85 Things About Me

1. I have two daughters. I feel very lucky to have them.
2. My OB didn't tell me to stop having children, but after two postpartum hemorrhages she did say "it would be unusual for your uterus to rupture in that location." We took the hint.
3. I am the oldest child.
4. I have one sister and one brother. Their children are considerably older than mine.
5. When I was single, I loved being an aunt.
6. I still love being an aunt.
7. My siblings thought I'd never have kids.
8. My sister once bought me a book on single motherhood for my birthday.
9. I grew up in the middle of the woods. We had 30 acres.
10. Originally we had 52 acres, but my parents sold 22 to a reservoir project as they were required to do through eminent domain.
11. We had an orchard, a huge garden, and for a couple of years we had goats.
12. My sister and brother and I loved the goats. One goat would only tolerate my dad milking her, so he had to do it twice a day every day and he didn't love the goats as much.
13. We still miss the goats.
14. Whenever my mother didn't know what to do with us she would make us weed the strawberries.
15. I'm just now starting to like strawberries again.
16. I still don't eat some of the foods we grew too much of in the garden, particularly squash and tomatoes.
17. But I think that may be a texture thing; I'm picky about food textures. I don't eat bananas either.
18. I will bake bananas or zuchinni squash into bread though, and I'll eat cooked tomatoes.
19. Cooking is a form of relaxation for me.
20. However, I'm not an expert on it.
21. I live about 15 miles from where I grew up.
22. I moved away twice.
23. I moved to Arlington, VA, for two years when I graduated from college.
24. I moved to London in 1992.
25. I did an M.Sc. in Operational Research at the London School of Economics.
26. I have an M.B.A. too. I don't know why. I'm not really an M.B.A. type. It was an evening program and it just seemed like an interesting class at the time.
    
27. In 1993 I moved to Minnesota.
    
28. I was there 9 1/2 years.
29. I worked in the airline industry.
30. When I started in the airline industry I loved it.
31. I traveled many places, but most of all I traveled to get to know all of my extended family, who lived everywhere from Singapore to California to Minnesota to the U.A.E.
    
32. I traveled a lot for work, especially to Asia.
33. I went to Japan more than 20 times.
34. I found my work intellectually interesting, but I don't think I was very good at corporate politics.
    
35. When I left the airline industry I was very stressed out.
36. I had a lot of physical symptoms of stress. They are almost all gone now.
37. Sometimes I have bad dreams about having to return to work. They are like dreams I have about still having one more high school exam to take.
38. When I left work I had no plan, except to move to Boise and marry my long-distance boyfriend.
39. I had been commuting to Boise almost every weekend for a year.
    
40. I told people I planned to do some writing.
41. I wish I hadn't said that.
42. I don't know why I thought I had to say anything.
    
43. I haven't done a whole lot of writing.
44. I am constantly amazed by the amount of time two children take.
45. Oh, and two animals too.
46. I have had my cat for almost 10 years.
47. Last year she was diagnosed as a diabetic. We give her insulin twice a day.
48. I married into having a dog.
49. Our dog is an Australian Shepherd. She is 6 but she thinks she is a puppy.
50. The cat-dog household merger took place before I moved in with my husband.
51. Co-workers told me that they suspected I was leaving when the cat moved.
52. I moved to Boise for my husband, but I'm glad I didn't have to stay there long.
53. I didn't like the desert much.
    
54. I missed trees.
55. And Democrats.
56. My husband was kind enough to hunt down a job in North Carolina. It was sheer luck, really, since companies in his industry are only in a few locations.
    
57. We moved back just a few weeks before my oldest daughter was born.
    
58. I feel very lucky to have my husband.
59. Sometimes I worry about whether I am appreciative enough.
60. I can be kind of picky.
61. I was married once before in my early 20s, but it didn't last a year and I think my record has been expunged.
    
62. I once went for three years without dating at all.
63. It took me a long time to learn to tell people (men) what I want.
64. I'm still learning. Just yesterday I was grouchy for my husband for not somehow having intuited my planned schedule for the morning.
65. I wish I was as understanding of human foibles as my husband is.
    
66. My husband and I both like to read trashy gossip magazines.
67. But my cousin gave us Star and we find it a little too trashy. What is up with the long stories which end "and their rep denied the story"?
68. I used to bike a lot.
69. I once biked from Minneapolis to Chicago in an AIDS fundraiser.
    
70. I was not ever athletic, so it was a big personal achievement.
71. I miss biking, but NC is not very bike friendly and the kids are still too little for a trailer.
    
72. My husband and I walk a lot now. We are big fans of putting the kids in Kelty backpacks.
73. I like to sew, but I have a hard time doing it since the kids try to grab the needle.
74. I like to make costumes. I made my daughter a tiger, my niece two clown costumes, and my nephew a cow costume.
75. In ninth grade I was president of the Home Ec club.
76. I never took Home Ec. The teacher who ran the club had been my science teacher, and I liked her.
77. I'm not really that domestic, except for the cooking and the sewing. I'm very bad at cleaning.
78. I'm also not very good at decorating.
79. I used to read every night before I went to sleep.
    
80. I don't do that so much now that I have kids, but I still read a lot.
81. I surf the internet while I nurse.
82. I keep hoping my next career move will become clear to me at some point.
83. I'm not very good at doing things by halves. When I had a career, I was all career. Now it seems I am all mom.
84. I worry about how I will balance things when I start trying to find a new career.
85. I've stayed up waaaay too late making this list.