100 Things About Me

Those blog friends of mine who have been reading my blog for a long time now will most likely already know everything on this list from the last one I did and from the many many times I have revealed everything before.  So skip this.  Please, I don't want to be responsible for an increase in valium popping around here. 

This is for everyone who is new here and wants to know about me.  This will permanently live on my "About" page for quick reference any time you wish to take a quick nap. 

1.  The first thing I like to get out of the way when meeting new potential friends are the following very important pieces of information:  I am mentally ill, I take medication for it, I don't play games, and I am not a swinger and sincerely hope that you aren't either.

2.  I have been married for 16 years to a great artist whose work you will one day covet.  He is also mentally ill and not a swinger.

3.  We have an 8 year old son who is like having three children in one, which is partly why we only have one.  We are really happy not to have more than one.  I admit that part of it is that I never want to give birth again.

4.  I am politically liberal and most proudly voted for our current president.  I have some surprisingly conservative beliefs but they don't include limiting a woman's right to decide what to do about an unwanted pregnancy and it does not include racism or limiting the rights of gay Americans.

5.  I am 100% not religious and I am yet, quite spiritual.  I don't believe in Jesus, "God" as god is known and described in the bible.  I dislike hearing people talk about Jesus like they have coffee with him every day.

6.  I don't mind if you have coffee with Jesus every morning, but for god's sake, don't evangelize to me.  I think evangelizing is evil.  Do not try to wrap me in your gospel.  I can assure you that the things I believe are pretty flexible but they don't include your gospel. 

7.  I do love some religious music, ironically.  I also love cathedrals and old stone churches.  I love places of worship.  I love iconography.  I love Jesus in art.  And Mary.  And crosses.  But mostly I love those things for the reflection they give of the people who sing the songs, made the buildings, and created an idea of love in art that speaks to me not of their faith but of their hope.

8.  Being a housewife with no kid was the best job I ever had.

9.  I love dirt.  "Soil" as my very good friend Dennis likes to correct me.  I love gardening.  Especially vegetables and herbs and flowers.  I'm not that into shrubs unless they produce something edible. 

10.  I am an excellent cook.  But I'm a vegetarian, so if your idea of excellence in food involves big hunks of meat- you will not agree.  And you will completely miss out.

11.  I don't like trying new things much.  I'm pretty happy with the music I listen to and am suspicious of most new music.  I will listen to new stuff if Philip or a really good friend forces me to.  Sometimes this introduces me to new favorites.

12.  You can suggest movies for me to watch and I will probably ignore you.  Either that, or, if I'm really interested I will ask you these questions: a) Is it an ART film?  b) Does it end on a hopeful note?  c) Is there lots of sex in it?  e) Are all the relationships in it doomed?  f) Is it French?  Because I can usually know from your answers to these questions whether or not I will watch it.

13.  I am a writer.  I should have put that one first but I was too busy making sure you knew I was crazy and not particularly kinky.

14.  I'm fat and middle aged.  I don't mind calling myself either as they are both true.  Although I am currently working on trimming the fat, there's nothing I can do about the age.  I am not bothered by aging.  Especially if I can be less fat.  I'll never be really thin, but it would be nice to be handsomely middle aged.

15.  I am passionate about many things.  I am especially passionate about anything that brings form and function together in one place, person, product, or tool.  To be useful and work well but also pleasing to the eye is the finest achievement in the universe.

16.  I have a permanently bloodshot spot in my eye.  I got it one night when I never went to sleep and I smoked about 3 packs of cigarettes, wrote very important poetry, and realized that I was probably clinically mentally ill.  My bloodshot spot really bothers me. 

17.  I love taking digital photographs.  I used to tease my husband about his collection of cameras and now he teases me because I have almost as many as he does.  I don't think film photography is better, just different.

18.  My mother brought me up as a vegetarian.  Although I have tried many different kinds of fish, poultry, and red meat- I find them all repulsive and if I can even get them down to my stomach in the first place I find that they hang out there for days.  That's not sexy.  I am really happy that I have been a vegetarian for 39 years.  I don't mind if you eat meat though.  But would you limit it to good quality responsibly raised meat, please?  If you can't afford much that way- so much the better for your health.

