Post #500

Haiku, in honor of the 5 or so hours that I spent at DFW, the wait on the runway at ABQ for a gate, and the long wait for the luggage afterwards.

Texas thunderstorm

living in airports sucks, but

at least there's wi-fi.

I realized yesterday when I signed into Blogger that this would be my 500th post. I'm not sure if that's good or bad. While working on this, I'm sitting at DFW which has, mercifully, a good Internet connection, and I'm switching back and forth between writing this and tracking my blogger peeps at IM-Moo. Go, Greyhound, Go!!
Well, so how best to commemorate this. I thought I would come up with 92 more things that people might not know about me. Lets see how this goes.

1. I find it really annoying when people walk toward me on sidewalks or in hallways on the wrong side. Did they not go to elementary school? Were they not told to stay on the right side?
2. I used to walk into people deliberately and then act surprised and say, "Oh! I didn't expect you to be there. On this side of the sidewalk, and all."
3. Then I recognized that this was unhealthy, passive-agressive behavior so now I just look right at them so that there is no mistaking that I will not move, and they go around me.
4. I really identify with Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life.
5. I know my job's important, but I'd rather be doing something else.
6. I have at some point wanted to be the following when I "grew up": teacher, oceanographer, geohydrologist, structural biologist, instructional technologist, counselor, psychologist, educational researcher, and psychiatrist.
7. I love to soak in the bathtub. For hours.
8. And nap. I fantasize about having a big, string hammock for when I'm off in the summer.
9. At home, I'm so messy.
10. Sweet Baboo doesn't clean up after me, though. He makes small noises of protest and frustraton until I feel bad and then I clean up after myself.
11. I don't feel hunger like normal people--I don't get hunger pangs or sick.
12. My feet don't sweat unless I'm ill.
13. I'm thinking that the non-sweaty feet no-hunger thing is an advantage in endurance events.
14. When I was a kid, I was seriously and brutally good at "Red Rover".
15. I have a particular dislike for men who stand reallllly close when they talk to me.
16. I feel like they're trying to sell me something.
17. Except for Sweet Baboo, of course, who could stand right on my feet and not bother me a bit.
18. I have asthma. If I didn't take Advaire, I'd be using Albuterol several times a day and visiting the ER.
19. Advaire works for me whether or not I believe in it, meditate, or keep crystals, and I will argue mightily in favor of 'western medicine' because of that simple fact alone.
20. Even though I may listen politely and even enthusiastically about alternative healing, I am a skeptic.
21. Which means, show me the research.
22. I can't sleep at night unless some part of me - even a foot - is touching Sweet Baboo.
23. I've started and quit two doctoral (Ph.D.) programs. It's hard to doctoral work with full time jobs and kids.
24. One of my fellow counseling students, however, suggested that I was afraid of success.
25. I suggested that she read less pop psychology and more research.
26. So my "one thing" for Ironman Louisville was that I wanted to finish something arduous that I'd started, to sort of replace my Ph.D.
27. People reallllly piss me off when they take up two spots, or park so that others can't get in or out of their car.
28. Once I walked into a nail salon and said, really loudly, "Gee, I wish I had a giant SUV so I could park however the hell I wanted and not care about anyone but myself!"
    Chuckles ensued.
    Then, about ten minutes later, a woman who was leaving hissed to me, "Good luck with your SUV plans!" before getting into her double-parked SUV and speeding off.
29. Now I just leave anonymous notes on windshields.
30. It makes me feel better.
31. I always make sure nobody is watching when I leave them.
32. Last week I left a note to a man where I said that just because he thought his car was his penis didn't mean that he had to try to cram it into the tightest spot imaginable.
33. I'm pretty sure Sweet Baboo, is going to be very distressed when he reads about that. But Pirate thought it was hilarious.
34. In middle school, when I did the President's Physical Fitness test, I would only run when the coach was watching. I hated running and sweating.
35. In high school, for my PE credit, I took swimming and bowling because I figured they required the least amount of work.
36. When I was in my twenties, I was depressed, and I walked everywhere looking down at the ground.
