CGG August: Write Your Face Off #2: Who You Callin' Fat?

I'm going to work at participating in the writing challenge issued by my ginger spirit boob animal guide Brittany Herself. You can find the entire list of August writing prompts at her blog if you want to peek ahead at what I'm up to, or just, you know, stay tuned.

August 2, 2014 Prompt: The first time you were called fat. When was it, and how did it change your life?

I can't honestly say that I remember the first time. It was just a thing that everybody knew. I remember it being understood, like it was understood that I was a girl, or that I had brown eyes, or that I had hands; it was understood that I was fat. It was also understood that this was the worst possible thing I could be and the thing that brought shame to my family. As a child, this was part lack of self-confidence and part conditioning. I grew up in an environment where I was told I was smart and outgoing, although I never felt outgoing at all. I was told that I was an extrovert, someone who wouldn't hesitate to speak her mind, someone who never met a stranger, but the idea of being any of those things was always terrifying. I faked it a lot. Still do. Still terrifying. Eventually I got the message that being the funny fat girl was better than being the boring fat girl. It will horrify my parents to learn that the overarching message I received from them about women was that only thin women are worthwhile. My mother took me to ERA marches and punk concerts. Those things and more sent great messages when they occurred, but they weren't the messages broadcast at me day in, and day out. Day in, and day out, my mother was the most beautiful woman in the room, at all times. The beauty pageant competing, golden-voiced, fashion modeling, anorexic, bulimic, self-torturing woman with ribs prominent enough to be counted sent a much more consistent message. My father taught me to code and navigate by the stars, to think critically and rely on science. Day in and day out, he didn't even acknowledge women as people if they were outside of the Playboy standard. These were the contexts in which women were approached. 

At various times my parents and grandparents offered me money to lose weight, enrolled me in weight loss classes, told me boys would pay attention to me if I lost weight, and so on, and so forth. So I can't say I remember the first time someone actually called me fat. I remember the first time I put on a body-conscious sweater dress in high school, and when my younger brother saw me, he gasped "But I thought Jennie was FAT!"

So did I. Looking back on pictures from that time, I had young teen pudge. I can remember sucking in my belly and thinking "if only that would go away, I'd be pretty!" If only I knew then that I was a strong young woman. If only I knew that I was worthwhile and valuable for lots of reasons, none of them body-specific. If only I had been able to see my own 14-year-old self the way I see my incredible 14-year-old daughter. I'm trying to teach her what I should have learned, myself.

I'm in the middle, at around age 14

CGG August: Write Your Face Off #1

I'm going to work at participating in the writing challenge issued by my ginger spirit boob animal guide Brittany Herself. You can find the entire list of August writing prompts at her blog if you want to peek ahead at what I'm up to, or just, you know, stay tuned.

August 1, 2014 Prompt: Write a letter to yourself 10 years ago. What do you know now, that you wished you’d known then? 

Dear Jenne,

It's about time you stopped with the dumbass spelling of your name which you devised at age sixteen and had engraved on a Zippo lighter (the teenage version of legally and permanently changing one's name) so that you could offer one spelling for people who call you Jen and people who call you Jennie. You're thirty years old, and you're not a Jennie. You're a Jen.

Things are about to get very difficult, very fast. It's time to make that huge step you've been putting off because it's scary, and time to get on with the rest of your life. It's going to be really great, and the kids are going to turn out to be incredible people. Stop being so afraid.

Let me say that again: Stop being so afraid.

Love,
You, age 40.

Now and Then

Sometime between when I turned 30 in February of 2004 and marrying for the second time in August of 2006, I:

• Got my first tattoo at Infinity Tattoo in Portland, Oregon, recommended and accompanied by my friend Lisa*. Why Oregon? Because here in South Carolina, tattooing was still illegal in 2004 (yes, seriously) and I very much felt a need to mark my 30th year in a visible and indelible way. 
• Cut off most of my waist-length hair, dying it varying shades from orange to magenta and firecracker red.
• Changed careers
• Pierced my nose
• Took up a major aquaria hobby (one 5 gallon tank with 2 fish somehow became a 60 gallon show tank)
• Got a second and third tattoo.
• Decided "I'm going to be Witty Geek Shirt Girl!" I would collect funny t-shirts! Friends would think of me as the awkward but endearingly funny gal! They could always count on to turn up wearing an amusing t-shirt! Some of my favorite shirts were a vintage Mr. Yuk, a pretty-much-only-okay-in-South-Carolina tribute to the UofSC COCKS, a Flying Spaghetti Monster logo, and the highly controversial Pirates Are Way Cooler Than Ninjas. 
• Among my favorites, this:

I really do.

