knitting = good
1. My birthday is February 16, 1978.
2. I was born in Comfort, Texas.
3. I was the only baby in the hospital at the time.
4. My aunt died from cancer the day before I was born.
5. I think that’s why I was my Gramma’s favorite.
6. My family moved to Austin just before I started 5th grade (summer of 1988).
7. I still live in Austin.
8. My Gramma died in a hospital in Fredericksburg and I always think about that when I go there.
9. I am the middle child in my family.
10. I have a younger sister and an older brother.
11. There is an 18 month age difference between us.
12. And now that I think about it, I have a half sister from my father’s second marriage who was born in 2000 if I’m remembering correctly.
13. I only met my half sister once, possibly twice, because she lives in California.
14. My father was married for the third time in May 2005, so I don’t know that I will ever see my half sister again.
15. I used to strongly dislike my siblings but things have improved between us the last few years.
16. I work in state government.
17. My job is incredibly boring and unchallenging.
18. I’m very good at learning new things (like software programs and databases and programming stuff) but this strength is very hard to demonstrate in interviews.
19. I’ve done many crazy things with my hair.
20. When I was 18, I attempted to dye my hair with a natural dye but ended up with splotchiness.
21. I found a stylist who would fix the problem for $50 an hour (totally worth it). This began my infatuation with Todd.
22. He was the first and only professional to dye my hair.
23. For several years, I had my hair colored on a regular basis by Todd and I’m currently resisting the urge to visit him to get my hair colored.
24. I let him dye my hair many shades of not-quite-natural red, bright ass pink, platinum blonde, and more highlights than I can count.
25. I regret that I don’t have pictures of all that.
26. But I know somewhere there is a picture that was taken at a family reunion of my Gramma and me with bright pink hair. (I dyed my hair on Tuesday and found out that evening about a family reunion the following weekend. Most of my relatives thought I’d lost my mind.)
27. In 2002, I had a buzz cut for a few months.
28. I liked it but my division director wouldn’t look me in the eye so I decided to grow it back out.
29. I had no idea that I had so much to say about my hair.
30. When I started college, I was planning on earning my degree in Chemical Engineering.
31. I switched to Classical Civilization after a semester and ended up with a Computer Information Science degree.
32. The company I worked for while I was in college paid over $40,000 towards my education.
33. There’s no way I could have paid for college on my own.
34. I am a Zen Buddhist and have gone through lay ordination.
35. But I haven’t practiced in almost a year.
36. I will go back to it because I love it very much, though I’m not sure when.
37. I have a dog named Tater (birthday August 16, 1999) and two cats – Toots and Buddy – whose birthdays are unknown but are probably around October 2004.
38. My three animals have been very expensive.
39. Tater’s been hit by a car and had a herniated diaphragm that required surgery and also had surgery for hip displasia in 2001.
40. She’s having problems with her hip again – an obviously unhappy thing.
41. And she has separation anxiety.
42. Toots was a feral cat’s kitten and was attacked by her mom one day when I let her outside and her third eyelid was injured.
43. It cost over $500 in vet bills and many vet visits for that injury.
44. My cats don’t get to go outside any more.
45. I found Buddy in the middle of a country road on a cold, rainy February day.
46. He had a bloody nose and was very sick for three months – more vet bills than I want to think about.
47. I won’t get another animal until I have a ton of money to spend on it.
48. I live in a garage apartment that I rent from a friend I’ve known since high school.
49. It’s a studio apartment that’s a little over 600 square feet with very high ceilings.
50. I love it.
51. I’ve lived there since September 2003 and he still hasn’t taken all his stuff.
52. But my rent is relatively low so I don’t complain.
53. Juggling the dual roll of renter and friend can be strange at times.
54. I’ve been a Diet Coke drinker for as long as I can remember.
55. But I’ve recently switched to Diet Cherry Vanilla Diet Dr. Pepper. This disturbs me because nothing should have a name that long.
56. I dislike my job in a powerful way.
57. I would like to back to school and earn my master’s degree in social work or psychology.
58. I’m going to pay off my credit cards before I go back to school.
59. The credit cards should be paid off by June 2006.
60. That makes me very happy.
61. I think it is insane to give credit cards to 18 year olds.
62. I grew up on a farm that had cows, sheep, chickens, and pigs and lots of land for growing grain.
63. The kids – consisting of me, my brother and sister, and two cousins – had the run of over 500 acres and had very little adult supervision.
64. I’m very surprised that none of us died in the process.
65. I have a tendency to be very on again off again without much found in between. Either I’m knitting a lot or I’m not knitting at all. Dieting a lot or not at all. Going to the gym not or not at all. Cooking a lot or not at all. You get the picture.
66. My sudden shifts in topic for this list are amusing, though in my defense, I’m taking breaks.
67. At one of my old jobs, there was a very strange elaborate rumor about me – I was a lesbian, I just broke up with my lover and was moving out, and she was keeping the baby.
68. The reality was that I’m not a lesbian and I was moving because my roommate’s 16-year-old sister moved in.
69. My family thinks I might be a lesbian, too, but they don’t say anything to me about it.
70. I don’t wear makeup currently, but sometimes I think about going back to wearing makeup.
71. Most of the year I wear Birkenstocks to work and I’ve been doing it for at least two years.
72. I think the above items are why my family suspects I’m a lesbian.
73. And my Grammy told me once that I dress like a boy.
74. I just don’t spend much money on clothes because I’ve been directing my funds to the credit card debt and yarn purchases.
75. And I have a hell of a time finding pants that fit me so I avoid shopping because I get angry/sad/frustrated when I can’t find clothes that fit.
76. I enjoy listening to audio books in the car and while I knit.
77. I want to lose weight so hand knit socks will fit me better.
78. It would be easier just to modify the sock patterns, but I’m just using socks as another motivating factor for losing weight.
79. I would like to lose 50 pounds or so.
80. I’m 5’4” and the least I’ve ever weighed was 155.
81. I used to look down on farming and was glad that my family moved away from the farm.
82. But recently, I’ve been thinking about how great it would be to live away from the city and be focused on growing food and raising animals, specifically animals of the woolly variety, instead of focusing on my soul-sucking job.
83. Rediscovering the library a few years ago has probably kept me out of the poor house.
84. I love to buy books and there wouldn’t be any money left for yarn if I didn’t go to the library frequently.
85. I’ve been able to indulge in audio books because my library has a good selection.
86. I started listening to audio books because a friend at work listened to them and I started checking them out for her because she doesn’t live in town.
87. I love Chinese and Vietnamese food.
88. I prefer drinking room temperature water and don’t like ice in it.
89. Recently I’ve started browsing knitting patterns and books before I go to sleep.
90. This seems odd to me because I’m not making plans to knit them soon, I just like looking at them.
91. I would really like to buy a spinning wheel but I’m afraid that won’t happen soon because I need to fix my pup’s hip.
92. Going to the vet frightens me because the bill tends to be huge.
93. I’m trying to express my appreciation more and gripe less.
94. I haven’t been involved in what I think of as a good romantic relationship.
95. Things seem to fall apart after 6 months, sometimes less.
96. I’m getting smarter about relationships but I’m tired of having “learning experiences” instead of “good relationships”.
97. At work, I unconsciously twirl things like paper clips or my id badge.
98. I wonder if people think I’m strange because of that.
99. My favorite movies include: Amelie, The Princess Bride, Grosse Point Blank, and Shrek.
100. It took me 24 hours to write this list.
