100 Things About Me

1. I am the second of five children.

2. I have lived in every state in the tri-state area (Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey, in that order). I have also lived in Massachusetts and Utah.

3. I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

4. I am a total Anglophile. I love all things British and have lived in London twice
(once for a study abroad in college, and once during and internship).

5. I'm a wannabe foodie. I look at magazines and and imagine that I could be a gourmet cook, but I'm scared off by ingredients that I've never used.

6. I am a magazine junkie. I currently subscribe to 10 magazines--Real Simple, Cooking Light, Martha Stewart Living, Everday Food, Ensign, LDS Living, Reader's Digest, Health (a freebie when I renewed Cooking Light), American Baby, and Parenting. I'm a little behind in my reading.

7. I have been scarred by books. When I was little I was running with a hardcover Dr. Seuss book, tripped, and now I have a nice scar at the corner of my left eye.

8. That didn't stop me from becoming an English teacher. I taught 9th grade English and writing for 3 years in Queens, New York.

9. I also had a dresser fall on me when I was about 2 years old. I escaped injury, but I don't know how.

10. I was a total tomboy as a child. I always wanted to do whatever my older brother was doing (sorry Chris!).

11. I have a BA in English from Brigham Young University and an MA in English Teaching from Columbia Teacher's College.

12. I like to write fiction for children. I am currently working on a middle-grade novel, but it is going verrry slowwwwly. I'll let you know if it ever gets published.

13. I never had any idea how much I would absolutely enjoy being a mother.

14. I love to scrapbook, though my husband would say I love to BUY scrapbook supplies more than I actually use them.

15. I have a fantasy of having a house big enough to have a craft room, or even a craft corner. I would get Pottery Barn's craft table (or the cheaper knock-off from Pier 1).

16. I'm a shopper. I'm not even going to count how many catalogs I get. Though I only requested about half of them.

17. I'm a bit of a clothes snob. I have semi-expensive tastes, although I don't like to pay full price for anything. My best find recently was a dress from J. Crew for $15. I think it originally went for $118.

18. I am not an animal person. I think we had a couple of fish growing up, but they were pretty short lived. My youngest sister was able to talk my parents into a dog a couple of years ago, but I'm not a huge fan. Don't even ask, Emma.

19. I have visited six countries: Canada, Mexico, England, Scotland, Wales, and France.

20. The Scottish Highlands were my abolute favorite place.

21. I have good teeth. They are straight and relatively white. I have never had braces or wisdom teeth and I haven't had a cavity in years. This is a trait we hope that Emma inherited.

22. I don't like to clean. I prefer to organize things and call it clean. However, I keep my house clean enough: most of the "mess" is things (books, papers, etc).

23. I am a pack-rat. This particularly applies to the aforementioned books and papers. And remember those magazines?

24. After I finish reading a magazine I rip out all of the articles I'm interested in or think I will need in the future, put them in page protectors, and organize them in binders. I have binders for recipes, excercise ideas, decorating ideas, health information, parenting ideas, and so on.

25. I have a label-maker and I love it.

26. When I was growing up, my crushes went by the year. 3rd grade: Joey Happy. 4th grade: Aaron...blast, I can't remember his last name, but I can still picture him. 5th grade: Brian Moir. Etc etc. In college it was sometimes a whole year, and sometimes by semester.

27. I absolutely love how my baby is always excited to see me, even if she's been crying for a couple minutes while I've run to the bathroom or something. Her tears instantly stops when she sees me. It is quite possibly the biggest boost to the ego ever. I know that this will end someday, but for now I relish in it.

28. I am not at all musically talented. I really wish I were. When I get a house big enough and some extra money, I want to get a piano and both Emma and I will take lessons.

29. Whenever I go out to eat, if it is a restaurant I have been to before, I always order the same thing. Yes, I know it's boring, but if you find something you like, why change it?

30. I spent a good part of my life rebelling against being a morning person. In college I decided to give in to it, even though I didn't like it. I shut down around 10 pm, but really can't get anything worthwhile accomplished past 9.

31. I have a love-hate relationship with Oprah. Sometiems I can't stand her and think she's totally arrogant, but I watch or TiVo her every day.