I stopped wearing this particular shirt when those mysterious little washing machine holes began to turn up, and a couple years later had to take it away from my husband (who thought it perfectly fine to keep right on wearing a shirt with a big hole where the collar was ripping away in front, in public).

By the end of 2006 I realized that I was not really much of a t-shirts-all-the-time person at all, and most of them went off to live in places like husband's closet or the Goodwill. This morning, halfway through July 2014, I happened across the talk nerdy shirt while packing my yoga bag before work. I allllmost passed it by again, but then paused, thinking of how cutting out the torn crew collar and trimming down most of the sleeve length might turn this old friend into a great top to for yoga class. I did, it did, and I wore it for tonight's power hour class set to the music of Rush! RUSH!! \m/

As for the rest of it, well, by 2009 that huge aquarium was drained and moved to a storage shed, where it still sits as of this writing.** My nostril piercing has closed, but now I have (and totally love) two tragus piercings. My hair is relatively short, but what was once "holy crap red" could now rightly be called "salt & pepper". I sat for a fourth tattoo not long after the third, but since then I have felt exactly zero artistic inspiration for a new one. Next month I'll have been at my "new" career for 9 entire years, and mostly I think I do a good job at it. I am pretty sure I know who I am these days, at age 40. I'm still not much of a crewneck t-shirt person, and tin only aquariums I'm interested in are ones I pay to visit and then get to leave. I am strong(ish), capable(ish), I can do hardcore(ish) yoga (I never saw that coming), and I enjoyed the hell out of yoga class tonight, in my newly trimmed shirt. Because for all the other changes, I do indeed still love it when one talks nerdy.


* Lisa, you're a footnote! Hah! Everybody else who is not Lisa: Are you in Portlandia? Stop! Drop whatever it is you are upcycling or composting! Go directly to the Peculiarium on NW Thurmond, and tell Lisa I sent you! She will induct you into the Insectatarian Club, introduce you to Bigfoot, and even show you an extraterrestrial dissection! Act now! 

** Just wait until an 8 inch long freshwater shark leaps right out of the tank flying directly AT YOUR HEAD IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT (I just wanted to go to the bathroom!) and see how much longer you want to keep fish.

For Renée

If you'll pardon the intrusion, I will take a moment of your time here, Internets, and I will tell you a thing:

The thing is, I am breaking up with American Idol.

I explained this to Renée in great and pointed detail yesterday, by way of an email which may or may not have included some but not all of the lyrics to Dolly Parton's I Will Always Love You As Performed By Whitney Houston Crack Is For Poor People Kiss My Ass (you can't prove anything). This post is more on the topic of that, and it's mostly for her, because she will put up with my rambling - you may have heard I tend to go on awhile - and we all need someone who understands us, right? Right? Right.

So I am breaking up with American Idol, after a decade-long courtship. Part of my present-tense use of "breaking up with American Idol", as you may have noticed, is the clearly attached connotation that I have not done so - not yet. Which: If you're a practitioner of the Context Clue, you know means that me and AI, we're still seeing each other. Up 'til now. But not for long.

Eventually I will address Steven Tyler's blatant disregard of Aerosmith and the human populous in general, but before we get to that place, there was this performance by the surviving members of TLC. The ones who are both alive and also not Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes (because she's dead; CONTEXT CLUES). As regards both the T and the C, I can't help but think they must be in some dire need of the moneydollars, and I hope they have been well-paid for showing up and taking their medley of '90s hits out for a walk. Because I remember how they were the picture of barely-composed bravery, all brave with their brave selves and their hand-holding on that stage at that awards show. I remember that standing ovation and the shaky composure and our security in the knowledge that not a single either one of them would (probably) ever set fire to a sports guy's house again. And then they packed themselves up and put themselves away to go about living lives or whatever, out of sight and also mind, like you do. Quietly respectful of the world's knowledge that without Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes there is not, no, there is not a TLC - no indeed. And they - like us - felt good about that, because it was good, but alas also over, which we all agreed about and we moved on. Older, wiser, and with both straps of our overalls fasted securely where they belong.

