100 things

I've seen this meme elsewhere, and I thought I'd give it a try:

1. My desk gets messy quickly.
2. I used to play French horn. Badly.
3. I hope to play horn again someday, but practicing in an apartment complex is cruel and unusual punishment on the neighbors.
4. Minutes before my son was born, in an attempt to get me to push harder, the midwife asked me, "Do you want this baby? You want this baby, don't you?" At that moment, I wasn't so sure I did.
5. Now I can't imagine life without my son.
6. On paper, my husband and I aren't a good match.
7. In real life, we complement each other quite well. I adore him.
8. I've never experimented with drugs.
9. I've never had a beer because I hate the smell of it and because I've seen too many stupid people drinking it.
10. I tend to leave projects unfinished.
11. As an undergraduate, I transferred schools three times in three semesters, to schools in three different states and three different time zones.
12. I'm extremely happy with the small liberal arts college from which I graduated.
13. I used to have an obsessive-compulsive streak.
14. My dog is an empath and an emotional barometer for my husband.
15. I have the coolest dog in the world.
16. I hated being sixteen.
17. Things got better at age seventeen.
18. My first gray hairs appeared in the last couple of months.
19. I am not patriotic in the conventional sense, and never have been, even when I was a child.
20. Despite my concern for the working class, it is extremely hard for me to "support the troops." This is cause for some embarrassment.
21. I am a pacifist. No, really, I am.
22. After attending several silent meetings last fall, part of me wants to be a Friend (Quaker), but the Christian God thing gets in the way.
23. My favorite lines of poetry come from Yeats's "The Two Trees": "Beloved, gaze in thine own heart / The holy tree is growing there."
24. I love natural history museums and aquaria.
25. I'm not so big on arboreta and botanical gardens.
26. My alma mater recently invited my newborn son to apply for admission to the class of 2028.
27. My son has a very big head, and not just because of that invitation.
28. When I was a little kid, my favorite animals were horses and dinosaurs. They still are.
29. I can doodle pretty damn well.
30. I'm slightly embarrassed to say I would love to have my home decorated by Candice Olson of HGTV's Divine Design.
31. I'm making this list when I should be grading papers.
32. My least favorite part of my job is grading papers.
33. The Washington, DC Capitol Police once threatened to turn me over to the FBI for taking photos of street scenes near the Supreme Court building.
34. I have an M.A. in writing poetry.
35. I'm very close to my mom's highly functional family.
36. On my dad's side of the family, I was lapped generationally not once, but twice. My mom and dad were a great-great-aunt and uncle long before I ever even thought of having a child.
37. I have never distinguished myself athletically.
38. But I try to take horseback riding lessons when I have the resources to do so.
39. I used to ride huntseat, but now I prefer dressage.
40. I was once bitten on the butt by an angry mare while buckling a girth. The bruise was incredibly large. Ends up horses bite hard.
41. I like to write angry letters, but I save them for special occasions. Like being detained by the Capitol Police.
42. My least favorite chore is vacuuming, yet it gives me the most satisfaction when it's done.
43. If I weren't so lazy and weak, I'd rearrange my furniture every month.
44. I've been vegetarian for 15 years, ever since we spent three weeks dissecting fetal pigs in 10th-grade biology.
45. I collect model horses.
46. I'm addicted to reading blogs by academics and parents with young children.
47. I wish my blog entries were wittier. My husband's blog is very funny.
48. I'm a talented procrastinator.
49. I'm not very good at finding new music on my own.
50. One of my favorite things to do is to read a good book until I fall asleep.
51. People who smoke in public make me very, very angry. In a not entirely rational way.
52. I felt this way about smokers long before I had a child.
53. My favorite place to live would be the central California coast because it's so damn beautiful.
54. But part of me likes the slower pace of life I experienced when I was living in central Iowa.
55. When I was growing up, I hated Southern California because I loathed urban life and suburban sprawl.
56. I'm still ambivalent about SoCal, but because my family is there, I imagine I'll return there someday soon.
57. In this age of conservative politics, I've come to like western California's left-leaning ways. I'm a fifth- or sixth-generation Californian, but I've just recently, in my late 20s and early 30s, begun to consider this state my home.
