Self-Indulgence

I borrowed this idea from another blog. Here's my list of 101 Things About Me (in No Particular Order):

1. I am a horrible housekeeper.

2. My car is dirty, inside and out.

3. I don't know why those are the first two things I came up with to put on my list of 101 things about me, but there it is.

4. I drink Diet Coke like some people drink coffee and/or water.

5. Sometimes when I look out my window at my office, I see people in their underwear in the building across the street.

6. I love watching the fog roll in off the lake.

7. I watch too much TV.

8. If I went back in time and chose a new major in college, it would be radio, television and film. Or maybe just film.

9. If I went back in time to graduate school, I would do extra coursework to get a second master's degree in linguistics.

10. I have often toyed with the idea of going to law school and to seminary.

11. I have a Hollywood crush on Vincent D'Onofrio (the Law and Order: Criminal Intent guy).

12. I have three brothers and a sister. I'm fourth in birth order.

13. None of us five siblings lives in the same state. One lives out of the country.

14. My earliest memory is of standing near the gigantic hole in the ground that was to become the foundation of our new house. I must have been two years old at the time.

15. My best friend growing up was Jane.

16. Jane's mom was like my second mom. It's nice to have a second mom.

17. I have the best husband in the world.

18. I cry at M*A*S*H re-runs and DeBeer's commercials.

19. It embarrasses me that I get goosebumps at the singing of the national anthem.

20. I am afraid of the dark.

21. I have incredibly low pain tolerance.

22. I get nitrous oxide at the dentist for cleanings.

23. I know, right? Lame, but also: awesome.

24. I bite my fingernails.

25. I have the best job in the world: freelance writer.

26. I love attention.

27. I think giving the benefit of the doubt is a powerful peace-making strategy.

28. I have three children: two boys and a girl.

29. Parenting (well) is the hardest thing I've ever done.

30. And the best.

31. I played on the varsity softball team as a sophomore in high school. We went to the state championships.

32. I played pretty much every sport offered in junior high and high school: field hockey, tennis, volleyball, basketball, and softball.

33. My family moved from Pennsylvania to Oklahoma the summer before my junior year in high school.

34. I wrote investigative editorials on controversial issues for my high school newspaper. Nobody cared.

35. I loved college.

36. I have only been west of the Rockies once in my life.

37. I love San Francisco.

38. I've only traveled overseas twice, to Cluj (Romania), Vienna, and Budapest in 1996 and to London in 2004.

39. I believe in the power of one: saying one kind word to a stranger, picking up one piece of trash on the way to work, helping one homeless person, making one small change at a time.

40. I hate sentimentality.

41. It annoys me when people use the word "semantics" inappropriately.

42. I love irony.

43. My desert island food is chips and salsa.

44. But the salsa can't have cilantro in it.

45. I love to cook.

46. I love parties.

47. I love being out in the sun. If I didn't love Jesus, I'd be a sun-worshipper.

48. I have been pregnant eight times.

49. My first child was a baby girl, Caitlin, who was born 18 weeks premature and lived for two hours.

50. This was the most important thing you could know about me until C. Peevie was born 14 months later.

51. I don't think we will ever know in this life why horrible things happen, like babies dying. We might know in the next life--but maybe not.

52. I believe that God brings good out of bad things.

53. I don't understand how prayer works.

54. It's harder than I would have thought to write a list of 101 things about me.

55. I like lists.

56. I only have two first cousins.

57. I married a guy with the same first and last name as one of the first guys I dated back in high school. Weird.

58. I dated an Iranian guy in college, and learned to speak a little Farsi.

59. I taught freshman composition as a graduate assistant at Oklahoma State University.

60. I have a master's degree in Teaching English as a Second Language.

61. I speak a little Spanish, but I wish I were fluent.

62. Our motto when my husband and I left Oklahoma was, "Happiness is Oklahoma in the rear-view mirror!"

63. I won an essay contest in high school, and bought a 10-speed bike with the prize money ($100).

64. I ate biscuits and gravy for the first time at the award ceremony for the essay contest, and fell instantly in love.

65. I was named the intramural athlete of the year during my junior year in college. I still have the trophy. One of my intramural sports was ping-pong.

66. I have lived in Chicago longer than anywhere else.

67. I love the Chicago skyline.

68. I love the lakefront, the neighborhoods, downtown; I love the character of the city, the faces of the people, the restaurants, the parks. I could go on.

69. I have a lot of friends who are cops, but I think the police department is a corrupt mess.

70. I will probably vote for Barack Obama for president in 2008.

71. I took piano lessons for four years as a child.

72. I love playing the piano, but I have to work very hard to learn a moderately-difficult piece.

73. I have relative pitch and about a four-note singing range.

74. I have green eyes.

75. I love to read: fiction, non-fiction, mysteries, memoir, theology, young adult lit., biography, history, poetry, philosophy, the Bible.

76. I do not have cable TV.

77. I wish I did have cable TV.

78. But if I did, I'd be the worst parent/friend/wife ever.

79. I'm a good speller.

80. I cleaned houses for a couple of summers during my college years. (Again with the irony.)

81. I used to play USTA tennis tournaments during my high school and college years. Once I just barely beat a woman who was eight months pregnant by hitting the ball just out of her reach.

82. My worst job was as a waitress at Ken's Pizza in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Once I got a one-cent tip and note on a napkin that said, "You are the worst waitress ever."

83. I love Baroque music.

84. I did a triathlon in, let's see, was it 1989?

85. I ran the Chicago marathon in, hmmm, I think it was 1991.

86. I think running a marathon is 90 percent (or more) mental.

87. Breast-feeding my first son was one of the hardest things I have ever done.

88. I never had braces, but I wish I had gotten them as a child.

89. The book that had the greatest impact on my spiritual life (besides the Bible) is Martyn Lloyd-Jones' Sermons on the Sermon on the Mount.

90. The book that had the second greatest impact on my spiritual life (besides the Bible) is Practicing the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence.

91. I have kind, helpful, generous in-laws.

92. I have never smoked a cigarette. I tried a pipe once and a cigar once, but didn't like either one.

93. I have never had a hangover.

94. But I love to drink wine.

95. Sometimes I browse the chip aisle at the grocery store.

96. When I was a kid I wanted to be the first woman in the major leagues and/or the first woman on the Supreme Court.

97. My favorite (cancelled) TV show is Fox TV's "Firefly."

98. My favorite currently-playing TV show is "24," and I totally have a crush on Jack Bauer, but at the moment it is seriously straining my ability to suspend disbelief.

99. I have never had a broken bone.

100. Once I won a mug from a radio station for calling in with a truly hilarious joke that the DJs did not even get. It was this one: Question: How many surrealists does it take to change a lightbulb? Answer: Two. One to fill the bathtub with brightly colored machine tools, and one to hold the giraffe. HAH!

101. And finally, I have always wanted to be a writer. Does this count?