They left us as they should have: with the fond memories of their gawky, condom-adorned adolescence (I cannot WAIT for the stats on site referrals to this post! I dare you to count and list all of the moneyshot words contained herein!), and then about how they grew up to be fine young ladies and the eventual Sickle Cell trouble and all the bankruptcy and arson - and even these beauties felt unpretty - even them! And because we remember all that we just wanted to sort of wish the various stages of TLC well and feel good about what we meant to each other at the time. You know? But now here we are, all these years later, it's the cultural relevance equivalent to T(*)C drunk-dialing us and hollering into the phone about how we never did give back their Depeche Mode CDs. It's not like we're unhappy to hear from you, T(*)C, but not like this, because this is sad in that Sarah McLachlan-behooving-us-to-save-animals way.

Perhaps you, like me, kept expecting the medley to give way to some new song, but alas: 'twas not to be. No new material whatsoever (the inclusion of tiny rapping personification of the Predator alien man we won't ever mention again notwithstanding). I'm sure you know - as I do - that performing new music is understood and included in any live television broadcast's TCO for retaining an artist to perform. Because otherwise nobody would ever show up. Tom Petty is like 'I would rather die than sing Refugee one more time, DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND THIS'. So we're essentially watching the rapping Misses Havisham all up in our business with their ancient wedding dresses going on about stopped clocks or chasing waterfalls (rather than sticking to the rivers and the lakes that they, themselves, are used to) or whatever, meaning to save us from misery like their own.

Backfire! Which reminds me: Steven Tyler.

Part of my "it's complicated" with AI means that thus far I have not only been exposed to Steven Tyler exposing himself as a solo artist (I know! That is not the way we expect nor are accustomed to!) in a new video, some black and white jobbie with circus animals (which: fitting, granted) and women younger than his daughters and possibly mine about how (It) Feels So Good (the 'It' is his penis). This video, I will embed it in the post script of this post. The post's post script, if you will, which I know: you totally will, don't even front.

So anyway, the point - I have one - is that I would like to go ahead and be on the record about how I find all of this Steven Tylering-around-in-our-faces-and-making-with-the-Aerosmithing-solo-while-that-sir-is-an-Aerosmith-song-and-that-right-there-is-the-standard-scarving-and-crotch-issues-of-the-Aerosmith... I find this deeply disquieting.

It's like how even as I myself am a consumer of the Americanized reissue of the BBC's Being Human show on SyFy, the show Being Being Human - I do not understand it. The casting choice of Sam Huntington, this I understand. I enjoyed him in Detroit Rock City and I have been pleased to note that he done growed up and caught himself a case of the adorbs. But this American re-issue: it perplexes me, it is a thing which is totally beyond me.

As I am a person who speaks English in What, I am also a person fully capable of both understanding individuals who tawk funny like them Brits as well as obtaining the avenues by which to do so. So too am I a person capable of watching Being Human without requiring it to be set in Boston and delivered to us in Americanish by cute Sam Huntington and his flatmates - roommates, sorry - that vampire with the too much face topography all up in his facial face and that woman who is No Annie, no ma'am. I just can't seem to grasp why we need separate and distinct forms of the same thing.

Which is sort of like how I can't really understand Steven Tyler having a Steven Tylering solo career and then not Steven Tyler Solo Album Single performancing on the AI, but Aerosmithing without Aerosmith on the AI. You dig? It's complicated. What I'm saying is Steven Tyler performed Dream On. Which: Aerosmith song, maybe you've heard of it?

Except there is nary a Joe Perry nor any of those other people including the one with the unfortunate hair and the other one with the terrifying babyman head from that one video, and possibly others but they can be and remain beside the point - of whom, and I am admittedly bad at math but this math is the kind of math that allows me to say "this math is in my math WHEELHOUSE", okay: the sum total of all of these absent parts plus the crotch guy equals Aerosmith.

