I recently stumbled across one of those “write-about-yourself” memes that were going around during the years of MySpace and the first few years of Facebook. This one was from January of 2009, just four months after Oscar and I were married. Newlyweds, pre-kids, one dog, two cats. It’s so funny how much has changed and yet, how much stays the same.
The instructions went like this: once you were tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits or goals about yourself and at the end, choose 25 people to tag to learn more about them. Here are my original answers from 2009 along with a few added “things.”
1. I hate paging people over the intercom at work. I feel stupid doing it. Thankfully, I don’t have to do this anymore, but I don’t think I’d feel silly if I had to again.
2. I do not like taking the fall for other people’s mistakes. Still applicable. You own your mistakes, and I’ll own mine.
3. I get really resentful when people don’t call me back. There’s few things that irritate me more than someone who can’t take 5 minutes to call a friend. Motherhood makes this harder to live by, by I still strive to talk to my closest friends as often as I can, or at least make the times I do talk to them count.
4. I would die a happy lady after meeting Robert Plant. Bonus for um, well, you know. Yeah, girl, yeah.
5. I freaking love the harmonica. If only I had the patience to sit down and teach myself to play. This goes for any instrument. I guess I’ll have to teach myself to play something when the boys go off to college.
6. Most days I would argue that I was born the wrong color. In the wrong era. This is still applicable, although now I wish I was more Latina than just by proxy.
7. I get really defensive if/when someone tells me I can’t do something. It makes me want to prove them wrong. I believe adults call this stubborn?
8. I’ve been all over Europe but I’ve never been to anywhere in the Western United States. I’ve been to California twice since then, representing SoCal and Berkeley. Holla!
9. I crack my knuckles like a mad woman. And my back. And my toes. And anything else I can crack. Cracking is my crack. Cracking is still my crack.
10. I would love the freedom of being able to work for myself. Later that year, I got that wish when I started Literally Efficient. It was tough, but the amount I grew and learned about myself was exponential, and I’m so glad for it.
11. I would also love to get the bird tattoos I’ve wanted for so long on my chest. Can’t even foresee doing that until I get to work for myself. And I’m actually good at whatever it is I’m doing. The birdies might still have to wait.
12. My 11th and 12th grade English teachers made me want to go into teaching. The Georgia curriculum assignments made me not want to teach anymore. I still fluctuate with wanting to teach. My heart is all in, but I have so many what-ifs.
13. I am thisclose to calling animal control on the neighbors who quarantine their nasty little dogs outside to bark all. day. long. Seriously – what if I had an infant? Have some manners. Those neighbors moved out that same year and we’ve had a pretty cool family living there ever since. Although, being in a neighborhood with houses so close together, I have to agree that common courtesy is appreciated. Bring your dogs in if they’re barking, huh?
14. I will forever hate being stuck behind school buses. Ditto for mailtrucks. I have much more patience for buses (precious cargo!) and mail trucks don’t really bug me anymore.
15. After next week I will have had 4 mouth surgeries (5 if tonsillectomies count), but only one cavity in a baby tooth I ended up losing anyway. Yep. I’ve been surgery-free since then. It’s been easier on my wallet.
16. I’m one of the only people I know to have been born with cataracts. People are still pretty impressed when I tell them I’ve had cataract surgery. My 60-year-old lady eyes are less impressed. I now have a pair of glasses for distance and pairs all over the house for reading.
17. I will forever pronounce Greenwich like Green wick in my head, knowing full and well that it’s pronounced Gren-itch. Ditto for Chiswick, as in “I’m Donna Noble, a temp from Chiswick.”
18. The first time I ever kissed Oscar was in his cul-de-sac, and I was scared shitless. I stood there like a statue with my arms crossed frozen in fear. Eight years ago. Happy memories.
19. My parents are some of the best friends I have. They still are. I am beyond lucky to have both of them.
20. I absolutely cannot wait to read to my children. And to sing with them. These are two of my absolute favorite things about parenting. I hope Oscar and my’s love of books and music run deep within them.
21. All the people I’d pay huge amounts of money to see in concert are either dead or no longer playing music. Let’s see: Zeppelin? Otis Redding? Nina Simone?
22. I love how big my new extended family is, even though it took me forever to learn all their names. That it did. It continues to grow each year. My extended family really loves having babies.
23. There is no type of cheese I will not eat. Especially the smelly kind – how I live for smelly cheese. All the cheese, all the time. Give me a hunk of pecorino and a Cab Sav and I’m a happy girl.
24. I will never tire of quoting lines from “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?” Ever. Take your pick. I’ll gladly sit and speak with you a spell.
25. I’m not even this number and I want to have children. Grayson was born two months after I turned 26. Alex was born when I was 3 months away from turning 30. It’s perfect timing and I wouldn’t change any of it.
And five more, so I have one for each year:
26. I can’t stand bananas after getting pregnant with Alex. In fact, I was talking to a girlfriend in July 2013 about how all of a sudden I despised the smell of bananas. “Go take a pregnancy test,” she said. Boom. Pregnancy does some weird things to your body.
27. I’m fairly certain that I’ll never master the whole weekly meal-planning thing, but I have a handful of things I can make to keep these boys happy. And there’s always pizza.
28. I am so lucky to have had two amazing creative mentors in my life so far. These two people have helped me realize things about myself that I never could have on my own, and encouraged and pushed me to be my best self when I was under their tutelage. I hope to one day be that person for someone else.
29. I’ve written about him before, but I really miss my late grandfather sometimes. I wish I’d had the opportunity to know him as an adult and ask him about his days writing columns at the Charlotte Observer, as the PR guy for Duke Power and being in Hawaii during WWII. He was fascinating, but I didn’t really get to know any of that side of him until after he passed away.
30. It’s so weird being thirty sometimes. I still feel like I kid, but I’m an adult. I have kids, a mortgage, and bills to worry about, but sometimes all I want to do is turn my music up real loud and sit on my bed daydreaming. Does this go away as you age, or do people always feel like they aren’t the actual age that they are?
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