32. I have the same relationship with Martha Stewart, but I don't watch her show.

33. When I was pregnant I was so sick that I lost 15 pounds. I only ate at work and was so exhausted that all I did was drag myself to work and back, watch a little TV and sleep. During this time I became addicted to the Food Network. It was a little scary how much I desired to eat things I didn't like before or since.

34. I read every assigned reading in school up until my senior year of college.

35. I'm a nerd and I know it and don't care.

36. I could have worked harder in college but conciously decided not to. I was having too much fun.

37. I love getting to know my younger siblings more now that they're growing up. I really enjoy being friends with my siblings as adults.

38. In college I had a guy buy me lunch and a different guy make me dinner on the same day. I never dated or was even asked out by either of them (though I liked one of them for a while). But most of the time I didn't date much.

39. I have never broken a bone.

40. Besides my own birth and the birth of my baby, I have never spent time in a hospital.

41. When I was a baby I had an hemangioma, which is "a benign tumor consisting chiefly of dilated or newly formed blood vessels." It looked like a large bruise under my eye that lasted for at least six months. It went away on its own by the time I was 2 or so. People at the grocery store and other random places accused my poor mom of abuse.

42. In high school I did three sports for a couple of years. In the fall, field hockey; winter, indoor track; spring, outdoor track. I was never very good at any of them. I ended up managing the field hockey team with my friend Rachel.

43. My friend Rachel and I saw each other just about everyday for 5 years (high school and freshman year at BYU). We'd get annoyed with each other every once in a while, but she probably knows me like no one else.

44. I'm a homebody.

45. I read every day. It's probably why my house isn't clean.

46. I constantly check my email (thanks, gmail, for automatically updating whenever there's a new message).

47. When I was in elementary school, my favorite color was Kermit-the-frog green. I went through a brief pink/purple phase when I was about 11, but since then my favorite color has been blue.

48. I have become a lot closer with my parents in the past 10 years. I love them and consider them some of my best friends.

49. I think I would do well on "Jeopardy".

50. I think Dave would do well on "Survivor."

51. I love Christmas and start listening to Chrismas music in September.

52. I love catching up with old friends.

53. Sometimes I have trouble making new friends because I'm shy, though I'm always glad when I do.

54. I don't think I'm interesting enough to come up with 100 things about myself, but I'll keep on plugging along.

55. I love buying school and office supplies. Last fall after I stopped teaching I had to physically restrain myself from shopping at Staples.

56. Tulips are my favorite flower. When I have a yard I'm going to plant them.

57. I kill houseplants, but not on purpose. This could pose to be a problem for #56.

58. Sometime during middle school I figured out that I would never be a "cool" kid, and I accepted it. It made high school easier and more fun.

59. I love lilacs. When I was little we had a big lilac bush at the end of our driveway and the smell always reminds me of being a kid and riding my bike in the driveway.

60. I love the smell of gasoline.

61. When I was in 8th grade I had to do a science experiment where I made 2 loaves of bread: one normally, and one without an important ingredient. It took my mom and I 3 tries to make the normal loaf.

62. I've actually become a decent cook over the years. I have yet to try bread from scratch, though I can make it in a bread machine. :)

63. I wish I were more artistic. I always wanted to be able to draw.

64. I love celebrating holidays.

65. I'm not terribly outdoorsy. I like to be outside when the weather is nice, but I just don't like the idea of being far away from a decent bathroom.

66. I'm very good at finding decent bathrooms in New York City. (Hint: Starbucks and Barnes and Noble).

67. When I was a kid I loved monkeys, apes, and gorillas. I had 30+ stuffed animal monkeys. I think many of them have since become dog toys.

68. I loved playing school when I was a kid, only that was too nerdy so I called it "Club." I was the teacher to my stuffed animals. I made up worksheets and my dad photocopied them for me. Most of my students got As.

69. Despite my teaching games as a kid, I changed majors about 4 times at BYU. I usutally went back to some form of English, but for a while it was Communications and Speech Langauge Pathology. I decided officially on teaching my senior year, but didn't want to stay around an extra year to get my teaching credentials, so I graduated in English.

70. I want to learn how to sew.

71. Places I want to travel to: Machu Picchu, a cruise in Alaska, a cruise in the Balkans, Hawaii, Italy, Spain/Portugal, Vienna. Mostly European destinations. I've never been big into Asia and I heard the safari at Disney World was as good as an African safari, minus the camping.