So this thing, it was happening, and I just sort of cock my head and Simple Dog shapes appear and I look at this thing that I should know except it is not the thing I know, and there is no Sam Huntington anywhere. But there is Steven Tyler's horrible caricature of a face and also crotch everywhere and the whole world apparently co-signing on how this is an acceptable thing.

I will miss Ryan. The end.

P.S. Do you know what happens now, Gentle Reader, when I write blog posts? I worry about every word that barfs forth, because Think Of The Children. My children, not so much yours, but mine, because mine are denizens of the Internets, now. They are that old, and I know they are going to read this - and other things I have written - sooner rather than later. And I just said "crotch everywhere", you see what I did there. I think I'm probably okay, what with how my teenager spent 5 minutes cracking testicle jokes over peanuts last night. So there's that.

P.P.S. I warned you I was going to do it:

I Was Wrong, or The Handbag Tortilla Test

As you may or may not be aware, I have long-held the opinion that giant purses are a signifier of The Crazy (diaper bags excepted. If you have a child small enough that you need a diaper bag you have my undying sympathy, I will gladly watch your baby if you need a nap, and btw there is a spit-soaked cheerio in your hair).

Which is not to say that carrying a giant purse automatically means that I would judge you as a Crazy Crazerson, but I would indeed assign a little check mark. In my head. Actually it is more that when a giant purse presents alongside certain other things that I will make my McJudgyface. Listen, I've turned 37 since last this blog was updated, and that means I am (a) old and (b) have lived long enough to collect some wisdom. With that wisdom comes the self-righteousness of passing judgement on teenage girls in hot pants with giant purses and roach clip feather earrings. Do your mothers know what you're wearing? I hope you grow out of this.

So anyway, you guys, I was wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. I was WROOOOONG.

You see, a few years back I learned to knit, and since then it's become a thing for me, you know? I do it a lot, as anybody who reads this blog or spends any time talking to me at all would know. So I reached a point where my one teeny little do-it-all purse was still enough to be pursey, but it was not pursey enough to accommodate my knitting. This meant I never took my knitting along unless I was going someplace expressly to knit, thus I decided to suck it up and buy a Mary Poppins/kitchen sink/crazyperson purse. That was months ago. I've kept my eye out, but because I am cheap I could not abide spending $30+ on a purse. Most of the purses throughout my life have been $15 or less, because to me they are not accessories. They are just a means of transporting my stuff, I usually only have one at a time (I'll wait while someone gets the smelling salts for Erin :), and I carry it until it breaks.

Okay, so: that's the back story which brings us to last weekend, when I had to take CJ to the maul so that he could hang out with his ladyfriend. (Sidebar: I hate the mall) He ditched me immediately, like you do when you're 13 and someone you recognize might omg see you with your mama in public, and that was when Mer and I visited Claire's. I found an enormous bag of holding which met all of my criteria: huge, cheap, and able to handle my knitting.

I have been using it for 4 days now. In these 4 short days I have grown incredibly attached to this bag, and I'm about to tell you why. Ready? Tortillas. The purse is so large that I didn't even notice I have been carrying a package of tortillas around for three straight days (I'm going to make soft tacos for dinner at some point this week. That sound you hear is Tim cheering).

Click to embiggen and view with notes

So you guys, I'm here to say it. You were right, and I was wrong. Huge purses aren't the human baboon butt of crazy, oh no! In fact they are the peacock feathers of utility and function.

My future criterion for purse selection: Does it pass the tortilla test? Because the tortilla test is the purse test of AWESOME.

Portland

Things I miss about Portland:

• My people
• Mount Hood visible from anywhere
• 90 minutes to the ocean
• Tillamook cheese
• All that rain
• All that coffee
• All those trees
• My Father's Place
• Liberals
• Powell's
• Getting to the rest of my people in a day of road-tripping
• Seattle is right there
• Banning's (I know, technically this is Tigard) coffee at midnight with D & I
• Infinity Tattoo
• Full-service gas stations
• Basketball

Things I don't miss about Portland:

• That smell in the morning
• All that rain
• The way it doesn't seem like I belong there anymore, and I don't know when that happened
• Waiting for the Hawthorne Bridge
• Randomly running into old teachers and other scary people
• Beaverton (I never liked Beaverton)
• "Pop"
• Front licence plates

I think maybe I'm homesick.

