First Things First: 100 Things About Me

1) Brown hair, blue eyes
2) Part Czech, part all-American mutt
3) Not quite mid-20s
4) Started college, but quit after my dad had a car accident and my mom needed help at home.
5) Now I'm back in the same town where I went to school, but somehow I've never gotten back to taking classes.
6) I have a job
7) As admin for the person who organizes alumni events -- wine auctions, tours, and lectures -- at the school I once attended.
8) Yes, it's all about fundraising
9) No siblings
10) Lots of cousins
11) My favorite color is purple.
12) I hate dealing with technology; that's why this blog is still this muted green. Or is it ochre?
13) I also hate crowds, shopping malls, and hospitals, any kind of confining space.
14) Also air-conditioning.
15) Sometimes I miss being in school, but there are other times, when I see what has happened to the dreams of the alumni I talk with, that I think that maybe I was lucky.
16) I still have all my books from my freshman year, though, so maybe I'm still thinking about it.
17) Every chance I get, I'm in my boat, a whitewater kayak made from kevlar & fiberglass; bought second hand; .
18) Or on my bike
19) My car is is a gray Volvo 240 that my parents bought for me; closing in on 500,000 miles, it is a work horse; I may never have to buy another car.
20) I never drive it, though, except on weekends when I take my boat to the river.

21) There's a Frank in my life.
22) Has been for three years.
24) It's not exactly clear just what's going on here, but for right now we seem to have a collection of habits that's hard to disentangle.
25) He's a gardener who has a small nursery and landscape design firm here in town; in his spare time, he makes furniture, works on his house. We met when he was installing a project at the college; no memorable exchanges, all it took was being noticed, a few pleasant words. One thing about being an admin, it's like acquiring an invisibility cloak. When somebody talks friendly to me these days, I notice.

26) It was hard to avoid noticing Frank: He's tall and blonde, tan, with light gray eyes; long, lean everything; somehow always smells like a summer day.
27) He used to play with a band in town; everybody knows him, everybody likes him; being with him makes me feel like I must be something special, too.
28) He has a great house, not too far from mine: a stucco bungalow he's been refinishing over the last five years; he's put down cherry plank floors, installed new kitchen cabinets, new appliances; the whole thing filled with orchids and jasmine, copper lamps, oriental rugs, mewing siamese cats.
29) Sometimes I think I'm more in love with that house than I am with Nick.
30) That's one of the things that bothers me.
31) The other is that I keep fantasizing about having a place of my own.
32) Sometimes it bothers me that I'm so much like a hermit crab, so willing to accept the life that someone else has on offer, someone else's story, rather than making one of my own.
33) He never complains about the nights I have to work, making sure lecture halls have enough chairs, there's a pitcher of ice water and a cup for the speaker, or that the students we've hired to wait tables actually show up.
34) He doesn't complain about all the time I need on my boat.
35) We seem to respect each other's independence.
36) Sometimes I think we respect each other's independence too much.
37) Lately he's been less interested in seeing the movies that interest me.
38) He's been too tired to go to the Comedy Central series we bought tickets for weeks ago.
39) But when his friends show up, as they always do, he's never so tired that he doesn't perk up and spend the rest of the night drinking beer and talking way past my bed time.
40) I am an early morning person. Always have been.
41) I like his friends.
42) But I'm worried that his best friend likes me. Really likes me.
43) Frank is the kind of guy everybody wants to be around because he's so nice, and he's always got something interesting going on, but it's been too long since we've shared a long, slow kiss.
44) I think I am too young to give up on the possibility of romance.

45) First kiss: Occurred in a dark basement during some silly junior high party. One of those moments when you suddenly realize that everyone has paired up, except for you and whoever is left. Like some sexualized form of musical chairs. He was shorter than me, with sweaty hands and chapped lips; an experience that, kept me abstinent my entire high school career.

