100 Things About Me

It is a blogging tradition (supposedly) to create a post that is 100 things about the author. This I knew. I recently learned that the idea, apparently, is to make it be your 100th post. I've past that by about 50 now, so I thought I would make it be another momentous post. I began blogging one year ago today. Happy Blogoversary to me! Anywho, a few of you may actually get to the bottom of this. Fewer still may do it in one sitting. I hope you enjoy. If there's anything I've learned while creating this list, it's that Disney apparently has a metaphor for everything in life.

1. I was a Girl Scout for 13 years. I know my cookies!
2. My mom is a twin.
3. I love to read. My grandma once gave me the entire old school hardback Nancy Drew collection, which I stashed a few at a time under the far side of my bed with a flashlight. Then my mom found them and gave them all back to her mom. I was very upset for a long time.
4. I like jigsaw puzzles.
5. I have a birthmark shaped like the United States of America, except it looks like Florida fell off.
6. I speak Spanish fluently (though I'm pretty rusty now...okay, maybe I used to be able to speak Spanish fluently). I also can read Spanish, and some Portuguese.
7. I was the kid that everyone made fun of in grade school, right up through the end of my Freshman year of high school, when my family moved.
8. I have lived in 6 states: California, Oregon, Utah, Connecticut, Maine, and Ohio. I am not a military brat.
9. I have traveled through over half of the states in the union: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Washington, Wyoming.
10. Despite growing up in Southern California, and having lived in Maine, I have never traveled to either Mexico or Canada, or any other country outside my own.
11. My favorite color is purple.
12. I would love to write short stories, but I have a hard time thinking up a story line (if you give me a good topic that I like, I might be able to take off with it).
13. I've lost my voice before from singing too many camp songs in a week.
14. I look horrible in the color orange.
15. I hate wearing yellow gold jewelry. It doesn't look good on my super-pale skin.
16. I have hiked "Y Mountain" in Provo, UT twice.
17. I love karaoke (but you probably don't want to hear it).
18. I am a Jeopardy! junkie (except that I don't get ABC right now).
19. I sang "My Favorite Things" as a solo in a talent show when I was 6 years old.
20. I love Christmas music.
21. I took piano lessons for 6 years, and started playing when I was in 3rd grade, but I can't accompany singing except to one or two hymns.
22. I hate watching sports, but I can't tear myself away from the Olympics. My favorite Summer events to watch are swimming, diving, and gymnastics. My favorite Winter events are all figure skating ones.
23. I would love to travel the world someday. I want to see Paris, St. Peter's cathedral, and go all over Spain and Italy. There are a lot of places within the USA that I want to see as well.
24. I say that I don't like pink, but I really do like it. Secretly. Shhh…don't tell anyone!
25. I am ticklish, but I can also turn it off when I want to.
26. The bathrooms in the first house I ever lived in were ugly dark brown (mine) and ugly mint green (my parents').
27. I once crank-called Hooked on Phonics when I was 13.
28. I had a recurring childhood dream in which I was the proud owner of Starlight, Rainbow Brite's prized horse. It was actually a nightmare, but for a different reason: a toucan was trying to bite my head off (literally) for sitting on him. I think I must have eaten too much Froot Loops as a child, because the bird looked strangely like Toucan Sam, although it wasn't. It was some other large talking animated bird.
29. I have seen the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade from the front row in New York City.
30. I have only been to one concert. I saw Green Day and Jimmy Eat World.
31. I love to cook. I especially like to sing and dance while I cook.
32. I can eat a whole bag of Twizzlers in one sitting without getting sick. (Except for black licorice -- the only way I like black licorice is in Good & Plenty candies.)
33. My favorite candy bar is Skor, and I love to eat the chocolate coating off, and then eat the sticky hard toffee by itself.
34. I would love to learn to play acoustic guitar, but my hands are too small. I'm content to listen to it instead.
35. Earthquakes give me a rush. I think they're fun.
36. I know the meaning of the word "Sesquipedalian." I should. My husband is one. (You're going to go look that up now, aren't you?)
