I’m feeling a little guilty because no one has posted anything here for a while (and our last post was even a guest post — thanks Beatrice!). But I’m also pretty much incapable of higher thought function at the moment, so you get to read some more random nothingness. There has recently been a fad on facebook where you post 25 random facts about yourself. I joined in, mostly because I had enjoyed reading what other people wrote so much. I thought I would share my list with you as well, and I would love to get to know all of you better by hearing some random facts about your life.
1. I’ve belonged to a moms group for over a year and have yet to go to a meeting. They have, however, given me lots of great ideas for things to do with the fam.
2. I write novels. Or I try to, at least. Someday I’ll actually finish one, and then we’ll see if I can get it published. (I’m about halfway through the current one, but I’m kind of stuck as real life has been bogging me down recently.)
3. My oldest son has autism. It can be a struggle (for him and us), but he’s doing better all the time, and he’s a really fun kid.
4. I hate grocery shopping with a passion. Actually, I hate most shopping (other than book shopping), but grocery shopping is the worst. That might be because I can’t avoid it nearly as well as I can the rest (though I still make my husband do a lot of it).
5. The bed in my guest room is one continual (huge) pile of laundry. At least it’s clean laundry.
6. I have seen the movie Cars hundreds of times (literally – really, I’m not exaggerating). It still doesn’t get on my nerves, which has got to make it about the best movie ever made.
7. I blog (on the bloggernacle, for anyone who knows what that is). Anonymously, on a group blog, which is more fun for me. I like blogs largely for their discussions.
8. I majored in anthropology and (kind of) minored in computer science in college. I got funny looks both places for it, but I enjoyed the diversity.
9. I also took a lot of classes just for fun, and they ran the gamut, too – history of us foreign policy, shakespeare, german literature (in german), quantum physics, differential equations in calculus…
10. I took an electrical engineering digital systems lab for fun that was the bane of the EE majors. Everyone in the class nearly fell off their stools when they found out I didn’t _have_ to be there. It was one of the best classes I ever took. I was lab partners with my roommate and best friend, and every week we got together, had dinner, watched Gilmore Girls and put together our circuit.
11. I bond with my siblings and father by playing facebook word games with them. We’re actually quite good, if I do say so myself.
12. In high school my friends and I would get together every Friday night and watch X-Files together. We might have been a little dorky, but we had fun and there was no drinking involved (I was the only Mormon), which is pretty impressive.
13. My parents never gave me a curfew in high school. Whenever I asked when I should be home my dad would reply by saying, “When do you _think_ you should be home?” I generally set a time an hour past my friends’ curfew, because then even if we were running a little late I’d still be home early.
14. The first time my dad ever tried to set a curfew for me was on New Years Eve when I was a senior in college and just home for Christmas break. There was no way I was going to let him start setting curfews at that late date, and I told him so. I got home about 10 minutes after the curfew. My fiancé (now husband, and we’d just gotten “unofficially engaged” the day before and hadn’t told anyone yet) was stressed out by this, since he wanted to make a good impression on my dad, but I didn’t let that stop me.
15. Oh yes, we got engaged 5 days after we started dating, and 10 days after our first date. It was completely insane (which I was fully aware of at the time), but it’s worked out pretty well anyway.
16. We kept it a secret at first because I was way too embarrassed to admit I’d gotten engaged that quickly. We didn’t have to worry about family approval, though – my dad had told me I could marry DH about 6 months before I ever even spoke to him. It was kind of random, but hey, that’s my dad.
17. If I tease you, it means I like you. My whole family’s kind of that way.
18. I can’t whistle. Even though I play the flute. It’s really not the same thing at all.
19. I’m extremely allergic to coffee. Or at least the smell of it, which gives me horrible migraines. (I’ve never actually ingested any, so I don’t know how I would react.) I can’t be in an enclosed space with a cup of coffee – in high school I would have to ask my teachers to get rid of it or give me a note to the nurse’s office (they were generally willing to finish it or throw it out, though I think I went to the nurse’s office at least once).
20. In high school I read a book a day. It wasn’t that hard, considering I read through most of my classes, which I got away with because I could read and still pay attention.
