20 Things, too

Alex did this thing, and I basically want to be her when I grow up (moment of appreciation for how she can make me laugh every. time. no matter what), so I figured I'd do it, too. And yes, if she jumped off a cliff, I'd totally jump off too since I know this girl, and the only way in holy heck that she'd pull such a stunt is if there were 0% chance of it causing bodily harm. That's what trust is.

Note: photos have nothing to do with post, being random samples available from my phone. Enjoy.

Besides, I was looking for something to reinvigorate my desultory blogging, and it's past my bedtime so I'm in a divulgatory mood.

1. Every time I see a picture of myself I think, wow, I look so much like a praying mantis.

2. The only bone I've broken is my head. I'd knock on wood, but I'm hoping that's enough of an ante to hold me for the rest of my life.

3. My first pet was a calico kitten named Minnie who slept on my pillow and sucked my pinkie while I sucked my thumb. She was tragically killed by a car, and I am still mourning her loss.

4. I am a consummate dilettante, and my enthusiasms are boundless -- for everything. It is due more to circumstance than any particular effort that knitting has stuck, I was a pen-twirler before I started knitting and the introduction was like water to parched earth, and I kept knitting until my fingers were literally raw. Then I didn't pick up needles again for five years because I was playing with horses and dancing my fool head off, until motherhood curtailed those activities.

5. I appear to be immune to addiction (haven't tested this theory too broadly, mind you) since I react very aversely to all of those substances to which people seem to become addicted. Two exceptions: reading and braiding. In my heyday of endless free time I averaged one book per diem, so I started listening to them to make them last longer and so that I could function in the world -- drive, do dishes, etc. And as there is no real fix for braiding, I had to grow my hair long again, despite my horror of hair all over the bathroom, just so that I can braid it. Since that wasn't enough, I had a daughter so that I could braid her hair, too. Since that wasn't enough, I lurk in the shadows until unsuspecting victims come within reach and then accost them with glassy-eyed zeal and the insistence that they really intended to go through their day with a braid. Three strands, four strands, crowns, zig-zags, inside-out-and-backwards, it's all fair game. If you've got hair, I'm imagining it braided.

6. Nothing makes me cranky like a hot, airless bedroom.

7. Except for activities that require me to reach above my head and push for long periods of time, such as painting ceilings or putting away heavy boxes on top of shelves.

8. Despite a certain short-lived blog series, I don't really have favorites of things -- music, foods, colors, seasons -- and I'm always fascinated by peoples' certainty when they say they do. I do, however, have definite DISlikes -- for the color olive drab, for instance. Part of the problem is that it really wound up on the short end of the stick when they were handing out names, along with puce and mauve. I never understand things like that, how such words can exist in the same category as chartreuse and periwinkle and vermilion. Like fly and hippopotamus, someone was clearly phoning it in with one of those nouns.

9. I love heights, climbing up to heights, swinging from heights, bungee jumping from heights, all kinds of heights. But I go belly up at the prospect of a jump of more than two feet off a rock into water. In these instances it is only my self-respect as a card-carrying tomboy that makes me screw my courage to the sticking place and hurl myself to certain doom. Go figure.

10. One of my greatest fears, while we're on the subject, is of tsunamis. Yet I still dream of a nice seaside cottage.

11. Apparently I am just a bushel of contradictions, for instance:

12. I graduated high school two years early, was an Oregon Scholar and won top honors from one of the most prestigious preparatory schools in the country, and yet at thirty I am a career-less single mother of two. Buy me a drink some time and I'll tell you my cautionary tale to frighten your children with, otherwise it's not all that interesting a story.

13. I own more scarves than I do shirts, clearly I have my priorities straight.

14. I adore the English language. I swoon over words like 'defenestration' and 'absquatulate' and have the utter tactlessness to use such antique expressions in quotidian speech, which often gives people the inaccurate impression that I'm either particularly clever or particularly snobbish. I am also an excellent speller.

15. I exist in part because my Danish great-grandfather challenged the Prince of Denmark to a duel over a woman, and had to flee to America after the royal family put a price on his head. The other half of my family were Croatian peasants since time immemorial, and I can say only very rude or nonsensical things in Croatian.

16. I still sometimes try to tap into my undiscovered powers of telekinesis just so that I don't have to walk across the dang room to pick something up.

17. The worst thing to ever happen in my life was the half second of watching helplessly as my son fell through the air and bounced twice on the ground, breaking the slender twig of his wrist into a sickening oxbow. I swear I never knew what fear was until I had children and had the entirety of my sanity wrapped up in the survival of two people whom I am powerless to wholly protect.

18. The best thing to happen to me was becoming a mother. Once again, go figure.

19. Taking photographs is one of the nearest things to complete happiness. Someone ought to pay me for it... Oh, wait.

20. Finally. This is an awful lot of talking about myself, I had no idea how hard it would be to come up with only twenty quasi-interesting facts about the entirety my life and being. This, right here, is the root of why I blog so little -- whatever would I say?

Cheerio, my dearios. Drop a line and tell me a thing or twenty about yourselves, you can be sure that I'm listening and dying to find out.