Repost: 100 things. I love reposting this because of #36-37, because I married him.

1. My first language was Estonian. I still speak, read & write it. All the time!
2. I didn't really speak English until I went to kindergarten,
3. where I learned the word "soon" and thought it meant one o'clock.
4. I thought this until I was 11 years old.
5. Because it rhymes with "noon", you see?
6. My twin sister Twirling Girl has always, always been there.
7. I don’t know what I would do without her.
8. My baby sister Tuuna Taco is my other best friend.
9. My parents are some of the best people I know,
10. And I don't tell them enough, so I am telling them now.
11. Since they read my blog.
12. Which sort of censors me, but that is probably a good thing.
13. I can be gross at your blogs, right?
14. I worry that if I ever meet any of you, you will discover that I am not really as pretty as the persona I have created
15. although I have begun to think of myself as "Spinning Girl" and would probably answer to it if someone called to me.
16. Sometimes I get terribly lonely.
17. Often, I love being alone & doing what I want, when I want.
18. I need to tune my piano so that I can play it.
19. I need to clean my chimney so that I can make bigger fires without fearing that I am going to start a chimney fire.
20. Some pieces of music are so beautiful to me that I cannot contain the emotion I feel when I hear them, and I just cry.
21. I can’t stand most of the music I hear on the radio.
22. There are some exceptions.
23. I have an almost unholy obsession with Yellow Ledbetter and every time I hear those first few hesitant guitar notes, I smile with glee.
24. I had a small alcohol problem once.
25. By small, I mean that it had a short life. Maybe two years of really drinking in a way I felt was out of control.
26. Plus 15 years of wondering if maybe I drank a little too much?
27. I gave up the booze on August 6, 2003.
28. In March of 2004 I drank 3 bottles of wine by myself and scared myself so much that I never want to drink again.
29. In July of 2006 I accidentally took a giant swig of my cousin’s vodka tonic, but only because our cups were identical and it really was by accident.
30. If I drink on purpose, I am afraid I will not stop, ever.
31. I still get mad that something so fun could turn into something so bad, but I’m OK with it and I don’t miss it. It just pisses me off that alcohol was such a mean trickster bastard.
32. I become smitten very easily.
33. Recently I was smitten with someone in my grad class.
34. But he never called when he said he would, so I had my answer.
35. That’s too bad, because I still find him really attractive even though I don’t talk to him much.
36. I am also completely infatuated with Jamwall, even though we have never met, because he gets me and we feed off each other’s sick humor in a truly exhilarating way.
37. Right now, I am imagining Jamwall naked.
38. Are you?
39. Someday, I hope to spend a weekend with him, romping through a condiment village that we have built together.
40. Sometimes I am perfectly happy with my life the way it has gone thus far.
41. But I am always ready for the next big, good thing.
42. I would like to be a mom, though not necessarily give birth.
43. Maybe I just need a pony!
44. Or a dog, a non-pooping dog.
45. Having to pick up shit is the one major thing keeping me from getting a dog.
46. Sharing my living space with a box of urine and shit and giant hair balls is what is keeping me from getting a cat.
47. I had the most amazing cat once, and he will never be equaled.
48. I fear the spider, but only once it has reached a certain size.
49. Spiders of Acceptable Size (SAS) are allowed to live freely in my home.
50. Spiders of Unacceptable Size – SUS-- are thrown outside, not killed, unless they are huge or move very fast.
51. I would probably go crazy if I woke up and discovered an SUS clinging to the tip of my nose with all 8 of its legs.
52. I can honestly say that I love my job.
53. It is like a dream. A job cannot be this perfect, can it?!?!?
54. I sometimes fear becoming debilitated and unable to teach anymore; what would I do then?!?!?
55. I don’t spend much time fearing the future though.
56. Most of my fears are fleeting thoughts, lucky me.
57. Maybe I am stupidly optimistic. That is fine with me.
58. I take life’s little luxuries very seriously.
59. My bed.
60. My coffee.
61. That’s a short list, but those are the two biggies.
62. When I was a child, my favorite place to visit was my grandparents’ house in upstate New York.
63. Sometimes we had to weed the garden, and we had to finish before we could swim.
64. This taught me self-discipline and delayed gratification.
65. I used to pretend I was a poor little slave girl, weeding my little row of carrots in the blazing hot sun.
66. Nothing equals the bliss of a cold swim after you have been sweating in the blazing hot sun.
67. There was (is) a spring-fed pond on my grandparents’ back property.
68. It is stocked with fish that were caught elsewhere & put there by my family.
69. They have lived & multiplied there for 50 years.
70. I used to catch grasshoppers in the meadow and then feed them to the fish.
71. I used to be very good at catching grasshoppers; the most I ever caught was 72.
72. Grasshoppers!!!
73. I fear that one day a swarm of locusts will land on me, as payback.
74. This fear, however, is fleeting.
75. When my family sells my grandparents’ house, I don’t think I will be as sad as I was over the past 10 years, watching it decline from what it once was.
76. Nothing gold can stay.
77. I hope that my parents’ home becomes that way for their grandchildren ... a really special place where you can always go and be happy.
78. I believe it is really important to listen to children and not try to spank too much of their personalities out of them.
79. Like the boy who made the grappling hook; it made me really happy to see that.
80. I can think of 5 teachers off the top of my head who would have said, “put that stupid toy away.”
81. Of course, I teach science, and can justify “allowing” a homemade grappling hook in my classroom.
82. It scares me how little science some people know.
83. I’m a little bit obsessed with Carl Sagan, and rightly so.
84. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors is one of my favorite books of all time.
85. I should read it again soon. I tend to reread books I love several times.
86. I have read Lord of the Rings at least 22 times from start to finish, plus countless times of reading just certain parts.
87. For me, rereading a good book is like visiting a place that I love.
88. When I want to escape for a while, I go to Middle Earth.
89. I’m OK with being a total geek.
90. I have amazing tits, so I can get away with it.
91. Are you imagining my tits right now?
92. Go ahead, then. I am OK with being objectified by you.
93. Shit, I forgot about my parents reading this.
94. Sorry mom and dad, sometimes I say dirty things to be funny.
95. Dirty and funny is one of my favorite combinations.
96. Wow, 100 is a lot.
97. I might have dyslexia because I often reverse “tomorrow” and “yesterday” in my speech, regardless of what language I am speaking. I think those two concepts got stored incorrectly in my Wernicke.
98. I am a huge procrastinator, and I did this instead of grading papers.
99. I always feel better after a good day of procrastinating.
100. I’ll feel even better later when I get that shit done. Thank you for reading!