19.  I always feel shockwaves of incredulity go through me every time I hear that someone doesn't "believe" in global warming.  The evidence is overwhelming.  I admit that I don't think highly of the intelligence of people who question that the earth is being poisoned by people and that it is having long term effects.

20.  I believe 100% in a separation of church and state.

21.  I believe that we can't always help who we fall in love with, but I believe we can ALWAYS help who we sleep with.  I am deeply disappointed in people who commit adultery.

22.  I have more nightmares than I have dreams.  When I drink a lot of beer (which is most of the time) I don't dream much at all and I sleep well.  This is (unfortunately) a very attractive side effect of beer because I spent the greater part of my life in an agonizing insane cycle of insomnia.

23.  I really need to go back into therapy but I can't afford to.

24.  We are pretty sure our son also suffers from mental illness and are beginning the process of getting him assessed.  It's not easy being a family of "special needs" people.

25.  I often wish I was Leonard Cohen.  I love his lyrics and his spirit. 

26.  I love old houses.  I tried living in a plain 50's ranch and it made me really depressed.  My current house is a 1909 farmhouse that is in much worse general condition than our 50's ranch was.  I love it so much more and I'm so much happier here!  It's madly quirky and we have a long way to go to bring its charm forward again.  I love it here.

27.  I sometimes wish I was a more fun person.  But I've tried at different times in my life to be more "fun" and just ended up less happy and no one liked me more.  They never do.

28.  I love roses.  I rarely like roses without scent.  My chief joy in roses is smelling them.  I like to pick them and once I am sure that there are no fat spiders hiding in its folds I like to bury my nose in them.  I like to pick them to bring into the house and I like pruning them in the winter.  I like talking to them and seeing them grow stronger in my garden each year.

29.  I also love wildflowers of all kinds.  My current infatuation is with lupines and poppies.

30.  I love fashion.  I love fashion magazines.  I love new designers and loath Karl Lagerfeld.

31.  It really irked me that the lavender rose named after him smelled so damn devine and that the flower itself was so gorgeous.  Damn him. 

32.  Nothing in the world makes me happier than to hear my son laugh with complete abandon- such an intoxicating joy!  He is a complicated and somewhat serious person- to hear him let loose and roll on the floor with it is elixir.  Like mother heroine.

33.  I hate parties, especially fancy ones.  Although I would love to get dressed up if I wasn't so fat I loathe any occasion that expects or requires it.  I'm a casual person.  The real reason is that I get very anxious at parties and have to take about two days to get over them afterwards. 

34.  I love chickens.  I have four right now: Dot, Pinny, Flower-bud, and Pearl.  They are great layers and they make me so happy. 

35.  I love reading other people's "100" lists.  I'm always a little sad when I get to the end of them.  Go ahead and link me to yours- no matter how boring you think you are I will enjoy reading what you think should be on your 100 list.  Sometimes I learn things about people that they didn't mean for me to learn.

36.  You should know that, in general, I can read into you as though your skin was made of glass and your heart and spirit and head were all displayed in the present like museum relics for student study.  Luckily people are changeable, fluid, and what might have been visible one moment might be obscured the next.  So I can't know your whole story at any time.  My gifts, though many, come with limitations like all superheroes.

37.  I am a poet.  I haven't written any for a long time but I believe that being a poet isn't something a writer chooses, it's something a person is born being.  I am not a particularly great poet but every time I spend hours working at it it improves.  It is always going on in my head: rewriting all life stimulus into condensed rhythmic essentials. 

38.  I love all three of my parents even though each one of them is pretty nutty in their own ways.

39.  I am a person of many contradictions.  I find them just as frustrating as you do/will.

40.  I do not like excitement. 

41.  My head can be a very dark place and I am always seeking to shine more light in there.  I write so that others like me can share the damp matches.

42.  If I get hurt in front of you (especially if it's through a clumsy manoeuvre of my own) I will bark rudely at you that I'm fine.  Even if I just broke my hip and everyone heard the bone crack.