21. I used to be a member of the SCA (that’s the Society for Creative Anachronism). I’d like to be again, sometime, when my kids are a little older. I especially miss the dancing (and if there was a dance guild around here, I’d do that even if I didn’t make it to events).
22. In college I worked at a museum. When I tell people that, they usually get the wrong impression of what I did, because the museum was closed the entire 3 years I worked there. I worked in the collections department, and I spent my time inventorying, packing, and then unpacking artifacts. It was pretty much the best job ever (especially since my co-workers were awesome). I’d love to do it again some day.
23. I remember music and lyrics amazingly well, but not the titles of songs or the names of bands. I can sing you an entire song, but if you ask me what song it is, I’ll shrug helplessly. (This has gotten very slightly better recently, as our van has one of those displays on it’s radio that tells you the title and artist of the song while it’s playing. I used to make my coworker John perform this service in college.)
24. My recurring nightmare is that I’m in high school, it’s almost the end of my senior year, and I realize I haven’t been going to classes all semester and I’m probably not going to graduate. This is a very strange dream to have, considering it’s been many years since high school and there was never any chance I wouldn’t graduate. But hey, who knows about that strange subconscious?
25. I love light rain, and overcast sweater weather. I think I’d love living in the northwest (of course, my husband would hate it).
26. My husband and I don’t agree on anything. Really.
27. In high school I contracted an unidentified virus (I think) that gave me Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. For 6 months I slept 17 hours a day. I don’t sleep that much any more, but I still need a lot of sleep.
(Yes, I know there are more than 25. I started typing some up, and when I went back to number them I realized I’d come up with 27. I decided to just leave them all in, ’cause I’m rebellious like that.)
…my friends and I would get together every Friday night and watch X-Files together. We might have been a little dorky…
a LITTLE?!?!?
(I tease! I tease because I like you!)
The only thing interesting about me is that I was once chased by a grizzly bear.
Still trying to figure out #15: you had your first date five days before you started dating? Don’t know how that works out at all, but I’m glad everything after that worked out well.
We were engaged after a week, sort of, though no one ever proposed, and married 3 months after our first date.
Mark, you’re allowed to tease, because I like you. And yes, I’m more than a little dorky, but well, I like it. And you were chased by a grizzly bear?! That sounds exciting. Hopefully you escaped with all body parts intact.
Marta, we went on our first date (and then a few more), but 5 days later we started “dating”, as in, exclusively dating and calling each other boyfriend and girlfriend, rather than just going on some dates. You courtship was even faster than mine. Mormon culture is crazy in that regard.
That was fun to read. But 25 is a bit long for me, so I’ll just do 5.
1. I met my husband by dating his (former) best friend. The best friend went crazy so I broke up with him, but kept hanging out with his friends (because in his craziness he ditched out on them too). Pretty soon we had one of those stereotypical LDS “married two months later” things. His mom didn’t know we were even dating when he called to tell her we were engaged.
This was all made so much more awful by the fact that the summer after we married my husband had to live with his parents in a nearby city for his internship while I stayed in our apartment near the college to keep my job. The old best friend got a similar internship but had nowhere to stay so he ended up living with my in-laws for that summer too. That was awkward.
2. I knit, crochet, cross-stitch, braid, and tie knots (decorative and practical). I taught myself and am actually pretty good.
3. When it rains, I bake. It’s classical pavlovian conditioning- my mom would bake when it rained because that was when she could open the windows to cool down the kitchen. So now whenever it clouds over I get a hankering for cookies.
4. I’m 25 years old. For some reason this has come as a surprise to a few people in the bloggernacle.
5. I was among the earliest mormon mommy “hey look at these pictures of my kids” bloggers. I started *years* before any of the ladies in my ward. I feel like I’m totally a trend setter because of that.
Vada,
This post makes me laugh because the popularity of the “25 Random Things” produced this parody in a shirt from Despair.com
Vada, it just hit me that I totally know high-school you! Wow, I have been reading this blog for almost a year, and that never occurred to me. The “special” 25 things was good for at least one thing!
#23 is totally me. I cannot for the life of me remember song titles or artists… Okay, not completely true, there are some I remember, but it is mostly true.
Also, #17 is totally our family, mostly. Daddy can never take it.
