embarrassing penchant for reality TV, but only the newer generation of stuff. I never liked The Real World or Survivor, but I love Project Runway and Top Chef and What Not to Wear and even America's Next Top Model (MB calls the contestants "The Shrieking Eels").

33. I've never seen any of the Austin Powers movies, because I could barely sit through a preview without wanting to punch Mike Myers in the face.

34. I never liked New Kids on the Block.

35. I started piano lessons in first grade, quit in fourth, and then started again in seventh and played through high school.

36. I started Taekwondo lessons when I was twelve and trained until I was nineteen. I have a second degree black belt, and I miss training so much. Unfortunately, my teacher is retired now, and I have yet to find a new school that I can afford.

37. I have ADHD, and have been taking medication for it since age twelve.

38. I start many projects and finish very few.

39. I was pretty into environmental causes in college and even lobbied on Capitol Hill once, but since graduating I've drifted away from activism.

40. I still care deeply about environmental issues, and I'm still an ace recycler.

41. I always say that I can't cook, but I suspect it's more a lack of confidence to try new things than lack of actual skill. I can make one dish from memory, and I used to be known for my ridiculously good brownies in college, though nowadays I'm more likely to make Toll House cookies.

42. I have the most awesome group of friends in the Universe. They truly are like a second family to me. I love you guys!

43. I love games -- trivia games, board games, party games, card games...I'm in! Luckily, most of my friends also love games.

44. I love to read. In seventh grade, I was actually forbidden from reading in my classroom because I'd start reading after I finished an assignment and then get so absorbed in my book that I'd miss the next lesson. As an adult, I can say that my teacher was justified and probably had my best interest at heart. As a bookish, awkward 12-year-old, I was SO pissed at her.

45. I went to K-8 Catholic school, and I was terribly unpopular. The older I get, the more I suspect that no one was truly happy in middle school.

46. I went to public high school and loved nearly every minute of it.

47. I get angsty when I think about going to my ten-year high school reunion (theoretically to occur in 2009), but I'm not sure why since I loved high school. I went to my ten-year reunion. I'm glad I went so that I won't always wonder what I missed, but I wouldn't have missed much.

48. I have always lived in the same city where I was born and raised. I went to college here, ended up getting a job here, and now plan to raise my future spawn here. When I was a teenager I thought it would be totally lame to stay here for most of my life, but now that I'm starting to grow up, I realize that there's nothing lame about wanting to raise your kids close to your family and friends. I never planned to stay here for life, but I can't say I'm too disappointed so far.

49. I was a geology major in college.

50. And an English major with a creative writing emphasis.

51. It took me five years to finish both degrees, but I'm very glad I followed my heart and did both degree programs.

52. From birth until probably my junior year in college, I wanted to be a paleontologist when I grew up. I have always loved dinosaurs. About halfway through college, I got interested in environmental geology. Then I got burned out, decided to take a year off before grad school, watched one year turn into two, started to get desperate about a future of shitty retail jobs, and then my current and completely kickass job landed in my lap. And I am immensely grateful.

53. I have a skull collection. I promise I'm not creepy, though. Really! I just think skulls are wicked cool.

54. Weird things tend to stick with me much longer than is convenient. For example, when I was in middle school, I read a letter to Dear Abby that warned readers to thoroughly clean out the lint traps of their dryers, because if the lint builds up, it can catch fire and burn your house down. To this day, I cannot leave the house if the dryer is running. When I told some of my message board friends about this a few years ago, one of them told me that she read a story online where a girl's washing machine malfunctioned and burned her house down. Now I can't leave the washer running and then go out, either.

55. Speaking of the message board, I'm a member of a smallish private message board that started in 2004 as a spinoff of a spinoff from the Knot. I never quite believed in finding real friends on the internet until I met these ladies. They are fantabulous, and will sometimes turn up in stories here.

56. I have really long curly hair. I hated my hair for years. Now I love it, but I still don't do anything with it because of the frizz and my ignorance of all things girly (i.e. straightening irons, styling skills, blowdryers). When I was 12, I got a really tragic haircut. After that, I was afraid to cut my hair until my sister talked me into donating 10 inches to Locks of Love after my wedding. I thought I'd hate my shorter hair, but I didn't. And yet, three years and almost three feet of hair later, I'm right back to being slightly skittish about cutting it off. I really should get it chopped for a donation again, though, especially since I know it will regenerate. I got my hair chopped again in March of 2010. It was such a huge relief that I felt dumb for waiting so long.

57. I wear glasses, and have since fourth grade. I had a short contact lenses interlude in high school and early college, but now I only bother with contacts for special occasions, canoe trips, or hikes in hot weather.

58. I never had to get braces, but I did have to get four permanent molars removed to make more space in my jaw and allow my teeth to come in straight. Pretty soon I'll probably have to get my top wisdom teeth out, though my dentist says the bottom ones will probably never have to come out. Yay, tooth extraction (shudder).

