100 Things About ME on my Birthday

1. Purple is my favorite color.
2. I was glad when the 80’s were over because I could never get my bangs to do that puffy thing.
3. I am 31 (today).
4. I don’t wear makeup very often but feel like I “should”.
5. I have a daughter who is almost 10.
6. She will probably be my only child.
7. I have been working in public radio for 6 years today.
8. I don’t love it the way I should and wish I could quit but honestly don’t know what else I could do that would offer the same flexibility in hours.
9. I am in graduate school to be a Clinical Social Worker.
10. I worry that I will be changing careers every ten years or so for the rest of my life.
11. I think this makes me flaky and unsatisfied.
12. Depression, migraines and moodiness run in my family
13. There are many (many) days when I am affected by at least one of these and want to stay in bed and be left alone.
14. I feel compelled to have a cat in the house and feel like something is missing when I don’t have one.
15. I crave mashed potatoes, cucumbers and apple juice when I am sick.
16. I could go to more than one (more than two) movies in one day.
17. I met my husband (and ex-husband) in high school, though I had a boyfriend and didn’t think much about either one at the time.
18. I am constantly surprised that my husband puts up with my crap.
19. My husband is younger than me by two years.
20. I didn’t start to wear my seatbelt consistently until Bean was old enough to notice.
21. I smoke sometimes, but now that Bean is aware of it I do it less and less.
22. I will feel like I failed her if she grows up with my bad habits.
23. I am a horrible housekeeper. Seriously. Do not go into my kitchen right now. Or my bathroom. In fact, let’s just go out somewhere.
24. My mother has told me my whole life that I am lazy and even when I am working full time, going to school, volunteering at Bean’s school, knitting and leading a book discussion group the fact that my house is messy still makes me believe her.
25. I enjoy cooking.
26. I make a pretty darn good pie crust.
27. I don’t know how to sew.
28. When Bean was little and we lived alone, we used to have backwards food days – spaghetti for breakfast and pancakes for dinner.
29. My cat loves me but barely tolerates everyone else
30. My husband sometimes is the same way.
31. I don’t own my home, though at my age I feel like I should. It just seems like such a huge commitment and responsibility.
32. I would still work if I won the lottery.
33. I love being a student.
34. I really dig office supplies.
35. I hate being outside if it’s too warm/cold/sunny/windy or if there are bugs around.
36. I burn fast and horribly, even with sun block.
37. I am closer to my cousin (who lives 1300 miles away) than I am to any of my siblings.
38. I have a step-sister, a half brother and a half sister (in that order).
39. My half sister is the same age as my daughter.
40. My brother is awesome and I am consistently impressed by the person he is becoming as he grows up.
41. I don’t like confrontation – it makes me physically sick. I’m usually able to look calm on the outside, though, so I can be confrontational if I need to be.
42. I cry when I watch commercials, Lifetime movies-of-the-week, season finales… pretty much any time I’m “supposed” to.
43. I rented and watched the entire Dawson’s Creek series and I didn’t hate it.
44. I read books so fast that I often forget exactly how they ended and after a few months I can read them again and be more or less surprised.
45. I watch bad daytime TV – especially the judge shows.
46. When I was pregnant with Bean I didn’t want to get married but I honestly didn’t know what else to do. Her dad was so insistent that it was the best thing to do that I caved.
47. I wish I had stayed strong – that marriage and it’s emotional fallout wasted a lot of my time.
48. I tell people that I keep looking for a sport that Bean will enjoy and want to stick with because I hope she’ll get a sports scholarship to college but it’s really because I hope that she will be more active than I was and not gain weight the way I did.
49. My first name is Jill.
50. I color my own hair – but I use “real” color, not the kind in the box, and my hairdresser taught me what to do before she moved away.
51. Sometimes when I am talking to my daughter’s step-mother I imagine thumping her right between the eyes and saying “do you really think anyone has ever been even the slightest bit interested in anything you say or do ever?” (A line from The Young Ones).
52. I have seen every episode of The Young Ones more than once and used to be able to recite lines the way other people do for Monty Python.
53. I was an odd kind of odd in jr. high and high school.
54. I wanted to be popular but decided early on that it required too much attention to details I didn’t care about.
55. I want to like dogs but am slightly allergic to and afraid of them.
56. I have no patience for stupid people.
57. I have no patience for people who can’t see beyond their own opinion.
58. I have no patience for people who don’t have an opinion and are satisfied to repeat back something someone else told them to believe.
59. I love Diet Dr. Pepper and drink way too much of it.
60. I have read the first hundred pages or so of Ulysses, The Wings of the Dove and Pride and Prejudice about ten times each but never finished any of them.
