One Hundred Things

A hundred things is a lot. My friend Barb was working on her list a couple of days ago, and having a hard time with it, and I mentioned that I was pretty sure there WEREN'T one hundred distinct facts about me. So she started writing them for me. I think she was up to 27 or so when I decided to give it a go myself, but I suspected that it was a diversionary tactic designed to keep her from having to work on her own list...or maybe a warm-up exercise.

Anyway, I decided to give it a shot and I was surprised by how easy it was. After I finished the list, three or four additional things occurred to me that probably should have been on the list. I thought about looking for things I could replace, but that seemed like too much attention to give this kind of exercise. It's surprisingly interesting to do, though. I recommend it, even if you're not going to post the results.

1. I prefer old-fashioned film to digital photography.
2. I never look back after I've written.
3. It's hard for me to think sitting down.
4. I'm more from Mars than I am from Venus; it's often very difficult for me to understand what women are thinking and why.
5. I'd kind of started to believe that my dog was going to live forever, and I hate that I was wrong.
6. My health problems make me angry.
7. At 16, I described the child I wanted to have in great detail, and at 29 I had her.
8. I can't sing.
9. I sing all the time.
10. I am English, Irish, French and Danish in nearly equal parts, but I only feel Irish.
11. I am not as good a Catholic as everyone in my life thinks I am.
12 I've only had two jobs I didn't like in my whole life, and they were both part-time summer jobs.
13. I carried my dog in my book bag around my law school campus years before anyone had heard of Elle Woods.
14. I am friends with nearly all of the men from my past.
15. My first paid article was about McGruff the Crime Dog, and it took me hours to write.
16. A similar-length article now takes me about 20 minutes to write.
17. I can do well on any standardized test, even if I know nothing about the subject matter.
18. My left and right brains are nearly perfectly balanced, and I shift back and forth as to which is slightly dominant.
19. I love math, but I didn't know it until I was 30.
20. I recently lost my best friend, and it still hurts every day.
21. I have a hard time turning off my "work brain" and focusing on anything else.
22. I am happiest and healthiest when I go to mass every day...but I usually don't.
23. I am very messy.
24. I love blank paper, to the point that I keep buying it even when I have stacks of different varieties already at home and am doing most of my writing on the computer.
25. I have very little curiosity about other people's business.
26. I am very uncomfortable in situations in which there is nothing productive to be done.
27. My daughter is 11.5 and her beauty still catches me by surprise on a regular basis.
28. Tea is an important ritual in my family.
29. I've been saying that The Sun Also Rises is my favorite book for so long that I'm no longer sure whether it's true.
30. When I was in law school, I hung out with a bunch of guys who thought I was cool because I'd drink cheap whiskey straight from the bottle with them, but a lot of times I covered the opening with my teeth and didn't really drink.
31. I skipped a day of my bar review class to take my sister to see the Grateful Dead at Soldier Field.
32. People are often surprised to learn things about me that I thought were right there on the surface.
33. I write very fast--5,000 to 7,000 words a day if I'm mostly focused on writing, and with very little editing required.
34. I hate milk, but all other dairy products (ie: ice cream, milkshakes, cheese) are my favorite food.
35. I made yogurt in a high school microbiology class and have consequently never tasted it.
36. I miss my hair.
37. I had "morning sickness" all day every day for four months, and came home from giving birth two sizes smaller than I'd been when I got pregnant.
38. People mistakenly believe me to be social.
39. I have kept every drawing, craft, and note that my daughter has created in her lifetime.
40. I also have a box of drawings, crafts and notes my sister made for me when she was a child and I was a teenager and in college.
41. I am not sentimental.
42. I love infrequently, but completely.
43. I do not know why I blog.
44. The song "Hang on Sloopy" always makes me smile.
45. I love semi-colons.
46. I love water, whether it be in my bathtub, falling from the sky, or filling an ocean.
47. I pay for and start watching a lot of movies I don't end up finishing.
48. When I was writing my book, I listened to nothing but Rick Springfield's music continuously for nine months.
49. I have three full filing cabinets and I don't know what's in them.
50. I have storage units in two cities and I still can't fit everything in my house.
51. I get excited about mathematical patterns.
52. I can't help noticing grammatical errors; I don't want to nitpick, but they stand out to me like flashing neon signs.