37. I love black and white photography. Sometime soon, I want to experiment with it.
38. I'm a two-time college dropout. I know, not really something to be proud of.
39. Jack-o-lanterns are fun. My favorite part of making them is toasting and eating the pumpkin seeds.
40. I once knew a girl whose first name was January. I also knew a girl whose name was Wednesday (she went by Wendy).
41. I love cheese. Except Swiss.
42. I don't use a cell phone.
43. I hate stupid people. You know the ones I'm talking about. The people that call the doctor's office the first day their throat hurts, in the middle of fall/winter, and ask "Is there something going around?" Yes, there's something going around. There is always something going around.
44. In high school, I lettered in Speech. I kinda like to talk.
45. I love surprises. Of the good kind. I especially like to surprise other people. Little things make a big difference. Big things do, too. The problem with trying to surprise me though, is that if I have any idea that you've got something up your sleeve, I'll figure it out. Just ask Ben -- he's learned that he can't even hint at Christmas gifts because I'll guess them in advance, even though he doesn't acknowledge that I'm right.
46. Swing dancing is fun.
47. I have two favorite scents at Bath & Body Works: Pink Grapefruit in the summer, and Black Raspberry Vanilla in the winter.
48. I still remember the phone number to the very first house I ever lived in: 714-956-9199.
49. When Julie was born, my water broke on a Friday night, but my body didn’t go into labor, so I didn’t go to the hospital until Monday afternoon (not knowing that my water had broken). They induced me in the hospital, but ended up doing a c-section anyway because I wasn't dilating and they were worried about infection. Ben says I should have all our kids that way, because then I can claim that I’d had three (or whatever) kids and never went into labor.
50. I love cold water. I drink at least one glass with dinner every night, and another full glass before bed. Super cold water. I crave it, but mostly in the evenings.
51. I love the TV series The West Wing. We own all seven seasons. Until I married Ben, I had never seen an episode all the way through. He got me hooked on it, but now I’m a bigger fan than he is. Sometimes when Ben and I are having a conversation, and I can’t think of a good way to explain something, I’ll compare it to a scene from the West Wing. Art imitates life.
52. My favorite book is The Count of Monte Cristo.
53. I am still in contact with a good friend that I met when I was in second grade, seven years old. Not many people can say that (especially having lived in five other states since that time).
54. When I sleep, I have to have a sheet or blanket over me. No matter how hot or sticky it is, I still have to have a sheet over at least my legs, although I prefer to have it tucked right up under my chin.
55. I have never broken a bone. I have sprained both ankles and dislocated my right elbow, but never broken anything.
56. Until recently, the only surgery I’d ever had was when I had my wisdom teeth extracted. But now I’ve had a c-section. That was also my first and only hospitalization.
57. I’m really good at the game “Taboo.” Game night, anyone?
58. My first car was a 1988 Chrysler New Yorker that I bought for $1200 in 1999 with only 82,000 miles on it.
59. Places I’ve worked: the Post Office, the mall (See’s Candies, an interior decorating store, The Limited Too, and a knock-off sunglasses kiosk), Crown Plaza Hotel, two doctor’s offices, a school district board of education, and Tri-C Corporate College.
60. I love Mexican food. I really love it. I’m getting pretty good at making it, too.
61. When I was in second grade, I wrote a paper about what I wanted to be when I grew up: a stewardess. If I wasn’t married and didn’t have a daughter, I would still be interested in it for the travel benefits.