61. I have a bachelor’s degree in English Lit, and one in Liberal Arts (with emphasis in Communications, Sociology and Women’s Studies). The second was supposed to be in Communications but I was two semesters from finishing on 9/11. I realized on that day that I did not want to be a reporter or work in any kind of news. I went to my advisor at the end of that semester and said I just wanted to finish so that I wouldn’t have this unfinished degree hanging over my head and he looked over my transcript and gave me some options. That was the quickest and easiest option.
62. The last boyfriend I had before my husband tried to break up with me at my parent’s house in the middle of my daughter’s birthday. I was too distracted (herding the 6-year-olds through cake and games) to really pay attention to him so he left and came back to my house later that night.
63. The worst part about it was that I was settling for him, he wasn’t supposed to break up with me! As soon as I figured out that that was why I was so upset I felt much better.
64. I like cake.
65. My daughter fell and hit her head on her 7th birthday and had a wicked black eye from it that lasted (swear to god) eight or nine months. People assumed that she had been abused and looked at my husband and I like we were monsters.
66. I am afraid of heights, confined spaces, flying (which is sort of a combo, eh?) and dogs.
67. I try to pretend that I’m not afraid of any of these things when my daughter is around.
68. I didn’t understand how anyone could NOT want kids until I was pregnant with my daughter. Then I understood that if I hadn’t really wanted to be pregnant I would really have resented the entire process.
69. I am always ten minutes early. If I arrive on time I feel like I’m late and if I’m actually running late I feel real anxiety.
70. I hate Thanksgiving and Christmas because they both feel so contrived and forced. It’s basically the only time we see some members of my family. There’s only so much I can do with a fake smile and polite conversation.
71. I sell Avon.
72. Peanut Butter is the best food in the whole world.
73. My daughter was born by c-section, and other than having my wisdom teeth removed that was the only operation I’ve ever had.
74. I am unbelievably clumsy.
75. My wedding dress doubled as a bridesmaid’s dress for my friend Marianne’s wedding three months later.
76. My doctor is so cool that I would be friends with her if we met under different circumstances.
77. If you want to buy me a gift you can’t go wrong with books and chocolate.
78. When I work on Sundays I hear the Puzzlemaster twice and feel very smart indeed the second time around because I already know the answers.
79. I used to drink coffee all day every day. Now I rarely drink it at all. I don’t know what changed.
80. My nightmares usually involve huge catastrophic events that you can’t control and could never really prepare for. They got worse after Katrina even though I am nowhere near New Orleans. In the dreams I am separated from Bean and spend the dream trying to find her.
81. I donated baby food and formula and diapers and water to the victims of Katrina – and was happy to do it – but it occurred to me as I pushed my cart out into the parking lot to the row of trucks waiting to be filled and shipped out that there were people in our city who didn’t have anywhere to live or food for their kids. Where were the trucks full of supplies for them?
82. I want to de-clutter my house but I lack the motivation to start.
83. I wish I knew how to do handy things like fix the toilet and hang curtains and install shelves. I know I could learn but I don’t think I’d be very good at it.
84. I prefer Spring and Fall for purely temperature related reasons.
85. I am not patient enough to teach people how to do things.
86. I like stuff that is personalized – notepads, tote bags, pencils, knitting needles.
87. I love funny t-shirts. There’s one out there somewhere that says “Nobody Cares About My Blog.” Seriously.
88. I wish I could be totally organized because total organization makes being impulsive easier. Like, all of my crafty supplies should be stocked and clearly marked and organized so that I can say “Hey Bean, want to make Christmas ornaments?” and we’ll have all the stuff and the room to do it.
89. I used to have a subscription to The New Yorker. I always read the fiction, poetry and cartoons but rarely read the articles. Even if I heard them referenced on NPR or something.
90. I love raspberry sherbet.
91. I can’t eat onions anymore… they make me really really sick.
92. I worry that people will figure out that I’m not very smart.
93. The top of my head and the tips of my toes are very sensitive – in a bad way. I can’t stand any pressure at all in either of those places. This makes wearing hats and cutting my toenails very difficult.
94. I get really annoyed when people are surprised and angry about lines in places where one should EXPECT a long line. Like the tag office on the last day of the month. Like the grocery store check out lines between 4:30 and 7:00 in the evening.
95. My favorite shoes are Birkenstocks.
96. I love the way a pile of wrapped presents looks. It’s very hopeful.
97. I used to write poetry – I was even accepted into an MFA program but I backed out at the last minute and decided I wanted to be a journalist instead. Now I’m not a poet or a journalist.
98. My favorite things about my husband when we first started dating were: he is an only child, he was not an English major, he was very calm and even-tempered and he looked at me like I was made of gold.
99. I don’t know how to play chess.
100. I watch a horrifying amount of television.