You May Have To Take A Day Off Work To Get Through This

Okay, so since I’m pretty much of a lazy ass, I will direct you to The First Six and hereby commence this list with Number Seven.

7.  Hmmmm…writer’s block already.  Does. Not. Bode. Well.

8.  I was a chubby kid.  My Mom always said it was baby fat and that I would outgrow it, and yet she put me on every diet known to man.  I could make up this entire post of 100 things just by listing every diet I’ve ever been on.

9.  One of my favorite words is ‘half-ass’ – I love this word and use it every chance I get, even as a verb.  As in, "BeBop, why the FRICK are you half-assing the dishes, JUST SCRUB THEM ALREADY!!"

10.  BeBop hates the word ‘half-ass.’ See above.

11.  My first boyfriend wrote out all the words to the Peter Cetera song You’re The Inspiration and I thought it was the most romantic gesture EVER.

12.  He turned out to be a cross-dresser. This was not my fault.

13.  Years after we broke up, we had lunch and he shared this news with me.  We briefly talked of becoming roommates, and then I realized if we shared a closet we would be sharing a closet and suddenly this did not seem like such a good idea.

14.  Growing up, I always thought I would be a lawyer and then go into politics.  Even from a young age, I volunteered on campaigns and was on the debate team in high school.

15.  After college I worked for a CRAZY attorney who smoked pot before going to court.  I soured on law as a career path and instead of going to law school I moved to Los Angeles.

16.  As I mentioned, I was a Congressional Page when I was about 15.  I was never hit on by any Congressmen.  I think because I had one thing going for me.  It’s called a VAGINA.

17.  During college I worked in Washington, DC for a summer and then after grad school moved there for a few years.   I loved that city.  But I grew disillusioned with politics and am still figuring out what I want to be when I grow up.

18.  I’m thinking these should be shorter or you’re going to be here all damn day.

19.  I spent a summer in a small West African village when I was in college.  No running water, no electricity.  It was awesome and horrible, all at the same time.

20.  I caught malaria and thought I was going to die. 

21.  I kept thinking my Mother was going to KILL me if I went to Africa and ended up dying of malaria.

22.  Exactly a year later I was backpacking through Europe and had a mysterious illness which consisted of really, really high fevers and once again,  was pretty sure I was going to die.

23.  When I saw BeBop for the first time, a shiver ran down my spine and I thought:  there he is.

24.  We started off as friends, hanging out doing ‘date-like things’ that would include dinner, a movie and often drinks.

25.  But he never tried to kiss me, so I assumed I was permanently stuck in the Dreaded Friend Zone.

26.  Then  I had a dream in which he was choosing two copies of each book from the basement of the publishing company he was working for at the time.

27.  When I woke up, I was sure he was seeing someone else. 

28.  About two weeks later, he explained that we were in the Friend Zone because he was ending a relationship with someone and didn’t want to complicate matters.

29.  This was actually fine with me because I was also casually seeing someone, a guy who had just graduated from college.  I was almost 30, he was 22 and hot. SCORE!

30. But when I refused to sleep with him he dumped me on my ass.  BASTARD.

31. But I kept his favorite baseball cap and as you know, there is nothing more precious to a frat boy than his beloved, well-worn college baseball hat.

32.  So you can SUCK IT college boy.

33.  Not that I’m bitter or anything.

34.  BeBop and I started dating shortly after that.

35.  When we started talking about adopting a dog, he suggested the name Peas. I almost left him over that.

36.  I am terrified of heights. 

37.  And roller coasters.  Once when we went to Vegas I went on the New York, New York roller coaster and kept my eyes clenched shut the entire time. I was SURE I was going to pass out cold and fall out of the safety bars.

38.  Needless to say, I do not, in fact, feel the need for speed.

39.  I hate it when people try to cut in line.  I get very angry when this happens.  And I mean steam-coming-out-of-my-ears-practically-catatonic-with-rage angry.

40.  It is not a pretty sight.

41.  All through college, I had a recurring fear that I would one day be taken hostage in a bank.

42. For years, each time I went into a bank I tried to locate a hiding place that I was sure would one day come in handy when the bank was suddenly taken over by masked men.

43.  I feared one of those Richard Nixon masks the most.

44.  I seriously had this fear for four years.

45. Soon after I graduated, some friends invited me to a local bar for drinks.  Since it was a weeknight and I actually had a real life job (with the screaming lawyer) I declined at the last minute.

