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January 01, 2000

100 Things

1. I was born female, blonde, fair-skinned and mostly heterosexual to a upper-middle class family in New England.

2. The rest of it is my fault.

3. Being a Yankee means being part of a strange clan of thrifty folk who eschew make-up, love the outdoors, flock to outlet stores in droves, and believe kindergarten teachers should have advanced degrees from Harvard.

4. I came to Chicago in college and fell in love with the city. It is where I have come back to, whenever I have gone away.

5. My son is a miracle, who was born after 7 months of bedrest and prayer. (I can get pregnant easily. My body just doesn't like staying that way.)

6. My favorite color is blue. Any blue.

7. Being a parent is the greatest honor of my life.

8. I met my husband in 1997, and we agreed we wouldn't be serious. Just a fling.

9. Ha.

10. I have an HUGE sense of humor.

11. No, really.

12. Sure, everyone thinks they have a sense of humor.

13. I own my beliefs. No person on Earth gets to tell me how to love God or worship. What Christian is. How to be a good wife. Or mother. No one gets to tell me what being patriotic is. Or how to be American.

14. I hate what conservative Republicans have done to the concept of being Christian.

15. My brother called me Lizard growing up.

16. He is my only sibling, and I really wanted to be an only child. Luckily, he escaped all my devious plans and is alive and well to this day.

17. Besides my husband and son, I don't have any family within 900 miles of my home. That makes me sad sometimes.

18. My mom is way cooler than yours.

19. I am an Episcopalian by birth and by choice.

20. I respect all faiths, all paths to Enlightenment, all roads that bring people to kindness towards the planet and its inhabitants.

21. I was a chaplain for 5 years in my 20's.

22. I believe that Free Will is the most important Gift we, as a species, were given.

23. I believe that our choices announce our intentions.

24. I majored in Theology at Loyola.

25. Jesuits love a good theological argument.

26. So do I.

You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.
- C.S. Lewis

27. So do spiders, snakes, and clowns.

28. I once had a professional clown for a cousin-in-law; he actually went to a real sleep-away college to become one.

29. He was cool when he wasn't in the freaky getup.

30. Still hate clowns though. And clown art. And songs about clowns.

31. I dressed up as a clown once for a sponsored pub crawl.

32. I'll do almost anything once.

33. When I was 12, I took a poop on the edge of a lake because I couldn't make it to the bathroom in time. A wave caught it and it floated into the swim lane. It was like that turd was following me and I couldn't outswim the thing.

34. Freaking turd.

35. I was a late bloomer; a spastic bookworm, who was teased, bullied and didn’t find my self-confidence until I was in my last years of high school

36. By high school, I had become a joiner. Student government, cheerleading, literary magazine, theater, band, field hockey. I graduated High School with 2 varsity letters, 2 pins, and voted “Most Obnoxious�.

37. Yes, really.

38. I have Lupus, a disease that affects my immune system.

39. I spent 6 months slowly losing my life until it was diagnosed.

40. I spent another 6 months on crutches, battling neurological problems and relearning to walk once I went into remission.

41. That year sucked.

42. It was during my recovery that I discovered MUDs: I was a kick-ass take-that-you-Orc cleric, guilded.

43. It was the first time in my life that I had fun in a game; it was cathartic to heal stuff, kill stuff, and blow stuff up.

44. One day it was time to let the MUD go *poof* from my life.

45. I am a pragmatist, a concrete realist, and I live in the here and now.

46. I used to look in the mirror and see a loud, smart, curvy, nomadic flake who never finished anything she started: including 4 colleges, 1 sorority rush, 2 engagements, my first marriage, 3 failed pregnancies, 5 novels, and an ordination.

47. Now I see a loud, smart, curvy, funny professional woman who has had the same plants and cats for over 15 years, the same bank for 8 years, the same friends for 10 years, the same partner for 7 years, and the same job for 6 years.

48. I need more polish, physically and socially.

49. I love being female, in all the ways you can imagine.

50. Although that peeing on a tree thing sure would come in handy on occasion.

51. It is my responsibility to leave the world a better place than I found it.

52. This has many practical applications.

53. I live for words. I live for words strung together in concepts, in beauty, in vulnerability, in wit, in revelation.

54. I adore the words of Austen, especially in Pride & Prejudice;

55. I love the Gospels and the Song of Solomon;

56. the first half of Stranger in a Strange Land;

57. the Declaration of Independence;

58. the banter between Beatrice and Benedict in Much Ado about Nothing and the St. Crispin's Day speech from Henry V;

59. the visionary words of Descartes, Einstein, Robert Heinlein, Mother Theresa, Jimmy Carter, Mercedes Lackey, Gene Roddenberry;

60. the text of Robin Williams' riff on Scotsmen and Golf;

61. the lyrics to It's a Wonderful World;

62. movie quotes (especially The Princess Bride);

63. and the words above the little pictures in Doonesbury.