Ten

My baby girl is ten years old today. Where has the time gone?

A Merry first five years:

Click to embiggen

Her second five years:

Click to embiggen

Happy tenth birthday to my Merry baby. She's a complete joy, and I love her so much. I'm so lucky to be her mom.

February: Old Age

Oh look: It's February. Lots of things have happened in the 10 days of February that have already elapsed. Here are a few:

• CJ and his girlfriend (!) were written up at school for kissing by her locker. I had forgotten that public displays of affection are outlawed at school. Honestly I was just glad that this time he hadn't been in a fight.
• I got into a hit and run crash on the 3rd. Very scary. My beloved Saturn VUE is going to be in the shop until at least the 19th.
• Meredith started in the gifted program at school, made it into the talent show, and continues to be so booked with activities that she has to consult her calendar before making plans. She's 9.
• We're in crunch-mode at work. I mostly enjoy crunch time, but not when it requires days worth of a most dreaded activity. I've developed a twitch in my left eyelid while doing said activity. I'm convinced it is psychosomatic, and that's hilarious.
• Tim has been coordinated by the lovely and talented Tracy, and there's apparently some to-do afoot for my upcoming birthday. We don't usually do a lot of to-doing as regards my birthday. I'm thrilled and nervous. Speaking of my birthday...

I'm turning 36 this month. Day after tomorrow, actually. I've been having a constant feeling of unease in the pit of my stomach regarding this, even as I fully recognize just how ridiculous that is. Age Aint Nuthin But a Number, (whatup ghost of Alyiah!) and all. I know. It's petulant and privileged, and oh my god, Becky, look at her butt (and that was two (count 'em!) TWO early nineties song references right there!) and everything, but there it is: I'm having Gettin' Old anxiety.

Starting sometime some number of years ago around this pre-birthday time (how's that for specific?), I realized that I remembered my mother being the age I was about to be. That was unsettling. I approached thirty with the idea that I was going to dread it, every minute of it... but that never happened. I love my early thirties. Or, at least, I've loved my early thirties. 30 turned out to be great. I felt like I finally "came into my own", as They say. I took charge of my own life, made really positive changes, and feel super proud and good about the result.

35, on the other hand, was upsetting. Suddenly I was being addressed by pharmaceutical companies and tv doctors and other forms of media in a whole new way. Not as a desired consumer, but as a warned consumer. "Women over 35 should consult their doctor before...", "Women 35 and older should not...", etc etc. If I want to have another baby, I'm "high risk". 35 was a whole new ball game.

And so now I'm about to turn 36. That's "late thirties" by any definition. Ugh.

Water: Meh

"Woo hoo!", I thought to myself this morning, "I can get a head start!"

That was during my morning commute, when I realized Tim had packed a bottle of water in my lunch. I finished it before arriving at work, all pleased with myself for getting that one out of the way early on. And now, I find myself mid-afternoon, struggling to get through the second bottle.

My daily goal is to consume four of these aforementioned bottles, because that's what They recommend. That's what They say is good for me. Yep, this is what passes as a new year's resolution in me-land: "Maybe I should drink something other than coffee, cream soda, and red wine, once in awhile? I don't even remember the last time I drank plain water... Let's see how that goes..."

So here I am.

Every day, I struggle to choke down four 16.9 ounce bottles of water, and every day I find myself wondering: Why the hell is this so hard?

Aren't we human animals something like 60% water? Isn't this what we're meant to drink? Supposed to drink? And then I force myself to chug down some more. Frankly, it's annoying. I'm constantly filling and refilling bottles, I'm running to the bathroom all the time, I don't feel any different than I did before, and I'm annoyed with having yet another item on my To Do list. Oh yes, I am that petty:

Don't even talk to me about lemon wedges, or flavor packets, or Special K Protein Water mix. Those are all great ideas, in theory, (and "everything works in theory", which always makes me think of John Cash's old .plan, or maybe it was his .sig? Anyway....). In reality, to make use of such items I have to remember that I need to purchase said items, and then execute the purchasing of said items, and remember to pack them along with me, and then... the hardest of all... remember to use said items. I just don't have the spare brain power to do it. So, plain water, I thought, I can handle. I have empty bottles, and there's a water fountain pretty much right outside my office door.