62. When I was registering for 7th grade, my 6th grade teacher wouldn’t recommend me for Pre-algebra because the teacher at the junior high school “didn’t like girls.” So instead, she recommended me for 8th grade math, which I aced as a 7th grader. That teacher recommended me for Algebra in 8th grade, skipping over Pre-algebra entirely (same anti-girl teacher). I took it, and got a C+. That teacher had a policy that he wouldn’t recommend any student for Honors Geometry if they didn’t have a B- or better. So I re-took Algebra in summer school that year. When my teacher over the summer had to miss a day or two of class, he told the substitute to just use my test (we had a test every day) as the key to correcting all the other tests. First day of high school, I transferred from my normal Geometry class to the Honors class. I also have 5 years of math on my high school transcript as a result of this.
63. I am incapable of blowing my nose discreetly. I honk like a goose. I just can’t do it effectively and also quietly.
64. My sister and I once broke a bed. I was sleeping on a trundle bed at the time, so it didn’t have a solid frame. We were goofing around on Christmas Eve, and suddenly one end collapsed under us, which of course set off a further string of giggles. Oh yeah, this was only 4 years ago.
65. When I was 24, my sister was 16, my brother was 12, and my dad was 48. He was twice as old as me, three times as old as my sister, and four times as old as my brother.
66. I was always the youngest kid in my class, since my birthday is in late November.
67. I can’t watch E.T. I'm told that a family member took me to see it in the movie theater when I was only 2 years old and it apparently traumatized me. As a kid I could never watch it without being scared and crying. When I was 19, I had a boyfriend who thought I was big enough to get over that, and he decided that we were going to watch it one night. He wouldn’t let me say no. I cried the whole movie. I was still scared. I will never watch it again.
68. On the flip side, I have been watching Oklahoma since I was three years old, and I’ll go you word-for-word on the dialogue and the music.
69. My dad and I once drove cross-country (Oregon to Connecticut) in four days. We did it in an eleven-year-old dying minivan named Lulabelle. She lived with us until she was 17, then went to live with another family. She went through something like seven transmissions in her first 10 years (never buy Chrysler).
70. When I was younger, one of my aunts on my mom’s side was known to us as “Aunt Booger” because she taught us how to pick our noses (not that kids need help learning). She used to teach us, “You can pick your nose, you can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your friends’ noses.” She once sent me a birthday card with pictures on the outside of people picking their noses. It said “You may think it’s funny when your nose is runny. You may think it’s funny…(open card) but it’s snot.”
71. I was nearly 22 years old before I learned how to ride a bike.
72. When I was five or six years old, I split my chin open on some bricks at a birthday party and had to have stitches. Those are the only stitches I ever had until I was 23, and fell off my bike. I split my chin open and had to have stitches in exactly the same spot. The doctor told me that the chin is the most commonly stitched-up spot on the body.
73. My lucky number is 13. I don’t think I’ve ever had a “bad” Friday the 13th.
74. I was born on the 17th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
75. I once laid on the floor of a one-room apartment in “the ghetto” for an hour while a police shootout went on outside. No kidding.
76. My dream house has a library/music room that would remind you of the library in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Obviously, it wouldn’t be that big, but there are floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, floor-to-ceiling windows, darker décor, a baby grand piano, a sofa and some fancy wing back chairs.
77. If I’m making a recipe that calls for cinnamon, I always put in extra. I get this from my mom.
78. I love to cook (as previously mentioned), but I hate planning meals the day of. I have to plan out a week’s worth or so at a time, otherwise I’ll go back and forth with Ben like the vultures in Disney’s The Jungle Book: “What do you want for dinner?” “I don’t know. What do you want?” “I don’t know. What do you want me to make?” But I never seem to think about planning side-dishes. I do a lot of one-dish meals, and not enough veggies.
79. I have two secret guilty pleasures of the musical variety. You know you have yours. The ones that you don’t want to own up to or let other people know about. Mine are the Spice Girls and the Macarena.
80. I remember my great-great-grandmother.
81. I can pat my head and rub my tummy at the same time.
82. In my house, I am more likely to leave the toilet lid up than my husband is. He’s very good about putting down both the seat and the lid.
