100 Things About Me

1. I am a terrible chocolate snob. I like only very dark, very good chocolate.
2. I am also a terrible coffee snob. Some people say bad coffee is better than no coffee. I’d rather have no coffee.
3. I like a dry cappuccino.
4. I don’t understand why so many baristas don’t know the difference between a cappuccino and a latte. Big difference.
5. I have big hair (not on purpose—it’s genetic).
6. I made my hair very, very extra big when I was a teenager in the ‘80s and had tall bangs and feathers and used a lot of hairspray and curling irons. My sister did the same thing and our bathroom always smelled like burning hair.
7. I am very cranky in humidity.
8. I ran the Vancouver Marathon in 2001.
9. I love to work out. My mood is better, my body feels better, and I am not depressed when I work out at least three times a week. I have done yoga, weight lifting, roller blading, Krav Maga, and pilates; used a sliding board, NordikTrak, stairstepper, and a body ball; run; and walked.
10. I have used a NordikTrak 3-6 times a week every week since 1993, except when I’ve been traveling or hospitalized.
11. In 1990, I lived in Florence, Italy for a month with my then-boyfriend (now ex-husband). We rented a rundown apartment in a 400-year old building with some other people. We ate gelato everyday, even if it meant not having any money left for dinner.
12. In 1997, I spent ten days in Guatemala and Belize. I snorkeled for the first time off the coast of Belize and loved it.
13. A few days after I returned from Guatemala, I had a brain hemorrhage and ended up in the hospital for a week. I was diagnosed with an AVM adjacent to my brain stem.
14. My AVM was successfully treated with stereotactic radiation.
15. My mother died when I was 12.
16. One of my worst fears is that I will die and my daughter will grow up without a mother.
17. I’ve been told that the best and worst thing about me is that you always know where you stand with me.
18. I believe in balance but not moderation.
19. I met my ex-husband when I was 19, married him when I was 22, and divorced him when I was 39.
20. We got married in Las Vegas with an Elvis impersonator present.
21. We have one daughter, who was born in 2002.
22. When I was pregnant, I had terrible morning sickness for the first trimester and for a long stretch couldn’t keep anything down but saag paneer from our neighborhood Indian restaurant.
23. I lived on Long Island (New York) until I was almost 8.
24. If I’m not careful, I start talking way too fast for anyone but a New Yorker to understand.
25. I love prune danish
26. And the New York subway system.
27. I also love Chicago’s public transit system
28. And really, really wish Denver had a decent public transit system.
29. I didn’t own a car for a few years in Denver and rode the bus and walked everywhere.
30. I miss not having a car payment.
31. I love fresh fruit, especially blueberries and perfectly ripe peaches.
32. I do yoga almost every day, even if it’s only for five minutes.
33. I am a Buddhist, but I do not belong to any official sangha.
34. I used to wait tables and have managed a restaurant and sometimes miss the restaurant business.
35. I was a sometime-vegetarian, sometime-pesco-vegetarian for 23 years.
36. I now consider myself a flexitarian. I eat meat once or twice a month.
37. I wanted to be a nun until I was about 12.
38. I had an all-red dining room (walls and ceiling) in my last house. It was wonderful.
39. Sometimes I say something out loud that I thought I was saying only inside my head. When my sister and I talk to each other, other people are often reminded of the rebel base scene in Star Wars.
40. I love the way it can snow in Denver one day and be in the 50s the next day.
41. I live in a 1913 bungalow with a gigantic old hot water furnace we call Sparky.
42. I always name my cars. My current car is named Biggie.
43. Before Biggie, I had Ginger, and before that, I had Geoffrey.
44. I will watch any film with George Clooney or Jodie Foster in it, no matter how bad.
45. I like big, sturdy wine glasses better than delicate ones.
46. I have two tattoos and want at least two more.
47. My eyesight is terrible and getting worse.
48. In college, I switched majors from communications to criminal justice to English to history, finally graduating with a bachelor’s in history, although I had more credits in English.
49. My master’s is in English, with the credits coming about 2/3 from literature and about 1/3 from comp/rhetoric.
50. My Ph.D. is in English Studies.
51. I am a clutz.
52. I eat breakfast every morning and usually wake up hungry.
53. I hated high school.
54. I hated long stretches of college.
55. I loved/hated graduate school. I loved reading in the discipline, conducting research, and discussing scholarship and research with others; I hated the competition among graduate students, the one-up-manship, the arrogance, and smugness of many of the students (which is encouraged by many of the faculty).
56. I would prefer people to underpromise and overdeliver rather than the other way around.
57. I drive too fast but have never gotten a speeding ticket.
58. I never speed on residential roads, and it drives me nuts when people speed down my street.
59. I have a tendency to snort and cackle when I laugh.
60. I love to nap, although I don’t have as many opportunities for napping as I wish I did.
61. I have very vivid dreams that occasionally contain accurate predictions. (OK, there was only one accurate prediction, but it was bizarrely accurate.)