37. Then I decided one day to stop doing that.
38. It was really scary, because when I started training myself to look up, I had to make eye contact with people, then I had to talk to them.
39. I once plumbed in a washing machine all by myself.
40. I've also cut my own wood, piped in my own wood stove, rewired a lamp, installed light fixtures and thermostats, built my own cheap ugly cabinets.
41. I once painted an entire two-story wood clabbord house, except for the very top where there were wasps nests.
42. I really hate my face.
43. But I'm learning to live with it.
44. I am a terrible liar.
45. That's not a "bit". I can't lie well at all.
46. If I was a doctor I would be so bad at it, because I would just burst into tears and I'd be all like, "OMG; you're gonna die!"
47. I have a good firm handshake.
48. I think less of people who don't have good firm handshakes.
49. My favorite video game is Dr. Mario.
50. I even have an NES emulator on my home computer so that I can play it.
51. WHen I was a little girl, I used to do cartwheels and summersaults on the balance beam.
52. When I talk to my sister in Alabama on the phone, my southern accent comes back.
53. These days, I'm much more interested in human behavior than I am in numbers.
54. It just so happens that mathematics teaching pays better, and needs more people.
55. I took ballet when I was a kid.
56. I tried to join the Military when I was 21.
57. I got kicked out for arguing with the ballet instructor.
58. I hate Larry the Cable Guy with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns, for reasons I will not explain.
59. However, I adore Dane Cook.
60. 99% of the time, my TV is on Comedy Central.
61. I watch a lot of television, and am a huge fan of Southpark.
62. Laughing is, like, one of my favorite things in the whole world.
63. I chose Kentucky for my first Ironman because it was close to where my relatives live.
64. The ones who didn't come, write, or call about the event. Those realatives.
65. I'm probably unlikely to choose another endurance event back east between April and October again.
66. My relatives and old friends aren't interested in triathlon or anything I've done.
67. So I think it means my old friends aren't my friends any more. Which is sad.
68. I mean, I listen about kids, grandchildren, cross stitch, gardening projects, choir, church, et cetera, so WTF?
69. It's times like this, and like at Ironman Louisville, that I miss my mom.
70. Even though she would have agreed with Mama Baboo that I'm insane, she still would have been there, taking pictures, and then she would have painted one of them.
71. When I was little my mom used to paint pictures of me all the time, and in my back yard now, there is a statue of me when I was ten years old.
72. One of the pictures she painted was me swinging on a rope, and she called it, "Flying Mist."
73. Another picture my mom painted of me one was of me standing next to my beloved rope with my arm in a cast, and she called it "Flightless Mist."
74. I wonder, what would she have called a picture of me crossing an Ironman finish line?
75. I'm really good at keeping other people's secrets. No really. Seriously.
76. I'm just not good at keeping my own.
77. I have congenitally soft tooth enamel. I think congenital is the right term.
78. I inheirited that from my father (Thanks, Dad).
79. I have ten crowns and all my remaining teeth have been filled at least twice.
80. That's why I'm switching back to Perpetuum, because it has anti-tooth decay stuff in it.
81. I also have a fast metabolism. Not in an "I'm so skinny; I wish I could gain weight" sort of way, but as in "We'll have to give you some additional shots of novacane before we finish filling your teeth" sort of way. This after I make a loud noise through the dental dam while they're drilling, because, HEY, I CAN FEEL THAT!!
82. I make most of my own earrings and necklaces.
83. I sculpted some nudes for the state art show when I was nine.
84. They were rejected because they were in oil clay, which isn't permanant media.
85. My mom said they were rejected because it was Alabama, 1974, nakedness and I was nine.
86. I smoked cigarettes for ten years.
87. One day, on November 5th, 1996, I had the mother of all asthma attacks and thought, "this is stupid" so I quit.
88. I'm loyal.
89. I can't manage my money.
90. I've never been called "shy".
91. I have, however, been called "hoity toity."
92. I can't bake. Everything I bake collapses, or falls apart into a pile of crumbs, and looks like crap.

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