I also just have to mention that I love today’s random quote. Awesome.
24. My recurring nightmare is that I’m in high school, it’s almost the end of my senior year, and I realize I haven’t been going to classes all semester and I’m probably not going to graduate.
That’s a common one. My variant is that I still sometimes dream that I haven’t defended my dissertation , and my advisor says I need one more good result before it’s acceptable, and I can hardly remember the theorems and research I’ve so far, let alone come up with more. And I got my PhD more than ten years ago. Actually, now that I think about it, I still have the HS/college version (oh no, I haven’t gone to class X or done the homework all semester, and the final is today!) 😉
18. I can’t whistle. Even though I play the flute. It’s really not the same thing at all.
I can’t whistle either. I can’t even play the flute.
6. I have seen the movie Cars hundreds of times (literally – really, I’m not exaggerating). It still doesn’t get on my nerves, which has got to make it about the best movie ever made.
Me too. It’s one of my kids’ all-time favorite films. I wouldn’t necessarily rank it among the best every made, but I agree that it’s very watchable, unlike some kids’ stuff that I can barely stand to watch once.
5. The bed in my guest room is one continual (huge) pile of laundry. At least it’s clean laundry.
I keep a large pile of clean laundry on my ironing board. Not that I iron or anything. The closest I come to homemaking crafts is that I iron patches onto the torn knees of my kids’ pants (and then sew around them so they don’t peel off).
2. I write novels. Or I try to, at least. Someday I’ll actually finish one, and then we’ll see if I can get it published.
Me too. I’m not too sold on dealing with the brick-and-mortar publishing industry, though. Straight-to-web improves the fun vs. stress ratio of the whole procedure.
Regarding dorkiness, I’m afraid I’m quite high on the meter too. Perhaps our new ZD tagline can be “Blogging by Mormon Dorks.”
The bed in my guest room is one continual (huge) pile of laundry. At least it’s clean laundry.
I’m not usually even that good. My problem is that I too often start laundry and don’t finish it and leave clothes in the washer and then have to re-wash them. I feel like I’m doing well when I remember to run towels or underwear as the last load, because then I can leave it in the dryer for a while without worrying about it wrinkling. I mean, I’m an OCD type, but I can’t manage to care if towels and underwear are wrinkled.
My recurring nightmare is that I’m in high school, it’s almost the end of my senior year, and I realize I haven’t been going to classes all semester and I’m probably not going to graduate.
My version is a periodic nightmare where I’ve been sent back to my mission and I’m heartbroken to leave my wife and kids and my mission president says, “But it’s only for six months this time,” and I think, well, I guess I can suffer through it for six months.
“Blogging by Mormon Dorks.”
Couldn’t that be the tagline for the entire bloggernacle?
I can neither whistle nor play the flute.
What’s dorky about watching the X-Files on Friday night? I don’t get it. 🙂
The dorky part is admitting it. It’s a well known fact that everyone watched the X-files, but only the serious nerds are self-assured enough to admit it.
Starfoxy – I would never have pegged you as being 25, so that is a totally valid point.
My very boring list about SPAM®, mass murderers, space aliens, nuclear weapons, cancer, and elective surgery.
http://applechapel.blogspot.com/2009/02/here-is-my-list-of-25-things.html
Like Vada, I’ve been feeling twinges of guilt at my absence these last months, particularly as I’ve watched the blog grind to a halt during the last few weeks. Since I still don’t have time to compose an actual post, I’ll assuage my guilt at not blogging by participating on this thread.
(1) At the moment I should be writing a paper on John Gower’s fifteenth-century Middle English behemoth Confessio Amantis. At first I hated it, but the issues of confessional self-construction, medieval metaethics, and the relationship between general principle and narrative are drawing me in.
(2) I’ve recently undergone the biggest transition of my life from full-time graduate student to SAHM. Much as I adore my daughter, I feel as if a bomb has gone off in my life and I’m slowly picking up the shards. I don’t know if it’s harder to become a mother for the first time at my late age (37), but I’m finding the transition grueling.
(3) Even at the worst moments of new motherhood, I do not remember the ticking clock of infertility with any fondness. Turning thirty-five when you haven’t been able to have children is like feeling a gear grinding away at larger and larger chunks of your heart. I was on a collision course with forty.