53. When I see words in isolation, like on a street sign, I automatically read them in different directions and scramble the letters.
54. My bookshelf is full of books I will never read again, and the books I cherish are packed away in boxes.
55. I keep a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church near my desk for quick reference.
56. I once wrote 273 pages of a novel in three weeks, but then took years to write the ending.
57. I used to do a lot of writing on the train back and forth to work, but now I can't stay awake long enough.
58. I am surprised that I like my daughter's mice.
59. I prefer not to think about people reading what I write.
60. I don't care much about stuff; I have a painting on my living room wall because my sister brought it over and hung it up, and I'm still using the stereo my mother bought for me in 1985.
61. When I read, I skip over descriptions of rooms and locations entirely.
62. I love lightly salted rice cakes--not as a diet food or a "lesser evil" or anything like that...I eat them on purpose.
63. I didn't get my driver's license until after I graduated from college, and then probably only because my parents bought me a used car for graduation.
64. Two years later, I'd driven across at least ten states alone (but for my poodle).
65. I hate volleyball with such an all-consuming passion that I am suspicious of anyone who plays it.
66. I still collect Hot Wheels.
67. I still have the teddy bear I got just before I turned two, in 1968.
68. I was a political activist in college.
69. I once ran a welfare advocacy clinic.
70. I worked three jobs simultaneously while going to law school full time.
71. Once every couple of years or so, I suddenly think of my best friend from law school and really appreciate anew the friendship that we had and the fun and mutual support we shared...but I don't get in touch with him.
72. I miss paper letters. Email is okay, but I loved writing and receiving handwritten letters in the mail.
73. I gave up voting after GWB was elected for the first time.
74. I love soccer, but I haven't been to a game in years.
75. My library books are always late.
76. I like to read in the bathtub. If the water would stay hot and life didn't intrude, I'd stay to finish the whole book.
77. I hate meeting new people with my hair short because I feel it gives the wrong impression of who I am.
78. I improvise.
79. I say what I mean--it's a big waste of time and counterproductive to try to read between the lines and figure out what I "really mean"--I really mean what I said.
80. A nurse tried to "hold back" my birth until my mother's doctor arrived to cover her own mistake, and without the intervention of a young intern at Jackson Park hospital in Chicago, I might have been brain damaged.
81. I haven't really given any new music a fair listen since the late 80s or early 90s.
82. I tell my daughter every day that she's exactly who I always wanted.
83. Getting caught in a downpour makes me laugh out loud.
84. In high school I got physically ill whenever I had to give a speech.
85. I've made a good part of my living as a teacher and public speaker.
86. I do not like poetry.
87. I love to discover people who are better/stronger/faster than I am in intellectual and professional arenas and work to keep up with them.
88. In my teens and early twenties, I avoided shorts because I thought my legs were fat; now that they really are I couldn't care less and wear what I want.
89. I didn't go to the dentist for 22 years.
90. I love to throw things away; I check my coupons hoping that they've expired so that I can clear them out.
91. I only own one pair of jeans, and that only because my mother insisted that everyone needed at least one pair of jeans and bought them for me.
92. I have as many vacuums as I have carpeted rooms in my house.
93. I am afraid of spiders to the point of possible phobia, but other bugs don't bother me in the least.
94. I love Neons. I can't think why anyone would want a whole, real, grown-up car when we could all have these friendly little high-mileage, easy to maneouver, practically free cars.
95. Every Monday when I'm dragging my garbage can up the hill behind my house at 6:00 a.m., I wish that I was married.
96. I have had two dogs who were well and truly mine throughout their lives, and I feel disloyal to both; each of them deserved to be the best dog a person ever had.
97. I don't have an artistic or decorative bone in my body.
98. I don't care in the least if you dislike me for who I am, but being misunderstood makes my brain explode.
99. I have been a lawyer, a receptionist, a hostess in a restaurant, a business college instructor, a curriculum developer, an author, a journalist, a salad prep girl, a telephone solicitor for the American Heart Association, a teacher trainer, a stay-at-home mother, and a night auditor in a hotel.
100. I'm madly in love with my kid. That probably sounds trite and overlaps with half a dozen other things I've said, but anyone who knows me would probably agree that it's my defining characteristic.