43.  I pierced my own nose when I was seventeen.  Actually I got the safety pin half way through and chickened out and I made my best friend Carrie push it the rest of the way in.  So we both pierced my nose.  And no, we weren't drunk.  Unfortunately.

44. I want to kill myself every time I cry in front of anyone.  I'm not actually kidding.  I would prefer to gouge my own skin than let you see me cry.  It's a part of not being super balanced.  I am pretty skilled at keeping my tears to myself.  Consequently there is a certain amount of internal bleeding as a result of it.

45.  I hope you realize that I meant metaphorical bleeding.

46.  I am aslo skilled at subterfuge.  My method is very plain: appear to tell every last detail about yourself so people will think they know everything and inevitably they will miss a lot of details in their complacency.  I also frequently assure people that I reveal "all" when really I think I keep some pretty big stuff secret.  Not stuff like being gay, or incontinent but stuff like how bad things really are in my head or my life and some of my real feelings about life, writing, mental illness, and parenting.

47.  I love Pacific Northwest tree frogs.  We have them in our yard and they are trying to attract mates as I write this.  So sweet.  They layed eggs in our fetid "pond" and we had tons of tadpoles and we loved them much.  Some of the frogs stayed behind. 

48.  One of my chief joys is making things.  I like to build, sew, paint, dig holes, rip carpet up, glue, make art, and use tools of all kinds.

49.  I love Oregon.  I love the whole Pacific Northwest and feel I've always belonged here even though I have spent over half my life as a California Native.

50.  I cannot put my bra on before my underwear.  I can't take my underwear off first either.  I think it's completely exposing in a really depressing way.  There is nothing more pathetic looking than a human who has nothing on the bottom half but is clothed on the top half.  The other way around is completely different.  I really don't know why because I don't think I've ever pulled that one out of my head and into the light before.

51.  It rubs me the wrong way when someone doesn't like something just because too many other people like it.  People taking pride in being "different" or ahead of the fad curve are the worst fakers of all.  Things become insanely popular for a reason and I don't understand having disdain for something solely based on it's level of popularity.  If you're going to not like something- don't like it because it sucks.

52.  I really like math.  I started off life terrified of it and barely passing every single one.  When I had to start over with math at the Santa Rosa JC I discovered that I was not only capable of doing math- I was really good at it!  And weirder?  IT WAS FUN.  I have already forgotten most of what I learned but I know that I can brush up any time I want and it will come back to me.  I'm very proud of getting straight A's in math as a JC student.

53.  The biggest education epiphany I have ever had is that math, language, and critical thinking are all languages in that each of them is based on a sentence structure with specific parts that must agree with each other in order to make sense.  I could describe a tree branch in terms of a mathematical equation, or a string of specific words, or in an equation of logic in which I can describe what I see based on other factors present making an argument for what is in front of me.  Do you see it?  My pulse races every time I think about how incredible and powerful that is.

54.  I often don't know when people are teasing me until I've already exposed myself as a social idiot.

55.  I have a very dry, dark, irreverent sense of humor.  Mostly I dislike body humor unless it is shared with the under 15 crowd.

56.  I think of my nightmares as my other life.

57.  Which is why I freak out if I smoke in one of them or discover I'm married to someone else besides Philip.  That world feels so real my emotional and mental self don't always feel the difference.

58.  I do not believe in the apocalypse but I love talking about it.

59.  I love talking about most things.

60.  I believe that all business is personal to someone.

61.  I am a master at subterfuge.

62.  And repeating things I've already said.

63.  Breaking my hip when I was 35 made me the joke of Santa Rosa General.  And all of the radiology technicians there after.  It was the most painful thing I've ever gone through physically besides giving birth.  I'm still not sure which one was the most traumatic.  Probably giving birth because I still have nightmares about being pregnant and giving birth again after 8 years. 

64.  I cannot return things to stores.  I waste quite a lot of money that way.  I just can't do it and I don't really know why but the few times I've managed to do it I have broken into a sweat and had panic attacks and thought I would pass out.  So I don't do it.  It embarrasses me when people try to convince me to take things back to the store because it exposes my irrational anxieties.  Generally I pass for normal and I don't like it when my cover is blown by someone else.

