Me 101

It’s been a hot minute since I updated this page. It’s interesting to note that things I once thought were quintessential facts about myself no longer feel quite so true or urgent. Anyway, this is the skinny on little ol’ me as of January 2022.

1. 1. This blog began in 2009 as a chronicle of my brand new life as a wife to a physician.
   2. It’s not really about that so much anymore; moreso about the mundane ups and downs of a person trying to live a decent life.
   3. Decent as in “good enough” not as in “doesn’t swear or drink or watch R-rated movies,” because I do all three.
   4. I am a daughter as of 1981, a wife as of 2008, and the mother to one child (whose blog name is Carla) as of 2013.
   5. My child was born sixteen days past the due date my doctor assigned me, which is my biggest claim to fame.
   6. I hate tomatoes.
   7. I love snow.
   8. While I am extremely unathletic, I love to downhill ski.
   9. My biggest dream in life is to be a writer.
   10. I have an MFA in Writing, specifically poetry…
   11. …but my goal is to write fiction.
   12. My side hustle is as a freelance writer and editor, mostly for non-profits, though I have a background in copywriting and online publishing.
   13. I have a love/hate relationship with cooking: I love food, and finding/trying new recipes, but I also grow very weary of cooking day in and day out.
   14. I am a very picky eater, which means that I have been blessed with a child who is even pickier than I am.
   15. When it comes to food, I prefer spicy and salty to sweet.
   16. Chips and salsa, baby.
   17. Sriracha is my most-used condiment.
   18. Cats are my favorite animal, but I don’t own one because I am allergic.
   19. I learned how to ride a horse when I was seven years old.
   20. The horse was a stubborn seven-year-old Appaloosa gelding and he lived to be 34. This is not a fact about me, but it seems important.
   21. I am a Very Bad Sleeper, by which I mean I wake up at the slightest disturbance of the air currents.
   22. I love lists, but even so it is difficult to come up with 100 things to say about myself.
   23. Including my current home, I have lived in five different states.
   24. I am deeply, excruciatingly awkward.
   25. And I know it. So I overanalyze every second of every interaction until I am convinced I should become a hermit for the rest of my days.
   26. Making phone calls gives me hives.
   27. Things that give me severe anxiety: the dentist, public speaking, confrontation, social interactions, ambiguous emails, people who don’t wash their hands.
   28. I am a wee bit of a germaphobe.
   29. The Covid-19 pandemic only heightened my aversion to germs.
   30. And strengthened my belief that being ALONE (with my little family) is the ultimate way to live.
   31. I love TV.
   32. Primarily mysteries, police procedurals, sitcoms, and the category of dramas that includes things like Mad Men and Succession.
   33. I do not typically care for romances or the category of dramas that includes things like This Is Us or Grey’s Anatomy.
   34. I have similar taste in books: mysteries and thrillers all the way, baby.
   35. Speaking of books: I love to read.
   36. Some of my favorite authors include Louise Erdrich, Tana French, Sue Grafton, Anthony Doerr, Sophie Hannah, and Caz Frear.
   37. I read multiple books at a time.
   38. This includes multiple physical books and usually an audiobook and/or an ebook all at once.
   39. Because I worked for years as an editor, I can sometimes be a little hard on the books I read.
   40. Most books seem to be in dire need of a copyeditor.
   41. Grammar is one of my passions. I love to have in-depth discussions about commas and parallel sentence structure.
   42. Yet I am a descriptivist, not a prescriptivist, and am fully on board with using “they/them” as a singular pronoun.
   43. Oxford commas for life.
   44. One of my biggest pet peeves is when people use “loose” when they mean “lose.” Or “breath” when they mean “breathe.” Or “lead” when they men “led.”
   45. Yes, I am willing to grant people grace – we all make spelling errors, especially online (see the previous bullet for a full irony example); but if you do it multiple times, it tells me your elementary school teacher has some explaining to do. Or that you rely too heavily on your word processor’s grammar/spelling software.