83. Although I never had any real pets when I was a kid (goldfish don’t count as “real”), I tell people that I had a pet turtle, but it ran away. I remember that there was a turtle I found in the backyard once, and I think I put him in a shoebox (on the patio, with no lid), and the next day he was gone. I think I was four or five.
84. When I chew gum, I tend to suck bubbles in rather than blow them out. This is partly because I don’t chew “bubble” gum, and partly just because I’m weird like that.
85. Because my birthday falls on the 22nd of November (if you hadn’t figured that out from #74, now you know), I am both a Scorpio and a Sagittarius. Most horoscopes will put me as a Sagittarius.
86. My ears are not pierced. When I was younger, I wanted them pierced and my mom told me that if God had wanted holes in my ears, He’d have put them there himself. A week before my wedding, I had my ears pierced (with my mom’s blessing…in fact, she paid for it), and I wore my new studs for almost six weeks before I had to take them out because my lobes were infected. I haven’t had them re-pierced, though I probably will someday.
87. It took me 3 days before I really got emotional about the birth of my daughter.
88. Going back to #1, I earned the Girl Scout Gold Award. This is the highest award given in scouting, and could be compared to a Boy Scout Eagle. I don’t know if this is still the case, but at the time, Boy Scouts earning their Eagle could count other people hours worked toward their total hours spent on the project. Girl Scouts earning their Gold Award cannot, thus making the Gold Award more challenging than an Eagle.
89. I love aquariums. I could stare at jellyfish for hours. I’ve been to the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, CA, one of the largest aquariums in the world.
90. On my right foot, I have two toes that are slightly webbed. It’s not hugely noticeable if you’re not looking for it, but it’s enough that I can’t wear toe socks.
91. Of all bugs and creatures I have ever had contact with, my least favorite is the cockroach. I hate even hearing someone say the word. It conjures up creepies and disgusting sounds. It makes me shudder like the hyenas in The Lion King.
92. I can’t give blood. I tried once, but the needle was too thick and they couldn’t get anything out of my veins. They tried several times, including jerking the needle around, which left me very bruised and sore. When I have to have blood drawn at the doctor’s office, I’m fine, because the needle is much smaller. I just have to look away as they put it in.
93. One of my earliest memories is when I was three years old and learned to tie my shoes. I was so excited that I showed my grandma when she came to visit the next day. She was so impressed that she told me, “You’re not supposed to know how to do that until you’re 5!” What I don’t remember is what happened the next morning, but as my mom tells the story, I got myself dressed the next morning and came to her, asking her to tie my shoes, “because I’m not s’posed to know how yet.”
94. I love to prepare meals with colorful food. If a recipe calls for two red bell peppers, I’ll use one red pepper and a yellow or orange one for the other. Why settle for one color when you can have lots more? And I’m really bitter about the fact that there are no truly blue foods (blueberries don’t count).
95. Unless I’m wearing a skirt (and even sometimes then, but only at home), I will almost always tuck one leg under the other when I sit down, even at the dinner table. Usually it’s the right under the left, until I realize I need to stretch the right out, in which case I then tuck the left leg under.
96. I am a night person.
97. You know how some people crack their knuckles? I crack my elbows. I’m sure it’s really bad for me. If you ever see me randomly throw my arm out, that’s probably what I’m doing.
98. I once went to an NBA game with my then-boyfriend, who had tickets from his work. We were watching the game, when he pointed to the 24-second shot clock and asked me what it was. He wasn’t really much into sports. I knew what it was though.
99. I met my husband at Fenway Park.
100. CDs I own and could listen to over and over again without skipping tracks:

• Sheryl Crow and Friends: Live from Central Park
• Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights (soundtrack)
• Goo Goo Dolls: Dizzy up the Girl
• Eve 6: Eve 6
• Martina McBride: Greatest Hits
• Shakira: Grandes Èxitos
• Josh Groban: Josh Groban
• Lifehouse: Lifehouse
• Sarah Mclachlan: Mirrorball