59. I'm a Pisces, and (appropriately) I love water.

60. I was born on Friday the 13th.

61. I have been fond of camels since I was a little kid. No idea why, but I still think camels are freaking cute.

62. I think birds are cool and nice and stuff, but I prefer them to be somewhat far away from me. If they get within a few feet, I get nervous. Evilducky's parrotlet Tweeter is the only bird I've ever been comfortable sharing my personal space with.

63. I once held a baby barred owl on my hand with a falconer's glove. I wasn't entirely not-scared of him, but it was still one of the most incredible experiences of my life.

64. I did a year of AmeriCorps service at a local nature preserve the year after I graduated from college. The AmeriCorps experience wasn't as cool as I expected (my site was somewhat disorganized and my local chapter was not entirely on the ball), but doing the service opened up a lot of great opportunities for me. Through my service, I met my good friend S (Hi, S!) and got involved with the Master Naturalist class that I took earlier this year. Now I get to do super cool stuff like volunteer at the local wetlands and teach kids about macroinvertebrates.

65. Clearly, I am the biggest nerd on the entire planet.

66. I LOVE watching ghost shows and hearing ghost stories. Let's just say that I believe in the possibilities.

67. I have had thirteen jobs since I turned sixteen. Most of the time, I had more than one job at a time.

68. I kept my first job for almost five years. I worked at a local deli / ice cream shop.

69. I'm still addicted to the ice cream from that shop.

70. I talk in my sleep. It's really embarrassing, and I hate it when people tell me about it in the morning. Apparently when I was a kid, my mom heard me shout, "MacGyver, swallow your gum!" (MacGyver is my cousin, and also Danger's husband.)

71. I love canoeing.

72. I was a Girl Scout from first grade until I graduated from high school.

73. I went to Girl Scout camp every summer from pre-7th grade to pre-12th grade. I loved camp so much. At the closing ceremony my last year, I bawled like a baby.

74. My job allows me to work with Girl Scouts, and it is fantastically rewarding to give back that way.

75. When I drink, I do this weird thing where I sort of puff out my cheeks. I've always done it, and loved ones have always called me out on my "chipmunk cheeks."

76. Most of my friends love monkeys, but monkeys tend to really creep me out.

77. I like having houseplants and can't wait to have a garden, but I don't have much luck at growing things from seeds. We have a garden at the house, though I tend to half-ass it. Maybe next year will be the year I keep up with the weeding and watering.

78. When I was a little girl, my mom let me pick out one movie to rent from the grocery store each Saturday. Many, many times, my choice was the old animated Disney version of Robin Hood. I still love the movie.

79. I very briefly smoked clove cigarettes in late high school. I still wish they weren't dangerous because I loved the smell so much.

80. The older I get, the more sentimental I get about Christmas. As soon as Halloween passes each year, I start to look forward to the day after Thanksgiving, when I can finally put up my Christmas decorations without looking like a total lunatic for starting too early.

81. I have three piercings in my left ear and four in my right (three lobe, one cartilage). I've been wearing the same silver hoop earrings since college. Maybe since high school. I took them out for my wedding day, but other than that, I've worn them all day, every day. The exception is my cartilage piercing. I can't sleep in that one, so I've lost about half a dozen earrings over the years.

82. I also have another piercing that you'll never see. It's not dirty or anything, but I am not in the proper shape to flaunt it. I used to have my belly button pierced, but MB never liked it and I was kind of ambivalent, so I took it out when we moved into our new house. It was supposed to symbolize adulthood or something, but really it wasn't a big deal. Except for the part where I couldn't figure out how to get the ring open for like two days and finally had to email Heather Feather and ask what I was doing wrong.

83. No tattoos.

84. I'm extremely liberal, but I don't like talking about politics.

85. I have a classic 8-bit Nintendo. MB got it for me for Christmas a few years back. Best. Present. Ever.

86. I'm really bad at video games that require use of controllers with more than five buttons. The only Playstation games I've ever not sucked at are Harvest Moon: Save the Homeland and Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life. I did pretty well at Bushido Blade 2 for Playstation 1, mostly by being a shameless button-masher.

87. I like to paint my toenails silver.

88. I'm finally okay with the fact that I have ugly feet.

89. Bands / artists I've seen in concert: Alan Jackson & Martina McBride (twice), The Wallflowers, Dave Matthews Band (twice), Red Hot Chili Peppers, Foo Fighters, Creed, the Goo Goo Dolls, Aerosmith, Alabama, Clint Black, Metallica, U2 (twice), Godsmack (twice), Incubus (three times), Cake, Tool. I also went to Ozzfest once and Lilith Fair once.

90. I love carnations and dandelions.

91. My favorite color is yellow.

92. Green is a close second.

93. My favorite season is fall.

94. My favorite number is 13.

95. I tend to be a really lucky person. (knock on wood)

96. I think I believe in karma.

97. I love stars (the shape and the ones in the sky).

98. In general, I'm an extremely happy person.

99. I am thankful every day for my life and all the people and joys and experiences that make it great.

100. I pick my nose (Ok, not really. Man, I'm glad to see #100.)