64. I dig words set to music, and music that needs no words.

65. I have 10Gig of music files sucking out my hard drive.

66. I don't own a stereo, and I can't sing.

67. I've taught American Sign Language at 3 colleges.

68. I was a cool teacher. I taught the swear words and dirty signs.

69. I speak marvelously bad French and worse, if possible, Spanish.

70. I am extremely thin-skinned.

71. I read pulp fiction in huge gulps

72. Hey, I was wondering. Do you look different in the mirror than the picture you have of yourself in your head, too?

73. I'm sensitive to sexism. I work in core IT, not the fluffy side. Not many women here.

74. Hey you, woman, get a degree in IT and come join me.

75. My career is serious business. I treat it with respect;

76. but I wish I was a stay at home mom.

77. Yeah, I got nothing for this one.

78. I'm blessed with amazing friendships and chosen sisterhood.

79. If I don't have fresh sheets on the bed on Sunday night then the whole week is headed straight for the crapper.

80. I can't drink anyone under the table. I have the constitution of a gerbil.

81. I'm weak for smart, tall, strong, brown-haired men. Like my husband.

82. I get turned on by the curve of my husband's collarbone, the set of his jaw, the reach of his arms, and his amazing eyelashes.

83. If I had to pick an imaginary character to spend the rest of my life with, it would be John Crichton of Farscape . Hands down, no contest. Mr. Darcy can go soak in second place.

84. I'm an independent voter, a fierce proponent of free will and choices - even those I don't agree with.

85. I'm practically a professional Anglophile. I lived in England in the 90's and would love to again.

86. I’m a Scorpio, Moon in Cancer, Gemini Rising. But I’m not sure what any of that means.

87. I hate being overweight and am constantly fighting to be in better shape.

88. I love to swim.

89. I love to be by the water. I love to sail. I grok the world when I am watching the horizon over the sea.

90. I need to create.

91. After writing, Cooking is my passion.

92. My next career will have something to do with food

93. Clam rolls are nectar from above

94. I'm terminally house proud.

95. Which is pretty sick, considering the state of my house.

96. Overachievement is overrated. Trust me on this. There ain't nothing this world needs less than another chatty Christmas letter

97. Yes, I do a Christmas letter. In November

98. I'm well-traveled, but there is so much more I want to see and experience.

99. If my son ever faces the kind of hell his father and I dealt with in school, we'll pull him out and find alternatives. Maybe travel the world as a family - maybe on a sailboat. Come to think of it, we might do that even if school goes just fine.

100. Not a day goes by that I'm not haunted by wondering how I can do more good in the world.

Since detaching from the East Coast, I have mostly lived around Chicago. Well-travelled, to be sure. I studied Theology at Loyola for many years. Project Management at the University of California. But most of what I've learned comes from on the planet training.

My writing is me: Socially liberal, fiscally conservative, optimistic, Christian, and just a touch goofy.

I believe that common sense is highly underrated. That public office should be filled not by election but by random - just like jury service.

I have absolutely no patience, none whatsoever, with crap-mongering idiots who believe they are endowed with a special right to define others.

So do you.

If you wish to know the mind of a man, listen to his words.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I love this country. I despise war. I love being female, in all the ways possible. I love fried clams and old pop music and clean sheets on the bed. I make a great soup from scratch. I can't draw worth a damn. I watch too much television.

I wrote my first book when I was 10 years old. It was an illustrated short story called the "4 W's" about 4 friends who share a treehouse and adventures. By 13, I was keeping a regular journal.

A creative writing teacher once told me to try and cure my tendancies to be "overly sentimental, dependant on cliche.." and to remember that "my talent needs the fuel of bald honesty."

This, from a guy with a tragic comb-over.

I'm just saying.

I've always tried hard to be a writer worthy of the term.

I got sidetracked in 1999, when I was promoted from being a technical writer into management. And then senior management.

I'm over that now.

I dream of becoming an author.

Until then, I will say that life is an adventure so call me an adventurer.

And the greatest asset I have on my travels is love.

If you step on people in this life, you're going to come back as a cockroach.

- Willie Davis