And yet, here I am.

Still on bottle two.

New Template

The last one was driving me crazy with disappearing comments links.

This one, by Templates Block, struck my fancy. I'll probably get bored with it soon enough, but I'm quite fond of it for now.

When It's Time To Change You Got To Rearrange

Hi there.

The more I think about it, the more I believe that Leila may be right: Social media is killing our established means of communication.

In particular, Twitter and Facebook are to blame.  I'm not angrily pointing fingers, here; I love me some Twitter and Facebook.  I love them so much, in fact, that if I have something to say, most of the time, I'm going to say it on the former, which will auto-update the latter, and I can then add a comment, if necessary.  I email my friends less and less, because pretty much all of my friends are engaged in one or both of the aforementioned means of communicating with me.  I post to my lists still less, because (see previous statement).  If I care about you or you care about me, it's pretty likely that you know exactly what I'm up to at any given time.  I won't send you a Christmas newsletter, because all of you have been experiencing my life as I choose to share it as it happens, so my lazy ass isn't going to have to try to sit down and compose it all into paragraph form and print it off onto fancy poinsettia paper and lick stamps and gather your addresses and make the excruciating walk to the mailbox and lift the million pound little flag on the side of it, and then trudge back uphill barefoot in the snow to my front door.  If your address has an @ sign in it, we're good.

I'm okay with that.

Most of the time.

The thing that hangs over my head is this blog: Yes, this very blog that you're reading right now.  I almost never write for this blog these days - in fact, the last time I put anything here at all was 8 months ago, and even that was copied and pasted from Facebook.  Hand me my cane and let me whack you with it for a second: I've been blogging since before blogging was really a "thing".  Back then my blog posts were written in notepad, and uploaded via FTP. The Internet Archive's earliest record of previous iterations of this site dates November 11, 1996.  That's before my kids were born, before I got married, before I moved across the country.  I was 22 years old, then.  That's just what the Wayback Machine has on record - my first ever 'blog' was a Doom fanpage, circa 1994 or so.

Anyway, point is, this blogging thing is something I've been up to for 15  years.  That feels like a damn long time (and I guess it is).  So when I consider that maybe I should close up shop and let this go, it seems like a good idea.  But, I can't.  It's like the awful holey clothing that my husband is so totally not allowed to wear but unwilling to part with.  It's packed up and in the attic, but he's just glad to know that it still exists, even if he doesn't get to use it.  That's how this blog is, for me.  It's here if I need it.

So, maybe I'll post more often, and maybe I won't.  I'm making some changes to the way that I interact with the Internet Nation: For example, I've started a Twitter account that is open to the world (that's it over there on your right).  I've changed my email address to one that is FirstnameLastnameOtherlastname@, instead of mynxzilla@ - because I started to feel ridiculous having a screen name email address at 35 years old.  I didn't even realize that I was feeling weird about it until I found myself dreading having to give the address to teachers and school administrators for the kids, or when trying to spell it out over the phone to doctors or whomever.  I found myself explaining, and making excuses, and just generally feeling pretty dorky.

Those two changes happened last week.  I'm pretty sure they're going to be the only changes, too, but I can't say for absolute certain.  I'm going to keep my Facebook account and my primary Twitter account locked down, because I like to know for sure who has access to certain things, and who doesn't.  But as far as this blog goes, it's going to stay, I think.  Maybe you'll even hear from me, now and again.

Now get off my lawn.

Desktop again, for rbw

New URL

Please note that this blog will now be living at http://www.mynxzilla.com/ . You'll probably want to update your bookmarks and site feeds and such. Thanks!