46) My most memorable kiss came when I was 18, in a cinderblock dorm room on a Friday afternoon. It was warm, inviting, electric, and sweet, everything I had ever hoped for or imagined. Unfortunately, I wasn't very experienced, and by the time I'd figured out what I wanted, he was gone. Sometimes I think I'm still looking for the chance to do that afternoon over again.

47) I swear more than I'd like; seems like it's time to grow up and drop that habit
48) I drink more than can be healthy.
49) But I really like chips and salsa with a margarita.
50) I hate anything that has a whiff of competition to it.
51) Sometimes I wonder if that means I am lazy.
52) But then, when I was 12, I swam the mile and half across the lake where we were staying, just to prove that I could.
53) So maybe I just like to keep the competition with myself.

54) People who like NASCAR races just bewilder me.
55) I know a few words of French, a few words of German, but I really admire people who've mastered second (and third or fourth) languages.
56) Someday, I'd really like to bike through Southern France, sometime when all that lavender is in bloom.
57) But I'd want to stay at charming little hotels with soft beds and clean showers.
58) I don't mind camping once in a while.
59) As long as somebody's brought along some excellent coffee.
60) Nothing smells better than coffee brewing over a campfire.
61) I can't live without hot showers, and not the kind you find at most camping grounds.

62) I believe in consequences.
63) My political beliefs are more conservative than not.
64) I don't really believe in majority rule.
65) I'd really rather that NOBODY ruled.
66) Still, I voted for Obama in the last election: something had to change
67) I think the people who claim that abortion is a woman's choice, right up to the moment of delivery, are just as crazy as those who claim a child's right to life from the moment it's nothing more than a gleam in your eye.
68) I believe that, no matter how many pills you take or how many condoms you use, there is no such thing as safe sex.
69) All sex is inherently dangerous.
70) I believe that any two people who love each other and want to commit their lives to one another should be able to marry. Love seems integral to human nature.

71) Plastic surgery disturbs me.
72) I wear make-up, though.
73) And my toenails are always polished.
74) My mother never gave me antibiotics for ear infections; I've never taken even a Tylenol.

75) I believe one's security and happiness is dependent on no one but one's self.
76) I hate using the pronoun "one," but I couldn't figure out any other way to make that previous sentence sound like it included me as well as my (non-existent) audience.
77) My parents are still resolving bills and insurance claims from my father's accident. The way I see it, insurance companies are in the business of scaring people into paying premiums, then making it as hard as possible to collect.
78) I'm sure I make as many grammatical errors as anybody, but I only notice the ones other people make; makes me feel superior.

79) If I ever get to make that bike tour of Southern France, I plan to have chocolate croissants every morning.
80) Or maybe a baguette spread with butter and lots of homemade strawberry jam.
81) My favorite place to be is in the grove of beech trees at the local nature center.
82) My favorite music. Changes from moment to moment. Depends on what I'm listening to. Mostly classical, alternative country. I'm not an afficianado, though; it all stays in the background for me. Personally, I prefer silence.
83) I love NPR, though: it's the first thing I turn on as soon as I get home.

84) I'm a preacher's kid. Lots of stuff comes along with that.
85) I hate meanness, all kinds.
86) Also, people who try to dominate an argument just by being louder than the other person, or by name-calling.
87) Or people who think that just because they have money or high SAT scores that they are somehow specially entitled.

88) I like men wearing flannel shirts and aftershave
89) Women who wear red shoes
90) Women who wear cocktail hats with veils
91) I don't play any musical instrument, but I harbor a secret longing to play the cello.
92) People say that my best feature is my eyes.
93) But I am vain about my arms.
94) People also say that I'm easy to be with, easy to get along with.
95) I'd rather be the person who's exciting to be with, the person people want to be near.
96) I'm afraid to say what I want.
97) When I started school, my plans were to get a degree in Finance.
98) Now I know that the confinement of an office job would just kill me.
99) Sometimes I think I should organize that bike tour to France myself.
100) I've learned that writing 100 things about me is harder than I thought.