More Than You Probably Wanted to Know About Me

Raechel did what I started to do a couple days ago by writing out her "25 Random Things About Me" list. I decided I liked hers and would finish my own list. Chances are you've been tagged several times in Facebook like I have, and you're probably starting to get a little sick of the phenomenon. That's okay. You can choose not to read them. Just read mine, because it's important. Don't ask why it's important, it just is.

1. I'm not really a dog person. We have a dog, and we love her on her best days and tolerate her on her worst, but really, I don't care to have a dog. I prefer cats.
2. I have epilepsy. I have to take medicine twice each day for the rest of my life to control seizures. This sort of sucks when I think about it, but by now, after taking medicine since age 12 or 13, it seems normal.
3. I've also worn glasses since 2nd grade and contacts since 5th. I have horrible eyesight. I wish I could get laser corrective surgery, but, at the age of 26, my vision still worsens each time I go in for a check-up. Dang.
4. I dated way too much in high school. I'm amazed that my super-protective, pastor-and-wife parents didn't rein me in more, but they didn't, probably because I was fairly mature and they wanted to show me trust. Unfortunately, I wasn't always as, ahem, selective, as I should have been. Or as careful.
5. I am a bibliophile, to the point that Stephen and I had a harder time marrying our book collections than we did marrying one another. Happily, our hundreds of volumes now coexist peacefully. Also happily, I am rubbing off on my husband: he is currently reading Pride and Prejudice.
6. I am a huge sci-fi and fantasy nerd. Like, almost embarrassingly so, if I really cared to get embarrassed about these sorts of things. My favorite author forever and ever, amen, is Robin McKinley, and Stephen will always rue the day that he introduced me to Star Trek: The Next Generation and thus created a much more enthusiastic fan than himself. I have seen the original Battlestar Galactica series and am working through the new one with my husband, and I think Firefly was pretty much the epitome of television perfection. Joss Whedon, you are the man.
7. I have lived on two continents, in seven states, and in approximately fifteen homes, not including dorm rooms or college apartments.
8. I am musical. I started taking piano lessons in 2nd grade and only quit formal lessons halfway through my sophomore year in college because I had to drop my music minor and couldn't fit in lessons. I took theory and competed in state theory competitions through junior high, high school, and college, too. I started playing the bassoon in 5th grade and played in formal ensembles through college and into our married life, although I'm taking a break from that currently, what with the raising of the kids and all.
9. Bassoon, you say? Why, yes. I even managed to squeak into the Texas All-State Band my senior year. I was the second to last chair in the last band. I had a fantastic time with the last chair, a guy from my rival high school.
10. And speaking of high school, I loved it. Loveditloveditlovedit. I went to Robert E. Lee High School in Midland, Texas, where "Dixie" was the fight song and Cedric Benson led us to three state championships in football. If any of my high school chums are reading this, know that I miss you. I don't wish we were still there, because that would be silly, but it was fun while it lasted.
11. Cedric Benson caught me from falling onstage during a rather unfortunate curtsy while we were both being introduced for our school's Winter Court our senior year. I wore my friend April's black dress. He wore a black tux and white socks. I was named Miss Courteous, a title that still makes me guffaw with laughter. (I know, I know. Courteous people don't guffaw. Thus my point.)
12. Favorite foods: peanut butter, cheese, raspberries, red peppers, and dark chocolate. Least favorite foods: applesauce, canned peaches, and Nutella. Yuck.
13. I am sort of a coffee snob. I am very picky about what beans I'll grind and brew at home, and I make it dark enough to put hair on your chest.
14. I wear a size 9 narrow shoe, as in, 2A foot and 4A heel. (In case you don't know, a normal women's shoe width is B. So I'm double- and quadruple-narrow.) It is impossible for me to find dress shoes. I have always wanted to wear cute little pumps, but never have; they simply fall off of my feet.
15. T.S. Eliot is my favorite poet, and I had quotes of his painted on canvas and hanging in my classroom.
16. Oh, yeah, I taught high school English for two years out of college. I loved the subject and hated the job itself. The fact that I was teaching the lowest level students possible in a rural Mississippi school may have had something to do with it. Getting them to say "Amontillado" correctly was a huge hurdle.
17. I have stood in C.S. Lewis' kitchen and sat in his front room.
18. My possession of a red scarf with pockets was a major factor in my husband falling in love with me.
19. Stephen bringing me a copy of The Princess Bride (the book) so I could have something to read while recovering from pink eye during college fall break was a factor in me falling in love with him.
20. I am a clean freak. I literally have to give the state of my home to Jesus, because it could very easily become something that Satan uses to make me stumble. I am way too easily hung up on messiness.
21. I hatehatehate to exercise.
22. I love Chicago. I wish we lived there instead of almost there.
23. I have a great fear of drowning, to the point of fearing bodies of water, including some swimming pools. I am particularly edgy around deep ends and pool drains. They just freak me out.
24. I studied at Oxford University for a semester during my junior year of college. I took tutorials in Renaissance Tragedy and Late Victorian Literature, a seminar in Shakespeare, a group Medieval History class, and countless more group class sessions. I wrote approximately two 8,000+ word essays each week and read, on average, two plays and a novel every week. I have never worked so hard nor felt so stupid in my entire life. Rebekah, my roommate, can attest to our workload. For heaven's sake, she read Middlemarch!
25. Stephen also studied at Oxford that semester (he had the easiest semester of his life) and he proposed to me in London on December 6, 2003. Earlier in the evening we had attended a service at St. Paul's, followed by dinner at an Italian restaurant. That dinner is an experience he would rather forget, and he will never allow me to go into any greater detail than that. After dinner we walked, and he bent down on one knee under a quintessentially London street lamp. The street on which he proposed was called "Chitlern." I'd rather forget that last little detail, in all honesty.

That was kind of fun. I'd managed to bury a lot of that stuff under deep layers of parenthood, pregnancy, and potty training. Imagine that, I was once a person not defined by my children!

(#26: I love my children to the ends of the earth.)

Consider yourself tagged. Then let me know and I'll come read your post and snicker at your forthrightness and your foibles.

(#27: I love alliteration.)j

jjj(#28: I have officially broken the "jj" key on my computer. Can youj tell?)