46.  That night, the bar where they went was taken over by a heavily armed crazy person.  Several people were shot trying to escape.  One of these people was a woman from my sorority, who was shot ten times but lived.

47.  The man kept these students hostage for the entire night.  One student died, after bleeding to death behind the bar.

48.  He did things to them.  But no one really knows what, because none of the people wanted to talk openly about it once it was finally over.

49.  It’s a little like the plot of that new TV show, The Nine.

50.  It was a horribly traumatic thing (to put it mildly) and terrifying for those of us who knew these people.  None of us knew how to help them.

51.  After this tragedy, I never had that premonition again.

52.  Suddenly half-way through this list, it has taken a macabre turn.

53.  Maybe you should take a quick break and grab yourself a Diet Coke?  It’s okay, I’ll wait…

54.  Much better!

55.  I love dogs and like cats, but I’m definitely a dog person.  I’m not sure if I’ll ever have cats of my own. BeBop is not a big fan. 

56. My sister used to have a little bird she called Josh.  He hated my guts and would scream (squawk?) bloody murder whenever I entered the room.

57. My sister would do her homework sitting on her bed with Josh perched at the end of her pencil.

58.  Being the nerdy bookworm I was, I thought this was ridiculous and told her so.  She was the cool kid and hated me giving her advice.  She and Josh would gang up on me and I would leave the room dejected, having had my proverbial ass kicked by my little sister and a little green bird.  Pathetic.

59.  On September 12, 2001, when BeBop and I started talking about canceling our wedding, I had my first (and hopefully last) panic attack.

60.  That was, and still is, one of the saddest moments of my life.

61.  Good grief Charlie Brown! Why is this list so depressing??

62.  My Mom has a photo of an Indian Guru in our house.  He’s wearing an orange robe and has a huge, bushy afro.

62.  This afro is like the exaggerated hairstyles seen in movies from the 70s.  It’s just a huge halo of hair. I cannot overemphasize the hugeness that is this afro.

63.  When one of my college roommates came home with me, she asked if that was my Dad.

64.  My Mom and I started laughing so hard we couldn’t speak and were doubled-over, trying to catch our breath, for like five minutes.  My roommate just stood there, unsure as to what was so humorous.

65.  This would be funny if you knew my Dad.  An uptight, prep-schooled New Englander.  With short hair and madras pants and golf clubs always within arm’s reach.  Who sings in the church choir. So to confuse him with an Indian Guru  in an orange monk’s robe with this huge afro is just, well…I guess you had to be there.

66.  I love food.  Like, LOOOOVE it. 

67.  Speaking of food, I just ate lunch and had a bowl of yogurt with bananas and flax seeds.  When I was about two bites from finishing, I bit into something hard that was not a flaxseed. It was a tiny bit of glass.  Then I found two more in my mouth.  I was eating glass people!  [That  sentence should read:  I was eating glass, people! otherwise it looks as if I was eating GLASS PEOPLE, which, unless I was really hungry, would not make any sense!]

68.  Speaking of eating glass, I really did meet an amateur magician a few years ago at a colon cleansing health retreat (mentioned in the First Six).  In his act at the end of our stay, he ate a light bulb!

69.  We’d been on a strict diet of juices, wheat grass and sprouted sprouty things all week, so I can’t imagine how this light bulb affected his digestive system.

70. He was (and still is, I presume) the father of the actress Michelle Williams.  It was during the time she was on Dawson’s Creek and I was waaaay too old to be watching that show, but I was.  And I admitted it when he told me who his daughter was.

71.  And I jokingly offered to run away with him and be his apprentice.  And I was only half-joking.

72.  My sister and I have a habit of cracking each other up at the most inappropriate times.  Think church, funerals, formal dinners, that kind of thing.

73.  My goal is always to make her spit out her drink through her nose, which she does often.  Sometimes when we start laughing we cannot stop.

74. Once when she was little, she drew a crude rendering of a pig on the church program, put an arrow pointing to the pig and then my to name.  As if the pig was named Watson, or that I was the pig.  Is this clear? I cannot tell.

75.  Anyway, we started laughing and snorting so loud we had to leave the pew and run outside.  My parents were not pleased.

76.  I always hated church but still go on Easter and Christmas to please my parents.  Really my Dad, because my Mom prefers to sing Indian hymns at a local ashram.

