100 Things

Warning: if you know me in real life please ask yourself if you really want to read this.

1. I was born white, female, American, blonde, and mostly heterosexual in the 60's 2. The rest of it is my fault 3. I have a son, an amazing creature who is looking to me and my husband to raise him 4. He may regret that, later 5. I met my husband in 1997. He was a fling 6. I laugh often so it's unfortunate that I laugh like a barking seal 7. I don't have a nickname and I won't respond to one 8. My brother called me Lizard growing up 9. I was a chaplain for 5 years in my 20's then I burned out in a ball of disallusioned angst just before my 30th birthday 10. I left the Church but not my faith. Please don't try to Save me. Really. I still talk to God a lot and she's never mentioned you. (thanks, Ladyhawke) 11. Biblical fundamentalists scare the crap out of me 12. So do spiders, snakes, and clowns 13. I once had a professional clown for a cousin-in-law; he actually went to a real sleep-away college to become one 14. He was cool when he wasn't in the freaky getup 15. Still hate clowns though. And clown art. And songs about clowns 16. I dressed up as a clown once for a sponsored pub crawl 17. I'll do almost anything once 18. I was a scrawny, whiny, beat-up kid through junior high 19. When I was 12, I took a poop on the edge of a lake because I couldn't make it to the bathroom in time. A wave caught it and it floated into the swim lane. It was like that turd was following me and I couldn't outswim the thing 20. Freaking turd 21. It still boggles the mind that I survived a childhood among 3 charismatic jocks 22. I was pretty sure growing up that I was adopted 23. I wasn't 24. I used to MUD. I was a kick-ass take-that-you-Orc cleric, guilded 25. I MUD'ed to heal stuff, kill stuff, and blow stuff up 26. One day it was time to let the MUD go *poof* from my life 27. I was the last among my girlfriends to lose my virginity 28. I was seriously sexually propositioned for the first time when I was 14 years old and still in a training bra 29. I think anyone over driving age who has any interest in someone still in a training bra needs serious psychological counseling and, possibly, incarceration 30. I love being female, in all the ways you can imagine 31. Although that peeing on a tree thing sure would come in handy on occasion 32. It is my responsibility to leave the world a better place than I found it 33. This has many practical applications, including my kitchen 34. I live for words. I live for words strung together in concepts, in beauty, in vulnerability, in wit, in revelation 35. I adore the words of Pride & Prejudice, the Book of Mark and the Song of Solomon, the first half of Stranger in a Strange Land, the Declaration of Independence, the banter between Beatrice and Benedict in Much Ado about Nothing and the St. Crispin's Day speech from Henry V, the poetry of Maya Angelou, the visionary words of Descartes, Einstein, Robert Heinlein, Mother Theresa, Jimmy Carter, Mercedes Lackey, Gene Roddenberry the essays of Eleanor Roosevelt, Nelson Mandela, Dave Barry, the text of Robin Williams' riff on Scotsmen and Golf, the lyrics to It's a Wonderful World, movie quotes (especially Bill Murray characters and The Princess Bride), and the words above the little pictures in Doonesbury 36. I dig words set to music, and music that needs no words 37. I have 10Gig of music files sucking out my hard drive 38. It's not enough 39. I don't own a stereo, and I can't sing 40. I've taught American Sign Language at 3 colleges 41. I was a cool teacher. I taught all the swears and dirty signs 42. I speak marvelously bad French and worse, if possible, Spanish 43. I am extremely thin-skinned 44. It took me 5 years to get up the nerve to watch Schindler's List and still I cried so hard that I had to keep fast-forwarding the movie 45. By the 6th grade I had read every child series on the market: Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Little House, and Little Women. I still read pulp fiction in huge gulps 46. I used to look in the mirror and see a loud, smart, curvy, nomadic flake who never finished anything she started: including 4 colleges, 1 sorority rush, 2 engagements, my first marriage, 3 failed pregnancies, 5 novels, and an ordination 47. Now I see a loud, smart, curvy, funny professional woman who has had the same plants and cats for over 15 years, the same bank for 8 years, the same friends for 10 years, the same partner for 7 years, and the same job for 6 years 48. I need more polish, physically and socially 49. It was fine that my husband isn't an American citizen until we had a child. Then I started imagining worst-case scenarios. I love his culture, his