   46. I am also willing to bend a little for stylistic choices. I adore Emphasis Via Capitalization, for instance.
   47. I wildly overuse parentheses.
   48. And dashes.
   49. Clearly, I have no problem with sentence fragments.
   50. I was born and raised in a remote rural part of the country, surrounded by wheat fields and sky.
   51. Now I live in suburbia, which isn’t so bad either.
   52. Especially because I can get delicious, delicious Mexican, Indian, and Lebanese takeout any time I want.
   53. I can spend hours reading and re-reading a document to ensure it is free of typos.
   54. And yet I have ZERO PATIENCE for things like puzzles, Sudoku, or measuring ingredients correctly.
   55. I am a morning person, but my husband is a night owl so I tend to go to bed too late.
   56. My addictions include hot sauce, my iPhone, detective series (especially when the detective is a witty but flawed bad-ass woman), and Bookstagram.
   57. Laundry is my nemesis.
   58. Not so much the WASHING or the DRYING of the laundry, but the folding and the putting it away.
   59. My ideal day would include waking up early but feeling 100% rested; reading a great book outside in bug-free sunshine with a cup of hot tea; taking a long walk with more sunshine and abundant cool breezes, plus lots of dog sightings; having a few hours of uninterrupted and fruitful writing time; petting a cat; eating something delicious and flavorful for dinner that I neither had to cook nor clean up; playing a rousing board game with my family; watching something hilarious or heart-pounding; and falling asleep in my husband’s arms.
   60. I find Twitter appealing to read but terrifying to participate in.
   61. I took piano lessons for twelve years.
   62. Nonetheless I’m really bad at reading music.
   63. My favorite composer is Chopin.
   64. It follows that my favorite piano pieces to play are Chopin’s as well.
   65. My favorite to play is his “Raindrop Prelude.”
   66. My favorite to listen to is his “Berceuse.”
   67. While music is obviously wonderful – and very important to my husband and child – I am a person who can simply sit in a quiet car, no music playing.
   68. My thoughts are cacophonous enough without adding excess sound to the mix.
   69. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy music. I do; just not all the time.
   70. My favorite albums are Timberlake’sJustified, Swift’s 1989, Phoenix’s Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP, Garth Brooks’s No Fences, and Weezer’s Green Album.
   71. I used to sing “Hold Me” by Weezer to my daughter as a lullaby.
   72. While I used to sing – and even did so in competition during high school – I am by no means “a singer.” So you can imagine that she does not allow me to sing a lot these days. Unless she is humoring me.
   73. Sometimes I fear I peaked in high school.
   74. My closest friends live thousands of miles away.
   75. I am one of those people who has a very few close friends: one from my childhood, one from grad school, one from my work life.
   76. I had a very close friend from college, but she died in 2019.
   77. My husband, obviously, is my very best friend.
   78. Despite growing up in an outdoorsy state, I am not particularly outdoorsy.
   79. I do not want to go camping.
   80. Hiking is okay. Once in a while.
   81. I do love to ski. I think I said that already.
   82. And snowshoeing is quite enjoyable.
   83. Water skiing is also an acceptable outdoor pursuit.
   84. Once, I witnessed my cousin break his collarbone while jet skiing, so I am no longer a jet ski fan.
   85. There is no reason that “jet ski” should be two words.
   86. I have one sibling.
   87. There are six years and 4,000 miles between us.
   88. But I am quite fond of my sibling nonetheless!
   89. I have one niece, a brilliant charming adorable child whom I wish lived closer.
   90. None of my family lives close, which is a bummer.
   91. But they all live in fun places to visit, so that’s cool.
   92. It is extremely difficult to find 100 even remotely interesting facts about oneself.
   93. My desert island food would probably be tacos.
   94. Or nachos.
   95. I am a Pisces, and I find that a lot of the horoscopic generalities about Pisces fit me to a tee.
   96. For instance, I am emotionally sensitive.
   97. I am also creative and imaginative.
   98. Though sometimes (often) my imagination gets away from me.
   99. I am an admitted perfectionist.
   100. And the pressure on this last fact is too much TOO MUCH I SAY.