100 Things About Me

(me at around 4-6 months, early 1980)

1. I was born three months shy of the 80’s.
2. My middle name is a family tradition that goes back four generations on my mother’s side.
3. I broke the tradition when I gave my daughter her middle name.
4. I hate tuna. Not your garden-variety dislike but an intense and pure hatred, LOL.
5. When I was a child I spent every waking moment reading.
6. As a result, I was convinced that if I dyed my hair red I could be Anne of Green Gables.
7. When I was about 7, my brothers ‘hung’ my Cabbage Patch Doll up by a noose then collapsed in a fit of laughter when I threw a tantrum.
8. I went into the kitchen and mixed together globs of this and globs of that to make ‘slime’, climbed onto the kitchen roof and dumped it on their heads the next time they walked past.
9. I just forgot to remove the ladder. You can’t run away on a roof.
10. I am a romantic comedy (aka Chick Flick) tragic.
11. I don’t like snakes. The big ones are bad enough but the itty bitty ones are terrifying.
12. I don’t drive.
13. By choice.
14. I really liked the name Johanna for our daughter, but we changed our minds.
15. My middle son is named after a character in a Jane Austen book and DH has no idea that’s where I got the idea.
16. I really wanted Willoughby (Will for short) but I chickened out.
17. I love Mark Twain quotes.
18. Erma Bombeck was a genius before her time.
19. I like junk mail.
20. I enjoy grocery shopping.
21. I design my own spreadsheets and templates to track everything from finances to menu planning.
22. I lived on a hobby farm as a child and spent my weekends climbing trees, building cubby-houses and weaving willow tree baskets.
23. We had potty calves we called Chocolate, Strawberry, Licorice and Caramel due to their distinctive colourings.
24. We also had cows called Joseph and Mary and had no choice but to name their calf Jesus when he was born on Christmas Day.
25. Other cows were called Bonnie and Clyde.
26. No, we didn’t own a dairy.
27. When I was one year old, my best friend was a pet lamb. I used to share my bottle with this lamb. Then one day she wasn’t there anymore. Apparently Roast Lamb featured prominently on the menu that month.
28. I used to own a green ‘Sprite’ with yellow star ears (from Rainbow Brite fame) in the mid 80’s. I lost him when we moved. I was about six years old.
29. When I was three I nearly severed a toe on a broken-off beer bottle. The entire top half of my toe lifted off the bone like a flip top lid, held down by a scrap of skin. The scar is impressive and I use it to scare the kids when they misbehave.
30. I once sewed a finger to a stuffed frog in Home Ec class in high school. I had to manually roll up the sewing machine foot and pull my finger out, needle clear through on both sides.
31. I can only cook three things well. Lasagna, Fried Rice and Tomato and Vegetable Soup.
32. I met my husband when I was 16 and he was 18.
33. I had our first baby at 19.
34. The second baby came at age 20.
35. On my 21st birthday I had to express milk before I could go out to dinner.
36. We got married at ages 21 and 23.
37. The third baby (finally born in wedlock!) came when I was 22.
38. After that we figured it was about time to stop!
39. I like to buy containers. Doesn’t generally matter which type – baskets, rolling tubs, wash tubs, Tupperware – they’re all fair game. Newest acquisitions: three small wash tubs I’m using as ‘folding baskets’, one for each kid.
40. I have ‘my’ favourite shows and tape a lot during the week to catch up on later. I really want a DVD recorder!
41. My candy of choice is peanut M&Ms.
42. I’m married to a part time (but very skilled) amateur photographer. He’s taken most of the photos of the kids you might see here.
43. I catch buses wherever I need to go and actually don’t mind it.
44. We bought our first home in June ’05 after renting for almost 8 years.
45. I like a large chunk of country rock music, most ballads, and the odd bit of Simple Plan/Good Charlotte/All American Rejects when I’m doing the housework.
46. Which is almost never!
47. I like to bake.
48. I’m not nearly as enthusiastic about cooking ‘real’ meals.
49. I would cook and bake all day long if someone else did my dishes.
50. I make a killer Fudge Brownie.
51. I just discovered the world’s best pizza dough recipe and rave about it to everyone who will listen.
52. If I ever write a book about my family, it will be entitled “Brothers, Billy-Karts and Bolt Bombs”
53. I love the smell of jasmine.
54. We always use the vanilla-scented air freshener in the toilet.
55. I taped my daughter’s birth and watched the video on her 5th birthday. The entire soundtrack to the tape consists of me yelling “CHECK THE CAMERA!!!”