58. My dissertation isn't going to write itself.
59. I'm about halfway finished with that project. It's due to be finished this spring.
60. I'm getting increasingly nervous about my chances on the academic job market.
61. I've had two jobs that required me to handle and talk about insects, including whip scorpions, giant African millipedes, and hissing cockroaches.
62. I never thought I'd enjoy motherhood this much. I can't wait to introduce my son to "scary" insects.
63. A lot of my peers seem impressed by how much I have on my plate right now: seeking jobs, writing my dissertation, TAing for two classes, breastfeeding and raising an infant. "How do you get everything done?" they ask. I think they'd be even more impressed if they knew about the sheer amount of time I spend procrastinating or on leisure activities. But I won't tell them about that. I don't want to out myself as a major procrastinator or make them feel bad for not being as productive.
64. Next to my dissertation advisor, I'm wholly unproductive. It's nice to have a good role model, though.
65. I don't have a favorite color.
66. The messiest room in the house has always been the one where I do my writing.
67. I've read all kinds of books on getting organized. None of their advice stuck.
68. I've never been comfortable around clowns, costumed sports mascots, costumed Disney characters, or the like.
69. I've only been to the circus once.
70. Once was more than enough.
71. I've never broken a bone.
72. I miss Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
73. I seek consolation for that loss by watching Monk, Lost, My Name is Earl, and House.
74. While writing my dissertation, I haven't read nearly enough academic books. Parts of hundreds of them, yes, but not enough entire books.
75. I worry about being interdisciplinary. It's kind of like being in middle school again, where I didn't really belong to any groups--I just sort of sat embarrassedly on the edges of other people's lives and interests.
76. I only became an extrovert in grad school. College was a long transition from introversion (needing time alone to recharge) to extroversion (needing contact with people to reenergize).
77. My least favorite characteristic in other people is arrogance.
78. I have very vivid dreams.
79. Lately my dreams have been about being taken to a place where I don't know anyone and where things are out of my control. Usually my life or that of my parents, husband, or sister is in jeopardy, but we always come through OK.
80. Last night I had my first anxiety dream about becoming separated from my son. It scared me. A lot.
81. My favorite children's book, when I was a child and now, is Goodnight Moon.
82. My favorite authors include Margaret Atwood, Louise Erdrich, and Stephen Jay Gould.
83. My dissertation gets harder, not easier, to write as a progress through it.
84. I think about my dissertation a lot. Probably more than I actually work on it, unless thinking (OK, fretting) counts as work.
85. I am ambivalent about breastfeeding.
86. I want to raise my son to be a feminist. That does not mean I want him to be a sissy boy.
87. I don't know any feminists who are sissies.
88. My dad once said he didn't consider himself a feminist until he had daughters.
89. I'm delighted that I was a catalyst for my father's feminism, even though all I had to do was be born.
90. Today my son, aged 11.5 weeks, learned to turn the pages of a book. I'm thrilled.
91. I'm responsible for introducing my son to books. His father is covering his musical education. An esteemed professor of American Studies has promised to introduce him to the Three Stooges canon.
92. I find it difficult to write about myself for 100 lines. It's taken me three days so far.
93. I was in labor 39.5 hours with my son. He was born, fittingly, on Labor Day.
94. I was born in June.
95. I wore braces for eight years. ¡Eight!
96. My mother wore them for ten.
97. I've studied Spanish and French but I'm lousy at both of them.
98. Which is funny because language arts were always easy for me while I was growing up.
99. That said, I need to practice writing more often. I've become less proficient at it.
100. So I'll conclude with the words of Margaret Wise Brown: Goodnight stars, goodnight air, goodnight noises everywhere.