Fifty

This is post number 50.  When I began this blog last year, I didn't know how long it was going to last.  It was a way for me to work through a side of my personality that I don't talk about on my "mommy blog" and to have an outlet for some of the things that I can't even really talk about with my sister (who is a regular reader of that other blog) or a few of my co-workers (ditto).  And I never bothered to do that "x number of things about me" post, because I figured that no one was reading this anyway.

Then I saw my stats, and realized that I do have a few regular readers, and I started to leave comments under this pseudonym, or link in places with an audience whose eyes would glaze over if I was talking about the parenting and social issues I talk about elsewhere.

So...here are my fifty things.  Most people do 100, but I'm an underacheiver.

1. I was born August 29, 1971, which makes me a Virgo born in the Year of the Pig.
2. I was supposed to be born early in the month of August, so I should have been a Leo.
3. There is a fair amount of conflict between my control-freak Virgo nature and my drama queen Leo tendencies.
4. I have an older sister and a younger brother.  I was close to neither while growing up.
5. My sister, with whom I fought constantly during childhood, is now one of my best friends.  If my brother lived closer, I'd probably be really tight with him now, too.
6. I spent four and a half years of college with basically the same goals and without changing my major.  The only reason I took an extra semester to fulfull my requirments was because I spent part of the time as a double major (Education and Psychology) before deciding which one to stick with.
7. I stuck with the education degree, since it would provide a job at graduation instead of impending grad school.
8. I am not using my degree in any way whatsoever.
9. For much of my childhood, I was ballet and jazz dancer.
10. I stopped dancing at the same time that puberty hit in full force. 
11. I've been unconsciously comparing my current self to that skinny, dancer self I was since I was 14.
12. I love food too much to have ever been anorexic.
13. Instead, I spent a lot of years throwing up
14. I still have absolutely no concept of what size I am.  I look at myself in the mirror and honestly believe that I am significantly larger than what my measurments say I am.
15. I don't know how to fix that, but I want to
16. I am a huge flirt, and have always been surrounded by guys, but couldn't get a date until I was 17
17. A friend at work jokes about how much of a drunken slut I am
18. The sum of the number of times I've gotten sick from drinking and the number of men I have slept with can be counted on one hand
19. My husband is the only guy I dated who didn't cheat on me
20. I've been married for one-third of my life
21. I have three children.  Two were planned.
22. Sometimes it's hard to reconcile the despair I felt with the last positive pregnancy test with the emotions my youngest brings out in me now
23. Sometimes it's not hard at all
24. I laugh a lot
25. I cry a lot, too
26. I wish I did more of the first and less of the second, but that's not so much working out for me
27. Dark chocolate, really rich coffee, red wine and a good massage are all decent ways to try to bribe me
28. I got my screen name from the main character in the short-lived ABC show Sports Night
29. That Dana Whitaker is neurotic, and "one of the guys" and tends to come across in social situations much more confidently than she really feels
30. It wasn't hard to find a parallel
31. I'm crazy good at remembering song lyrics and TV/movie quotes
32. I'm allergic to shellfish
33. I used to be able to eat shellfish, until a crab feast made it really hard to breathe
34. I don't know if I'm really allergic to all shellfish or just crustaceans.
35. I don't care to eat clams or mollusks or oysters again to test the theory
36. Over my lifetime, I've been taken to the ER six times
37. Two of them involved ambulances, two involved injuries outside of normal doctors' hours and two involved caregivers who were freaked out by me passing out when I puke
38. I pass out a lot.  I have low blood sugar and a low normal blood pressure.  As a result, whenever I get sick, my body doesn't so much like to function properly
39. I think an average of one ER visit every six years is too much
40. My only hospital stays other than ER visits were my tonsillectomy and the birth of my children
41. My many scars include: two c-section scars, three incisions for mole biopsies in the early 90's, six mole biopsies from early this year, a gash from when I learned to use a penknife, and a u-shaped slice from a bagel accident on the morning of my daughter's First Holy Communion
42. The day I sliced my thumb instead of the bagel, I proceeded to wrap my hand up and continue with our plans for the day- we went to church, I came back to the house to set up for the party and grabbed a bite to eat before leaving for the hospital.  Had my sister not seen me trying to slip out unnoticed, I would have driven myself to the ER so I didn't spoil anyone's day by taking them away from the festivities.
43. My emotional scars outnumber my physical ones by a large margin
44. I worked as a sound and lighting technician in college.   
45. I do a damned good job of hanging a lighting truss and wiring a small sound system, even if it does sometime screw up my manicure
46. My iPod consists of a very eclectic mix of indie pop, classic rock, jazz, country, show tunes, new age, classical, blues, some Amy Grant and a few random songs that the IT guys left on my iTunes when they were testing out the installation
47. When I want to be left alone in airports, I listen to my iPod and focus on my knitting
48. When someone tries to talk to me while I am listening to my iPod and knitting, I feel it should be legal for me to stab them with my needles or strangle them with the cord to my earbuds
49. I'm very good at procrastinating
50. I haven't decided whether its good or bad to be considered less intelligent than I really am at work. It's insulting, but less is asked of me by the folks who think I'm dumb because I'm "just a secretary"

Comments

My God. We must be related. You sound so much like me.