Five years ago

I wrote this list of 100 things five years ago. I thought it might be interesting to cross out the items that no longer apply:

1. My father and the doctor were reading Playboy while my mother was giving birth to me
2. I very nearly did not survive my infancy, I was born with a rare blood disorder.
3. As a child I tested as having an obscenely high IQ.
4. I had braces.
5. I'm a slob.
6. I'd rather play Tetris or Solitaire than, say, Quake.
7. There is a bot in Quake 3: Arena named after me.
8. I met my husband in a game of shareware Quake. He impressed me with the size of his shotgun. Ex husband.
9. I am 8 years younger than he is.
10. I can roll my tongue, fold it, and tie a cherry stem in a knot with it.
11. I get carsick in the back seat.
12. My first child was a surprise. I was on the pill.
13. My second child was carefully planned.
14. I used the Shettles method to choose the sex of my baby.
15. I won a playground breakdancing contest in 4th grade.
16. I cheated on a math test that same year and didn't get in trouble because my teacher was a childhood friend of my uncle's.
17. I experimented with recreational drugs as a young adult and hated every single experience.
18. I almost married someone else.
19. I fell in love with him in a tent in the wilderness over a bottle of Jack Daniels.
20. He was dating my girlfriend at the time.
21. I've practiced Catholicism, Christianity, Wicca, Paganism.
22. I finally settled happily into Unitarian Universalism.
23. I am bitchy.
24. I love to cook, but I make a huge mess doing so.
25. I'm a rotten housekeeper.
26. I can't decide if I want to have another baby.
27. If I get pregnant again someday we are having a homebirth.
28. I refuse to negotiate on that subject.
29. I loathe conflict, but I fight like a dog.
30. I miss living in Oregon.
31. I was more or less living alone at 16.
32. I was supporting myself at 17.
33. I worked at Subway to do so and can barely stand to eat there now.
34. I am double jointed.
35. I crack my knuckles.
36. I secretly long for a nose job.
37. I skipped my high school graduation ceremony.
38. I went to California instead.
39. I boycott Nestle.
40. I could survive entirely on Papa John's pizza.
41. I am strongly drawn to space.
42. Astronomy Picture of the Day is one of my favorite websites.
43. Inside I feel like I'm still about 12 years old.
44. I'm breastfeeding as I type this.
45. I love being creative.
46. I bake really good bread.
47. My hair is turning gray.
48. I don't mind, and actually think it is kind of cool.
49. I stopped shaving.
50. I used to shave my arms.
51. I wear CoCo by Chanel.
52. As a teenager I had a major fixation on Marilyn Monroe.
53. I read Gone With the Wind in one single day.
54. Sometimes I wonder if I'm mentally ill.
55. I chose my internet nickname out of a dictionary, and replaced the "i" with a "y".
56. I was called "Bug" by everyone until I was a teenager.
57. Some people still call me "Bug".
58. I used to be late to grade school because I would stop and rescue caterpillars from the road.
59. I developed a very intricate story in my mind and still think about it and expand it occasionally.
60. I love animals, if someone else takes care of them.
61. I performed in a handful of stage plays, but always had smaller rolls while understudying the big ones.
62. I'm a shameless flirt.
63. I develop crushes whenever the wind changes.
64. I'm going to get a tattoo this summer. Did it in January.
65. On the back of my neck. Yep.
66. I'll ask Paul Steed to design it, if I can track him down.
67. I adore Stephen King.
68. I want a minivan.
69. I co-sleep with my kids.
70. My husband sleeps on a futon.
71. It works out fine for us.
72. I am terrified of spiders.
73. I have really really accurate gaydar.
74. Huey Lewis kissed me on the cheek.
75. I asked Jerry Garcia if he had a baby in his tummy.
76. I'm mildly psychic.
77. I have boundless knowledge of trivial things.
78. I can't remember important tasks or dates without writing them down.
79. I paint my toenails. Usually purple or blue, right now they are blood red.
80. I can't sing.
81. I do it anyway.
82. I don't know what I want to be when I grow up.
83. I hate being predictable.
84. I lost my virginity at 15.
85. Homecoming night.
86. I like to wear toe rings.
87. I have terrible self-esteem.
88. My favorite meal is spinach quiche and pulpy orange juice.
89. I am a homebody at heart.
90. I love the way my babies' breath smells in the morning.
91. I'm late getting the kids and myself ready for school/work because of this list
92. I have a major dental phobia.
93. What I really want to do is direct.
94. Rufus Wainwright makes me swoon.
95. I'm always really attracted to gay men.
96. I once stood on a table and sang "I'm a little Teapot".
97. Drunk.
98. Topless.
99. Someday I'm going to write a book.
100. Cinnamon Altoids are my favorite food.