65.  My favorite nickname ever was "Peep".  Partly because I'm always such a clod-hopping indelicate female it was a pleasure to be called something so small and sweet. 

66.  I love animals.  I would love to have more if they weren't so expensive and us so broke.  I think I like animals better than people.

67.  I never read forwards.  Never.  I'll read notes attached to them though.

68.  I dislike e-cards of all kinds and e-vitations.  Just send me an e-mail.  Please. 

69.  I don't buy into the pitbull hype.  My dog is part pitbull and she's the best dog in the world.

70.  I used to be so afraid of dogs I would hide from them in the bathroom where I worked.  When I was 25 I started to ease out of my fear of them but it took a long time.  Now I really like dogs a lot.  I still think of myself as more of a cat person.

71.   I love black and white films.  But I only like film noir in small doses.  I prefer the Thin Man Series, or Carey Grant films.   A couple of my favorites are "The Women", "Rebecca", "The Shop Around The Corner", and "Libeled Lady".

72.  I would like to be as classy as William Powell or Myrna Loy.

73.  I love walking alone in cities with a walkman device so I can watch people with my own soundtrack.

74.  I still love David Bowie as much as I did when I was 13 and became an enormous fan.

75.  I don't like the word VAGINA.  I don't care if I have one or not, I prefer to refer to mine as my "hoo-ha".  Vagina will always sound like an STD to me.  I don't see why I should have to like the word to respect the part.

76.  I'm not a romantic person at all.  However, I love a film that has a good romance in it.  Films are not life.  Romance is not really life either.  So I like to be entertained by them but I'm not the heroine type so I don't like to pretend to be one.

77.  I'm not cuddly either except with my kid.

78.  But he's not cuddly any more now that he's 8.  He's informed me that I may not hug or kiss him in public.

79.  People who don't believe in evolution freak me out.

80.  Balloons also freak me out.  I hate them.  I HATE THEM.  Every single one of them.  I'm relieved that my kid doesn't like them anymore either.

81. I also hate fireworks.  I think I liked them a lot when I was a kid. 

82.  I dislike jokes with punchlines.  The worst ones of all are the sexual jokes which I just don't think are funny.  I try to be polite and not say "Those jokes are never ever funny so why are you forcing me to use my fake laugh?!  JUST STOP IT"

83.  I like jogging.  I just recently found out that I can jog again.  My hip specialist doctor told me I should never jog again.  I have been bummed about that for three years.  But I met a physical therapist (hip specialty) who told me that as long as the pain from jogging is manageble I can do it.  Until I have to get my hip replaced, then I really will never be able to jog again.  I need jogging shoes now.

84.  I am not lactose intolerant.  Don't bother trying to convince me that I am.  I think I know better than you.  Nothing was cured when I didn't eat cheese for a month.  I didn't feel better.  Cheese and me are very comfortable with each other and if you try to separate us I might have to do you bodily harm.

85.  Which reminds me that I don't believe that there is any excuse good enough for starting a war. 

86.  I think war is evil and wrong.

87.  There will never be a religion open minded enough to describe my spiritual beliefs, but it resembles buddhism more than any other.

88.  I love books.

89.  I am learning to make my own medicines and beauty products from my mother. 

90.  I am scared for my son's future.

91.  I love my Vespa.

92.  I love picking vegetables in giant farm fields with my headphones on and no one around me.

93.  I write letters to people in my head all day long. 

94.  I've probably written one to you.

95.  I loath secrets. 

96.  I think mental health must be brought out into the open in order for it to lose its taboo status and for people suffering from it to get the help they deserve.

97.  The best most valuable people in history have been mentally ill.  This may not be a fact but most people I admire who have contributed something amazing to culture have documented mental health problems or there is lots of evidence that they would have been found to be mentally ill if they had been able to afford help or if they had had access to mental health facilities.

98.  I believe in nonviolence.

99.  I would give you my shirt if you really needed it.

100.  Otherwise I prefer to remain fully clothed.