Facebook Made Me Do It!

I'd had every intention of posting "100 things about me" for my 100th post. Then the post slipped by, the task, too daunting.

By now, however, nearly every person I've ever known has tagged me on facebook for "25 things about me." 

25 things seemed a bit more manageable than 100. 

Here goes:

1) I’ve moved 26 times, 18 of those moves before I was 20. Most of those moves were around the SF Bay Area. Once I moved everything I owned across country over the course of three plane trips. For the next move, I drove everything back from NY to CA in an 18-ft. U-Haul.  

2) On April 1st, I’ll have lived in my current house for four years, and that will be the longest I’ve lived in any one house.

3) I've traveled to England, Scotland, Ireland, India, Denmark, France, Canada, Mexico, and throughout the United States.

4) When I was 22, I worked a weekly shift at the farmer’s market during the summer. That 4th of July weekend, I came home with three crates of fruit, and canned 184 jars of fruit and jam by myself. For a while, I didn’t have a big enough closet or pantry, so I carried them around in the trunk of my car. I gave them as Christmas presents for the next three years. 

5) In 5th grade I was fluent in “OB.” 

“Dobo yobou knobow hobow tobo spobeak Ob?”

6) I was an escort at the 2000 MTV Movie Awards for “The Will Smith Dancers.” They were just kids who’d been hired to perform for that one show and didn’t know we were there to meet their beck and call. Thinking we were trying to corral them back to their green room, they spent the entire event running away from us. 

7) That same weekend, I was given “The Limp Handshake” by John Stewart.

8) I have an incorrigible sweet tooth with a special fondness for chocolate. These days I’m trying to satiate my cravings with Trader Joe’s Dried Pineapple and their Sweet Sesame Rice Snacks. Those are good in their own right, but, they’re not chocolate.

9) I participated in a sweat lodge ceremony when I was 20.  

10) For my first two years of high school, I went to boarding school.

11) When I was 4 years old, I got a National Geographic photographer to take me for a ride in his helicopter. For a long time, I thought it was my cute dimples that swayed him. Now I’m thinking it was my mom’s cute dimples that got his attention.

12) In the 4th and 5th grade, I attended a two-room school house with a total of 28 students, K-8. 

13) I took up sewing when I was 13, because it was something my mom couldn’t do. I sewed both my prom dresses, and I went on to get a degree in textiles and fashion design.

14) When I was a senior in high school, my friend and I joined a hardcore bicycling group on a 50-mile bicycling trip. The extent of our previous biking experience had been riding our bikes to school. We naively thought that the first leg of the trip would be a breeze, because we’d be heading south, which would naturally be downhill. 

15) After completing a college Oceanography class, my study partner, who was a certified dive instructor, took me scuba diving in the Monterey bay. That was 15 years ago, and the only time I’ve ever gone scuba diving, but it peaked an interest, and I’d definitely do it again. Sky-diving however is something I once wanted to do, but, now that I’ve had children, I’ve crossed it off my list.

16) When I was 6, I told my friend, who had 13 brothers and sisters, that I had a sister that we kept in the closet. I was furious with my mother for telling her in Spanish (so I wouldn’t understand) that this wasn’t true.

17) My mom spoke Spanish to me throughout my childhood, and, while I understand quite a bit, I still can’t speak it.

18) When I was 10, I saw Johnny Cash perform at the Grand Ole Opry in Memphis.

19) After I lost my first tooth, I was woken up by “The Tooth Fairy,” which made things rather confusing when I began to question the legitimacy of Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny.

20) I’ve known my husband for 17 years. We’ve been in a relationship for 13 of those years, and married for 8. The first year we were together, he lived in CA and I lived in NY. The last year before we got married, I lived in CA and he lived in NY. We’ve lived together ever since.

21) I love to go barefoot, but hate the feeling of sticky or wet floors and will often find myself standing on the sides of my feet while washing dishes or cleaning house.

22) When I was six, I set about trying to discover the exact feeling of falling asleep. After two sleepless years, I finally pinpointed the moment between wakefulness and sleep. I blame that experiment on my inability to go to sleep at a decent hour.

23) I was in a full body cast for three months when I was 2-years-old. My poor mother.

24) I’ve lived on both coasts, but never in between.

 

25) The bane of my existence as a child was that my parents “chose” the last name Rain. I avoided talking about it at all costs. Now it’s such a part of who I am, that I chose not to part with it when I got married, even though my husband has a perfectly lovely last name, which is also the last name of my children.