62. My handwriting is atrocious. When I write comments on student papers, I have to make a conscious effort to write slowly and legibly, and even then, many students can’t read what I wrote.
63. I am terrible about returning phone calls but very good about responding to text messages.
64. I am working on developing the perfect mojito recipe.
65. I don’t like small spaces, especially elevators and 2-person tents.
66. But I love camping, as long as I can sleep in a big tent.
67. I love to bake. My specialties are customized birthday cakes and all sorts of winter holiday desserts.
68. When I first started teaching, a student wrote on an evaluation, “Nice person, shitty teacher.” It was probably true.
69. For my first five years as a teacher, I struggled with how much it mattered whether my students liked me or not. I finally realized that is matters not one bit.
70. I hate lawns and get pissed off whenever I see them. When we moved into our house, my soon-to-be-ex-husband tore up our lawn and replaced the front lawn with mulch and xeriscaping and the back lawn with a stone patio.
71. I do love to run through grass barefoot but I wish I didn’t.
72. I suffered from depression from the time I was 9 until I was in my mid-20s. I have suffered from manic depression since my mid-20s. I was on medication for five years but now have reasonable success controlling my depression with yoga.
73. I never suffered from post-partum depression, unlike the majority of women who have had children.
74. I have always voted Democrat or Green.
75. I consider myself a feminist and an environmentalist.
76. I love road trips, although I hate being the driver because I think it’s too dangerous for me to be the driver. My vision is bad and am easily distracted by other cars, signs, windshield wipers, and passengers. Although if I drive, we’ll get there faster.
77. One excellent road trip I took was in 1992 when my then-boyfriend and I decided to get married in Las Vegas. We drove with two friends from Illinois—where I was a student at Bradley University—to Las Vegas and got married over my Spring Break. On the way there, I had the second-best breakfast of my life at a diner in Albuquerque called Adrienne’s.
78. On the way back, we drove through Denver and had the best breakfast of my life at a diner on Colfax called the Walnut Café (which recently closed).
79. Another excellent road trip I took was in 2004. My then-husband and daughter and I spent five weeks driving from Denver to Illinois (to see my in-laws) to Virginia (to see my dad) to New York (to see my cousins and godmother) and then through Quebec and North Bay, Canada, and then through Wisconsin, South Dakota, and Wyoming.
80. I am fanatical about wearing a seatbelt and require everyone in my car to wear one.
81. Just about the grossest thing I can think of at the moment is having to drink a tall glass of milk. I have never liked drinking milk straight (it’s a family tradition—my dad and his parents never drank milk and my daughter won’t drink milk).
82. One of the best things about being a parent is telling my daughter stories about when I was a kid.
83. When I was a kid, I wanted to grow up to be independently wealthy and own lots of horses in rural Virginia. I never had a good plan for becoming wealthy (I obviously still don’t).
84. I spent 2/3 of one miserable semester at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts.
85. When I was a kid, my parents wouldn’t let me paint my bedroom. My dad is a big believer in white walls.
86. I can’t stand white walls and have always preferred lots of color wherever I am living. The house I live in now has an orange kitchen, green dining room and living room, and blue bedroom.
87. I have been in a Walmart twice in my life and bought something once, in 1999. I still feel bad about it.
88. I hate to get up early, but if I do get up early, I feel better all day long.
89. I love being the first person up in the house, when it’s dark out and quiet.
90. I love being the last person up in the house, when it’s dark out and quiet.
91. I grew up near a beach in Northport, New York, and can’t remember ever not knowing how to swim.
92. I love the smell of saltwater on the breeze that permeates the air within a mile or so of a beach.
93. I went through an extreme awkward phase beginning when I was about 8 and lasting until I was about 16. I can’t stand to look at photos of myself from that period because I remember how lonely and sad I was then.
94. Whenever I had a sore throat as a kid, my mom would make me hot tea with lemon, honey, and a shot of whiskey.
95. I love going to the movies, but I hate paying more than about $6 to see a movie. I didn’t see a movie in a movie theatre for about a year in the ‘90s because I was too cheap.
96. I am very cheap when I buy clothes, and often I regret my cheapness. I still remember a pink and red top from Banana Republic that I was too cheap to buy a few years ago. I figured I would just buy it when it went on sale. Well, it never went on sale. Now, years later, whenever I feel like I have nothing to wear, I think, “Damn. If I had only bought that top at Banana Republic.”
97. I don’t know much about wine, but I sure do enjoy drinking it. I like shiraz and pinot noir best for reds and sauvignon blanc best for white.
98. My favorite authors are Isabel Allende, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, John Irving, Dave Eggers, Margaret Atwood, Galway Kinnell, and Lucille Clifton. I have an index card signed by Dave Eggers.
99. I never had braces on my teeth.
100. I did telemarketing as a teenager and had the highest sales in my unit for two years straight.

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