(4) I’m constantly amazed at how much work motherhood is, and how little credit or recognition it garners. People are far more likely to be impressed that I’m getting a Ph.D. Motherhood is, of course, far harder.
(5) I threw up all nine months of my pregnancy. I tried every trick in the book to prevent and/or assuage nausea and vomiting. Nothing worked.
(6) I despise the term “Momma.” To borrow a page from Rebecca J.’s book, I will tolerate being addressed as “Mommy” only by persons to whom I have actually given birth.
(7) I’ve recently discovered, for the first time in my life, an interest in cooking, now that, for the first time in my life, I’m home during the day. If nothing else, it certainly beats scrubbing toilets.
(8) I’m a newcomer to Facebook, and I’m deeply ambivalent. Random people I evidently once knew keep contacting me. I’m contemplating deleting myself and going back underground where I belong, with all the other introverts.
(9) I can’t whistle OR play the flute.
(10) …but I love the smell of coffee. I would be a coffee addict if I weren’t Mormon.
(11) I also love beautiful blank books, journals, sketch pads, stationery, and pens and pencils. I can spend many happy hours browsing through office supplies.
(12) For some reason I’ve never been able to bear the sound of styrofoam. It sounds to me like nails on a chalkboard. I can’t pick up egg cartons in the grocery store without shuddering.
(13) I too have weird recurring dreams about getting called back to my mission, but unlike Ziff, I seem to be younger in my dream, unmarried and without children. I have these dreams frequently, even when I never think about my mission during the day.
(14) …and I have the classic anxiety dream about the class I forgot to go to all semester, and now I have to take the final. I hate that dream. The mission dreams are generally better.
(15) I love ballet, but I don’t care for opera.
(16) Now that I have a daughter I’ve entered a whole new world of church challenges with an inactive husband. I really need to get in touch with FoxyJ and others in this situation for pointers on navigating sacrament meeting alone with children, handling Primary lessons with delicacy and tact, etc.
Sixteen is about all I can manage. I’d better get back to that paper now, and I’m starting to feel a little ridiculous, culling my brain for scintillating facts about myself. The truth is that I’m simply not all that interesting–gazing at my navel bores even me. But at least I’ve done my duty today to keep our blog afloat!
I have the same recurring nightmare about being in my last semester of high school. Except that my husband and children are somehow in the background and I can never find my classes.
Re: Eve (#13)
Eve, you’re getting converted to Gower? I fear for your mental health. 😀
But this was fun to read, and since I’ve been a blogging slacker lately (I’m glad Ziff and Vada have been doing their best to keep ZD from perishing from off the face of the Bloggernacle), I’ll (belatedly) chime in with a couple:
(1) When I was a kid, I worried a lot at night about the possibilities of robbers breaking into the house. I assumed they’d go straight for my stuffed animals, so I hid them all under the covers with me.
(2) I think I have an unusually low need for stimulation. I generally like life to be quiet—what some people might consider “boring.”
(3) I do judge a book by its cover, and especially by its font. I have a very hard time reading a book written in something ugly, like Courier.
(4) I’m a carnophiliac (is that a word?) I really, really like meat. This leads to a bit of liberal guilt, but not enough to convert me to vegetarianism. Pass the steak, please.
(5) My favorite movie ever is Return of the King. I saw it in the theater 18 times, almost all of them with my movie-fanatic sister Amalthea. It’s hard to imagine ever liking another movie enough to even come close to that record.
(6) As a young teenager, I listened to the radio under the covers so that no one in my family would know I was doing it. I had this idea that we were supposed to be intellectuals who didn’t listen to cheesy pop music, but I loved it. I still have a weakness for it. Also for trashy teen soap operas. Clearly my credentials as an intellectual (or even a “so-called” intellectual) are highly in doubt.
(7) After five plus years of living in California, I’ve become a wimp who can’t deal with extreme temperatures.
(8) In elementary school I got sent to speech therapy because I talked very fast, and didn’t take a breath between sentences but instead just waited until I ran out of breath, which made me somewhat difficult to understand. However, I think it might be argued that talking like this is a viable strategy when you have lots of siblings and are trying to make yourself heard.