I didn't sleep very well last night so decided to think about putting together the 100 things list that I've seen appear on other blogs. The list might be different under other circumstances, but this is 100 things about me today.
1. I grew up on an organic farm in East San Diego County and we ate what my parents raised and grew. We subscribed to three magazines: Life, Organic Gardener and Prevention.
2. My parents had me so late in life that was father was born in the 19th century.
3. My parents lived in Fairbanks Alaska when I was born.
4. I was born in Seattle and the Thompson Maternity Hospital, which no longer exists, because my mother was high risk due to her age.
5. My mother taught me to knit and the Red Cross taught her to knit as part of the war effort – the first world war.
6. My great grandmother hiked the Chilcoot Trail to the gold rush in Dawson Creek, Yukon Territory.
7. The gold bracelet I wear comes from a single nugget she was given for bringing good luck to her outfit.
8. My mother wore the bracelet until she gave it to me when I got to high school.
9. It doesn’t come off any more so I am always wanded at airports as a potential terrorist – me and the other old folks with implants and plates.
10. When I was nine, we moved into the little house my father built out of scrap lumber.
11. My parents got our C of O before the house was finished.
12. For the first year we heated water on the stove and took baths in a galvanized tub in the kitchen.
13. We had an outhouse – it was painted green to match the trim on our white house.
14. My mother raised meat rabbits for money so she could stay at home with me.
15. I had to walk a mile to the school bus, uphill both ways – okay, just one way.
16. My mother played piano in church.
17. She gave me accordion lessons – gads.
18. I lived in the Philippines for two years as a Marine wife.
19. My oldest son was born in the Philippines
20. Ian is my third husband and we celebrate our 10th anniversary in September.
21. We have seven children and seven grandchildren between us and they all like us.
22. I was a medical transcriber for two years, so I can type really fast and I can type what I hear.
23. My only brother is 23 years older than I am.
24. I fidget – when I was a kid, people used to say, “Can’t you just sit still?” and I would think, “Whaaa….?”
25. I was raised Protestant.
26. I am a confirmed Catholic.
27. I still eat the same as when I was growing up.
28. I am still the same weight and size as I was in high school.
29. Some of my clothes are really old.
30. So am I.
31. My favorite color is green but I’m starting to like purple.
32. I have always hated purple.
33. I have finally learned never to say never – or always.
34. I can’t bear to knit one single project at a time – minimum four.
35. I like to bead with seed beads.
36. I decided to learn to weave because my mother wanted to learn but couldn’t afford a loom.
37. I have two looms.
38. I don’t love to weave.
39. I will learn to love to weave.
40. I love to spin – spinning is my meditation.
41. I learned to sew in 4H which I couldn’t wait to join when I turned ten.
42. I am a good seamstress.
43. I don’t sew anymore.
44. I took cooking in 4H but it didn’t take to me.
45. My mother-in-law taught me to cook.
46. I am a very good cook.
47. I don’t like to cook - I don’t have or make the time.
48. My great grandmother, my grandmother and my mother were all professional cooks.
49. My mother and grandmother were able to work all through the depression as cooks at truck stops.
50. My daughter doesn’t cook either.
51. Both my boys are very capable cooks – the lineage switched gender.
52. My best friend is my husband.
53. He cooks.
54. We met through work.
55. We love to camp.
56. Our favorite campground is Lane County in Florence, Oregon.
57. I am allergic to sagebrush.
58. Our place is named Sage Creek Farm because that’s what is in our creek.
59. I take allergy shots for sage brush.
60. The hardest thing I have been through is my daughter losing a baby.
61. My daughter is my favorite woman on the planet.
62. Alexia, her daughter, is 2nd runner up.
63. I started running when I was 30 and continued for 25 years.
64. My furthest fun distance was half-marathon.
65. I ran in the Journal Jog as a bride, wearing a Laura Ashley dress.
66. I fell off of a mountain bike and couldn’t get my toe out of the toe clip.
67. I’ve only ridden a mountain bike once.
68. I was able to run after the first knee surgery but had to quit after the second one on 9/17/2001, the week after 9/11. We went to DC and NY the next month – it was spooky, quiet and somber.
69. My running partners were my two dogs and after they died, I scattered their ashes under some willow trees on our favorite trail.
70. They pulled out the trees and paved the trail over after we moved out here – progress.
71. My grandmother taught me how to make custard and pie crust.
72. I am a good pie maker.
73. I like to make pies, any kind, including quiche and meat or tofu pies.
74. I love dark roast coffee, the darker, the better.
75. My favorite drink is India Pal Ale – I can’t drink just one.
76. I prefer red wine to white.
77. I drink a bottle of wine a month.
78. On the Myers-Briggs personality scale, I am an EFTP, which means I talk a lot and like to have a lot going on all at once.
79. I was a white blonde clear through high school. I once met an albino Mexican girl who looked just like me and my feelings were hurt because she wouldn’t talk to me.
80. I knit really fast.
81. I talk really fast.
82. I don’t drive fast.
83. I love to read.
84. I can’t enjoy the mystery genre, no matter how hard I try.
85. I am angry at our White House Administration.
86. I don’t trust the mainstream media and get my news from the Internet and NPR.
87. I worry that we won’t leave Iraq until our Administration has privatized the oil fields.
88. I am a good sleeper – no insomnia here.
89. I was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in 1996.
90. I resent it but am glad to finally know what’s wrong.
91. I hated the high desert when I moved here, but after living in Redding for a year and running on tree-lined streets that looked like the other – couldn’t see the view – I fell in love with it after we moved back.
92. I love the high desert.
93. My favorite season is autumn.
94. Spring is my second favorite season but it’s usually very short here. The high desert is spectacular in spring.
95. I am impatient and tend to follow directions after my first attempts fail.
96. I am trying to enjoy every age as I am in it. My mother lived to be 95, so I expect many stages and ages to come.
97. Ian says I “spread” but it’s important to have all my tools around me when I’m working. That’s why he insisted on a workroom for me when we had this house built.
98. We only fought over leaving a window open from my workroom to the great room – he was right.
99. I asked him what he wanted when we were planning the house – he said, “A view.” I’m glad I listened to him. He was right.
100. I don’t have to be right all the time, but I do like to be right.
This is how much snow fell overnight. I left work about 4:00 yesterday when it started snowing in earnest. I have never experienced such a harrowing drive, and I've lived here since 1975. I drove about 12 miles in near white-out conditions, with snow falling so fast that I had to put my windshield wipers on high. With only a couple hundred feet of visibility, headlights appeared almost at the same time as I came upon the vehicle. At one point, a pair of headlights crept past me on the left, then almost immediately I saw a pair on my right side - freakout! It was the lights of a car that had spun out, but they were able to pull back on the road after I passed which is good because I was afraid to stop.
I took a picture of Zaria this morning. The distortion is because I had to shoot through the window. I still hadn't shoveled the deck. She came to us from Oregon so the only weather she had experienced before coming here was rain. She's chewing her cud (is that what llamas do?) and completely is contented. I believe she's having Andean dreams.
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