77. Once when I was in junior high my Mom brought me to an ashram in Oakland.  An Indian guru was there (not the one in the aforementioned photo) and he was blessing people.  You had to wait in a long line and then bow down before him.

78. Usually, he would make some sort of a blessing gesture above your head and murmur something in Hindi.  When my Mom got her turn, he started batting her over the head with a large peacock feather. But the kind of feather with the…spine thingey??…in it, so that it was more like a small stick.

79. And he kept slapping her on the head with this feather, making a loud "THWACK" sound each time.

80.  She thinks he was opening her chakra.  I think he was punishing her for being mean to me when I was little.  (See previous post re: being locked in room in order to bend spoon with so-called psychic powers.)

81.  I get terribly carsick AND seasick.  Sometimes I’m not that much fun to travel with.  Unless you like vomit, because THEN I’m your best fuckin’ friend!

82. I love words.  I love reading them and writing them, and speaking them and learning about them and making them up.  I heart words.  Strangely, this never occurred to me until one day shortly after we met, BeBop said, "GAWD, you, like, totally love words."  And I thought, "Holy freaking hell, I DO!"

83.  Are you sure this list is supposed to be all about me?  It feels self-indulgent and narcissistic.  And by  "self-indulgent and narcissistic" I mean SUPER FUN.

84.  If you are still reading by this point, I will send you $5.

85.  NOT.

86.  When BeBop and I took a break from trying to get pregnant, I went through a certification program to become a life coach.  Even though it’s not my full time job now, I love it.

87. Sometimes I wonder if one day I’ll become a life coach working with women dealing with infertility issues. I like to look for meaning in the bad things that happen to me, but know that sometimes shit just happens, man.

88. My sister and I have seen the movie Tommy Boy about 100 times.  There is one scene in particular, in a restaurant, that makes us laugh so hard we practically pee ourselves, even though we’ve seen it a million times.

89.  Many people think my sister and I are very weird.

90.  My sister eloped after knowing her now-husband for only two months.  She didn’t tell anyone for almost three months.  He is Mormon. She is not.  We thought they were crazy.  They celebrated their  7th anniversary this past summer. Shows you how much we know.

91. Every January, BeBop and I make what we call our Treasure Maps. They’re collages of pictures and quotes and phrases that we put on our mirrors to look at each day  They represent our dreams, wishes and goals for the coming year.  We’ve had baby pictures on these treasure maps forEVER.

92. Phew.  Home stretch now, baby!

93.  My friends and I like making up nicknames for each other and every other person in our lives.  The girl your boyfriend cheated on you with is called Martini, the pale guy in our condo complex is called Powder, my ex-boyfriend is called Mr. Cruel.  It gives us endless hours of fun to come up with these names.

94.  When my Mom took my sister and I to India two years ago, we were traveling in a taxi to an ashram.  At the same time the driver offered my Mom a mint, she saw a small dog on the side of the road.  When she asked, "what is that?" he thought she was referring to the mint.  So he said, "A mintamintamint" because he was frustrated she didn’t understand his English.  She thought he was pointing to the dog and calling it a "minka."  She kept saying, "A minka??  What kind of animal is THAT?  I’ve never heard of that!"  And my sister and I laughed so hard I thought both of our heads would explode, right there in the taxi.

95.  For the rest of the trip we’d see a dog and shout, "Look, Mom!  A MINKA!!" and laugh and laugh. She would tell us to shut up.

96.  At one point, we were attacked by wild monkeys because they saw we were carrying fruit from the market.  One stood on its hind legs and grabbed my Mom’s skirt WITH HIS TINY LITTLE MONKEY HANDS.  We shrieked in terror and my Mom tried to hit it with the bag.  I threw a banana in the other direction in the hope it would get distracted and run for the banana.  It did.  We still ran away like screaming little girls.  Good times.

97.  I still don’t know what to do with the rest of my life. I look at the following quote each day, and hope it’s true:  "Whatever you are meant to do, move toward it and it will come to you."

98. I really, REALLY want to get pregnant without having to do IVF.  Sometimes I think this is possible, other times I think I’m a raving lunatic.

99.  The raving lunatic part will come as no surprise to you if you’ve read Numbers 1-98. 

100. At the end of a long night of partying, my sister and I would say, "We’re soooooo end of party," meaning it was clearly time to go. 

I think I can safely say: 

END OF PARTY.