100 Things

Written in honor of my 100th blog post on Wednesday, November 12, 2008, and in deference to the Blog Gods, who will surely smite me if I do not mark the occasion by revealing 100 truths about myself.

1. When I began this list, I was 12,307 days old.
2. My middle name is Janeece.
3. My middle name is the same as my mom’s.
4. We discovered after my grandmother’s death that she had a close high school friend named Janeece.  (We found photos of the two of them.)
5. If I’d had a daughter, her middle name would be Janeece.
6. Neither of my sons has the middle name, Janeece.
7. I took French as my foreign language in high school for the sole reason that my first name is French.
8. I’m glad, because France is now one of my favorite places.
9. I don’t speak much French, though.
10. I despise lying.
11. When I was in elementary school, I was told to make up a poem in my journal.  I couldn’t think of anything, so I wrote down a song my grandmother liked to sing.  I was in Virginia, she was in Nevada.  No one would know, right?  (Kid logic!)  The song: Be kind to your web-footed friends, for a duck may be somebody’s mother (etc.)
12. I was caught.  I was mortified.
13. Embarrassment stays with me for years.  I have felt intense mortification for events that happened ten years in the past.
14. I often get embarrassed for characters on television shows and am highly uncomfortable watching them make asses of themselves.
15. I don’t understand why the show Seinfeld is considered funny.
16. I think Jerry Seinfeld’s stand-up is funny, but it doesn’t translate well to a sitcom.  What is the deal with that?
17. I have a quirky sense of humor.
18. I find the show Pushing Daisies incredibly funny.
19. Monty Python, too.
20. I don’t like bathroom humor.  At all.
21. I like my baths and showers very hot.
22. I prefer baths, but I rarely make time for them.
23. Sometimes morning “getting ready” feels like a waste of time.
24. Driving also feels like a waste of time.  I just want to be there, already.
25. Riding in the passenger seat is not a waste: I can read, talk to the driver, crochet, or do sudoku and crosswords.
26. I love going on road trips with my husband.
27. My husband and I are best friends.
28. Yes, we’re one of those mushy couples who actually enjoy spending as much time together as possible.
29. I also enjoy spending time with my parents and my younger sister.  We all get along very well.
30. In fact, my sister and I loved going on trips with our parents when we were teenage girls.
31. Trips with my family always included bags full of books, board games, and playing cards.
32. We like to play Canasta and Spite and Malice.
33. My husband and I also like to play Canasta.
34. My eight-year-old now likes to play Spite & Malice.
35. I love to read.
36. No, I really love to read.  I can’t put a book down.  I tend to ignore other important things in my life when I have a book in front of me.
37. Thankfully, I am an extremely fast reader.
38. My parents and sister are also voracious readers.
39. My Dad and sister are writers, too.
40. My sister is a writing fellow in law school.
41. Mom is an artist who favors abstract design, although she’s drawn to geometric shapes.
42. I realize this list is supposed to be about me, but my family is an undeniable part of who I am.  I read, I write, and I craft.  This is because of the influences of my family.
43. My sister is one of my best friends.
44. She can also push my buttons better than anyone I know.
45. She no longer chooses to push my buttons.  We’ve both matured a lot.
46. We haven’t had a fight since 1993.  That is a mutual, unspoken agreement.
47. We had some doozies before 1993.
48. When we moved to England in 1991, we decided we were each all the other had, so we called a sort of a truce.
49. I sat on her lap and cried when the pain from my wisdom teeth extraction was too much to bear during lunch period at school.
50. The first celebrity whose death brought me to tears was Jim Henson.  I believe I was a freshman in high school.
51. The most recent celebrity whose death brought me to tears was Steve Irwin.
52. I am a crier.
53. What movies to I cry at?  All of them.  No, seriously.  Give me a slightly poignant moment, and I’m misty.
54. I also cry when I feel deep emotion or frustration.  This is inconvenient in business situations and is no easier to control for the inconvenience.
55. I am a kick-ass administrative assistant.
56. I haven’t worked as an admin for six years, and I don’t miss it.
57. I enjoy paperwork.  Forms are fun!
58. Office supplies are a drug.
59. I am a stay at home mom, but motherhood is not my calling.
60. I am dismayed by the pressure in society for every person to have kids.
61. I chose to have children but was under no pressure from my parents or my husband’s parents to do so.  There are many people who have no desire to be parents.  What’s the big deal with that?  If your child doesn’t want children, stop pressuring them to have some!
62. I yell at my kids, even though I hate yelling.
63. I don’t think I am alone in that.
64. I often feel like my voice is not heard until it is raised.
65. I do not have the patience necessary to teach.
66. This is why I don’t volunteer to teach Sunday School and why I did not become a teacher.
67. I am raising great huggers.  These kids can hug, and they do so without pause, provocation, or purpose.  A hug is for hugging, and it feels good.
68. I will be satisfied with myself as a parent if I raise confident, polite, determined men who explore their creativity and choose careers they love and spouses who are their best friends.
69. I am quite nervous of the future probability of daughters-in-law.
70. I like my mother-in-law.
71. My mother-in-law likes me.
72. I come from a small extended family.
73. I married into a very large extended family.
74. The differences between the two are amazing to me.
75. I can’t imagine what it would be like to live very near extended family.  (Results of being a military brat.)
76. I feel blessed that my children have had so much time in their young lives with their grandparents.
77. The separation of my children and my parents & in-laws is the only thing making me doubt our move to Seattle.
78. I believe change is usually healthy, though.
79. I want my children to be unafraid of change.
80. I can make change (for a purchase) pretty quickly.  It’s all in the counting-back.
81. I love counting money.
82. I was a bank teller during one college summer and directly after graduating from college.
83. One of my clients in the bank drive-through, a doctor’s office manager, gave me a felt snowman she had made for Christmas in 1997.
84. We dropped that snowman off at Goodwill last night after our garage sale.
85. I felt great sentimental attachment to many things we sold and gave away this weekend.
86. I am working to remember feelings and memories without the physical prompts of these ‘things.’
87. I enjoy scrapbooking to mark my memories.
88. I do all of my scrapbooking digitally now.
89. I would like to take courses and learn the ins and outs of proper photography.
90. I do not want to be a professional photographer, taking pictures of wedding ceremonies and other people’s children, but I would love to be an art photographer, just for fun.
91. I truly appreciate art, but I am tired of art museums.
92. The Musee D’Orsay is my favorite art museum.
93. Van Gogh is my favorite painter.
94. I have no talent for painting.
95. I have little talent for singing.
96. I still enjoy singing.
97. I met my husband thanks to our singing.
98. My husband, our children and I like to sing along with the radio in the car.  Today we all sang “Viva La Vida” by Coldplay at the top of our lungs.
99. I am having a very, very good life.
100. When I completed this list, I was 12,311 days old.