The song will never be the same for me. It's ruined. Ruined! Or ... enhanced?

Today I was at Napa Auto Parts, and "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" by Blue Öyster Cult came on the radio. I smirked, then smiled, then giggled, then started laughing outright. The clerk looked at me like I had Tourette's. Which ... it felt like I did. I was trying to buy wiper blades, but all I could think about was this:

I like how he really explores

the space in the room.

Explore the space, baby.

Impulse Control Problem

I live in constant fear of acting on one of my impulses.

Last July I wrote a semi-true post about impulses I suppressed during a trip to the drugstore. One of these involved grabbing the bun-like ball on a customer’s turban and yelling “Beep! Beep!” In actuality, this impulse occurred with a student in my school. Imagine the consequences of such an act!

Another time, long ago, I worked in a school with a vice-principal whose last name was Putz. Before I met him, I sat in the office chanting my mantra: “Don’t say putz. Do not say putz. Whatever you do, do not say putz” I wasn’t really worried, because the word putz does not exist in my regular daily lexicon. The man was 10 minutes late to our orientation meeting so when he arrived, he said, “sorry to keep you waiting, hope you weren’t bored.”

I replied, “Nope, I was just putzing around.”

::crickets::

What the fuck is wrong with me?!?!?!?!?!

My latest impulse involves handshakes. Whenever I know I am going to have to shake hands with someone semi-important, like the lawyers and house-sellers at my closing the other day, I fear that I am going to tickle their palm with my middle finger, just like your crazy uncle Elmer does at every family picnic. What if I actually did that? I imagine it as I am greeting the person, and hope that my finger will behave. I’m pretty confident in my ability to control it …

But I did say putz, and that worries me. The little Tourettes demon is lurking just behind the curtain. One of these days, I might shake the hand of the Sultan of Brunei and end up giving him a "happy ending". And not the good kind.