language, his identity. I just don't want to come home one day to find his ass has been deported over a 5-year-old speeding ticket 50. My pedigree: I started journalling as a kid in 1979. I went online with my own bad self in 1997 (complete with bad clip art that took an hour to load) . We bought our first domain name in 1999. Wanting to feel a litle more free, I added a semi-anonymous format to the portfolio in 06/2004 using Blogger 51. Hey, I was wondering. Do you look different in the mirror than the picture you have of yourself in your head, too? 52. I'm sensitive to sexism. I work in core IT, not the fluffy side. You better believe the I am the only woman in the meeting more than half the time 53. It's crap, but what's there to do but pony up and keep blazing? 54. My career is serious business. I treat it with respect 55. but I wish I was a stay at home mom 56. I chose my company because it seemed more diverse in its employee population and more invested in its employees as a policy 57. Yeah, really 58. Turns out, the company is actually a bastion of middle-aged white men who play golf and talk about the good old days of "real" engineering 59. Still, the absolutely right choice. The company has done right by me even while I've been fighting for changes from the inside 60. I hate voice mail 61. Seriously, I won't check it for days, weeks 62. I had a guy threaten to have me fired for it, he loved to send "internal" voice mails through the system without actually calling me and went nuts when I would never respond 63. I check my Caller ID rabidly on all 3 phones in addition to my 2 email accounts, 4 instant message accounts, text messenging, and a pager function but this guy couldn't get over himself 64. Yeah, I got nothing for this one 65. I'm blessed with amazing friendships and chosen sisterhood 66. If I don't have fresh sheets on the bed on Sunday night then the whole week is headed straight for the crapper 67. I can't drink anyone under the table. I have the constitution of a gerbil 68. When I get depressed, I eat and suffer from insomnia 69. Hours spent watching movies, drooling over Bradley Whitford, Denzel Washington or Matt Damon 70. I'm weak for smart 71. I'm an independent voter, a fierce proponent of free will and choices - even those I don't agree with 72. Bush is a weasel 73. OK, so that last one wasn't about me. But frankly, it's something that needs saying and often 74. I was the Queen of unrequited love until I was in my 20's 75. In high school, I liked this guy for 18 months. I would call him every single day after school to "go over our homework". It wasn't just the joke of my family - it was the joke of the county 76. The spell was broken by a Very Nice Guy who, I firmly believe, just couldn't watch the train wreck of my puppy love for one more minute 77. One day he came to our study table in the library and physically turned my chair so I was facing him and my back was to the object of my affection 78. Every girl deserves a Very Nice Guy to hold her hand and tell her how bright she is and how any guy would be lucky to have her and how pretty she looks in her cheerleading uniform. We all need external validation, especially from very cute Very Nice Guys 79. Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. I was a cheerleader in high school 80. Among a million other things 81. I'm practically a professional Anglophile 82. I hate being overweight and am constantly fighting to be in better shape 83. I love to swim 84. I love to be by the water. I grok the world when I am watching the horizon over the sea 85. Cooking is my passion 86. My next career will have something to do with food 87. Clam rolls are nectar from above 88. When my husband and I were first dating, he wouldn't eat much beyond meat and potatoes. Plain. Now he asks me what kind of wine I'm using in the mushroom reduction 89. I get turned on by the curve of my husband's collarbone, the set of his jaw, the reach of his arms, and his amazing eyelashes 90. I'm terminally house proud 91. Which is pretty sick, considering the state of my house 92. Overachievement is overrated. Trust me on this. There ain't nothing this world needs less than another chatty Christmas letter 93. Yes, I do a Christmas letter. In November 94. I need to create 95. I have an outstanding sense of humor 96. No, really 97. Sure, everyone thinks they have a sense of humor 98. If my son ever faces the kind of hell his father and I dealt with in school, we've agreed to sell out and travel the world as a family - maybe on a sailboat. We might do that even if school goes just fine 99. I'm well-traveled 100. Not a day goes by that I'm not haunted by wondering how I can do more to help