56. When she was born I asked “Is she still a girl?” (I already had two boys…I was desperate)
57. My daughter and I share the same scar – a small tooth-width line just underneath our bottom lips on the right side. It’s eerie how they are virtually identical.
58. I got mine at age 2 or 3 when my brothers were playing the ‘one, two, THREE!’ game with me – they lost their grip. As did my two front teeth when I head-butted the windowsill.
59. Miss Moo got hers when she tripped over her toddler feet.
60. I told her no matter where she was in the world, whenever she saw her scar she would think of me, and when I saw mine I would think of her – we’re connected, quite possibly the only mother-daughter team in the whole world with the exact same scar in the exact same spot caused by two separate accidents two decades apart.
61. I’ve chosen to keep the other scars she left me with secret. She can watch the video herself when she’s pregnant :P Which I’ve told her will be in her mid twenties at the earliest.
62. Reptiles in general bother me.
63. I LOVE the movie While You Were Sleeping.
64. I was in love with Bill Pullman for most of my teens.
65. I wanted to work for a train station so someone could drop a diamond ring through MY token tray. It never happened, sigh.
66. I discovered I was pregnant the night my (now) husband went to a Metallica concert.
67. My husband proposed when I was 7mo pregnant with our first. Then he went to a Slayer concert.
68. He’s too scared to go to any more concerts.
69. During our wedding ceremony, our ‘hope candle’ blew out.
70. I kept every letter and card he ever wrote me while we were ‘dating’.
71. I torture him with sappy quotes from them to prove that he’s not as macho as he thinks he is.
72. I hate intolerance and ignorance – two of the biggest threats to a peaceful existence, in my view.
73. My eldest son learned his letters from Wheel of Fortune and his numbers from Sesame Street. For two years he thought the number ‘5’ was actually said ‘5…mwah ha ha ha’ (ala The Count).
74. There’s nothing like a head wound on your 3yo to make you wet your pants.
75. I’ve never broken a bone…though not from lack of trying.
76. Motorbikes scare me. Every few months DH suggests it as a more economic means to travel to work and every few months he gets the divorce speech.
77. I have a ‘funeral song’.
78. I made DH pick one the other day – the only one mellow enough in his collection is too depressing to use…but he is insisting.
79. In nearly every case, I should be studying rather than doing what I’m doing. Including now.
80. I walk down the street imagining scenarios for stories. That guy over there? Serial killer. The woman with a pram? Drug mule. Stuck in an elevator and a nice bomb squad hunk uses a crane on the roof to secure the people inside before they plummet to their deaths at the hands of a madman who has rigged the whole thing with bombs? Darn it, that one’s taken.
81. I used to make my Dad save his beer bottle tops so I could use them as ‘coins’ in my fake shop when I was 6 or 7.
82. I want to write an ebook.
83. My husband is turning 30 at the end of the year and doesn’t want a party. How do you celebrate a milestone birthday like that without a party?
84. I think he’s scared – the last time he had a milestone birthday (his 21st), I gave him a 4w old son as a present.
85. I’ve never had a surprise birthday party…and I want one.
86. The Ultimate Holiday: a week at an all-expenses paid writers/pampering retreat. Alone.
87. I don’t like meat with bones. I'm a lazy carnivore.
88. I am a Christmas nut – my husband is The Grinch incarnate. Makes for an interesting few weeks come November/December.
89. We had our honeymoon in 2000...a full year before we were married. Our second son came with us…in utero.
90. Then when we GOT married, we took the kids (then just two of them) on a driving holiday as a sort of ‘proxy honeymoon’.
91. I don’t care what you’ve done, or how badly you stuffed up, but an apology isn’t an apology unless there’s a backrub and headrub involved. This only works on my husband by the way…its just too weird if someone else tries it.
92. My kids are saving up their pocket money to buy China. How much do you think China is going for these days?
93. My kids’ biggest thrill in life is the prospect of takeaway for dinner.
94. The year I turn 40, my eldest son will turn 21, my middle son will turn 19 and my daughter will turn 18. I’m thinking that would be a good year for a party.
95. My middle son is the only one of our kids who inherited his parents characteristics – brown eyes and dark brown/black hair. The other two managed to get light brown hair and blue eyes.
96. My daughter was born 6 days before Christmas 2001. I got a GIRL in my stocking!
97. I spend all summer complaining about the heat then all winter complaining about the rain. I want spring all year round.
98. The stretchmarks on my a** merely indicate that my body was once a baby receptacle. Things spread. Other things droop. In the end, does it really matter?
99. I’ve only ever loved one single man in my life. And now I can’t get rid of him!
100. I’ve never been prouder of anything I’ve ever done than I am when I look at my kids.