72. I'm a good speller.

73. I'm a grammar nerd. I don't have all the rules memorized per se, but I kind of know it intuitively.

74. I used to want to be an editor at a book publisher. Now I just want an editor to publish me.

75. I enjoy living in a place with four clearly defined seasons. I love all of them, but I wish winter were shorter.

76. I'm way too indecisive to have just one favorite book, movie, or song.

77. I am not a high heel person. I lust after them when I see a great pair, but I don't buy them because I cannot bring myself to wear them. As a teacher I was on my feet all day, and 3 hours of church is too long too. :)

78. I am a feminist in the sense that I think women should be able to make their own choices. I think the feminist movement has swung from "women need to be in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant" to "you're betraying your equality if you stay home rather than work like men." Why can't they just let us be?

79. I love children's literature as much as I love classic literature. And I hate literature snobs. This is one of the reasons I got a master's in teaching instead of literature.

80. I have a huge sweet tooth. I'm working on cutting back so I can cut back my bod as well. I recently decided that if I wanted to eat cookies I would have to make them myself. It's kind of working.

81. When I was a kid, there was one house that gave out full-size candy bars at Halloween. I want to be that house and have done so for 2 years. This will probably change, however, when we move some place where we get more than 3 trick-or-treaters.

82. I love how the places you live can become a part of who you are. However, I do realize that this can be both good and bad.

83. I love to throw theme parties. My roommates in college and I were famous for our crepe parties. We also threw a Harry Potter bash when the first movie came out. I haven't throw a party in a while, mostly because my house doesn't have room for more than one or two families at a time.

84. I'm much better at exercising when I can go to a class. In college I was into kickboxing classes, but I like any type of aerobics class.

85. My first job in high school (besides the random babysitting job) was as a bank teller at a tiny branch of a small Connecticut savings bank. I wasn't even going to apply because I didn't think they'd hire me, but my mom made me, and I'm so grateful! Because of that first job I was always able to get nice office jobs.

86. I haven't been to a library in a long time. I prefer to buy books, because I like to underline my favorite passages and take notes. I can't bear the thought of returning a book I've liked. This book-buying habit does not always sit particularly well with my husband.

87. I have thrown up on the campus of Columbia University and at Chichen Itza, Mayan ruins in the Yucatan penninsula in Mexico.

88. In our first week in New York City, we went to an outdoor performance of a Shakespeare play in Central Park (it was a Church activity). While there, we were interviewed by Toni Senecal, an entertainment reporter for the channel 11 ten o'clock news. We didn't have a TV at the time, though, so we never knew whether or not we actually made it on TV. Though we have little interest in entertainment, we always like to watch Toni on the news (she has since moved to channel 5).

89. I have been kicked by an ox while visiting Nauvoo, Illinois. No, it didn't hurt--I think I got too close to him and it was more of a nudge than a kick. I have a great picture of it.

90. I'm a big fan of Disney World. We went for our honeymoon and again in 2004. I think we're going to go this November, too.

91. My right hand is "webbed." There is a bit of extra skin between the middle and ring fingers. I probably could have it removed easily, but I don't think it's worth surgery. It's just annoying because I can't wear rings on that hand. Most people don't even notice it's there.

92. My favorite food is chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven.

93. I once snuck 2 pints of Ben & Jerry's ice cream and 10 spoons into Movies 8 in Provo.

94. I love movies based in New York, especially now that I know where everything is. That goes double for 80s NYC movies.

95. I'm pround to be a child of the 80s. It was a fun decade. I'm glad that the toys I used to play with have come back. When Emma gets old enough, I'm going to get her a My Little Pony, a Strawberry Shortcake, and a Cabbage Patch doll.

96. I took tap and ballet classes for five years. I stopped because we moved and I never found a new place to take classes. Sometimes I wish I had continued, but most of the time I don't care.

97. I really enjoy tennis, wish I were better at it, and wish I had a place to play.

98. Tennis and NCAA basketball are the only sports I will watch on TV. I will occasionally watch other sports in person.

99. I prefer silver, white gold, or platinum to gold.

100. Whew! It took me a month (working on and off) to write this.