100 Things About Me for Post 100. Be Sure to Read #100!

1. I’m named after my aunt.
2. My middle name is the same as my mom’s.
3. My confirmation name is Monica.
4. My mom almost named me that.
5. I like Beverly better.
6. I own far too many bags.
7. I used to own too many shoes.
8. Ok, I probably still do.
9. I learned how to knit English a month ago in order to finally make gauge.
10. I’ve been knitting for almost 10 years. I should have tried to make gauge a little sooner.
11. I’m an ovo-lacto vegetarian.
12. One of my favorite things to do is to watch a Shakespeare play, especially outside.
13. I’m perfectly good at math. I just pretend I’m not.
14. I learned to read in church by following my mother’s finger as the lector read the Gospel.
15. I became an Episcopalian in 2003.
16. I stopped going to church when I moved.
17. I still like to read my Book of Common Prayer. I think it’s well written and comforting.
18. I like that William Shakespeare also read the Book of Common Prayer.
19. I don’t believe you have to go to church to connect with God.
20. I hate working out in a gym.
21. I love getting my work out by doing something: kayaking, boxing, hiking.
22. I spent a summer at St. John’s College, Oxford.
23. I’ve rarely felt as comfortable and at home as I did then.
24. I haven’t had tv since February 1992.
25. I watch a lot of tv when I’m at Neal’s house. I won’t even admit to how much.
26. The avid tv watching usually only lasts a couple of days. Then I get disgusted with myself.
27. I watched golf with my dad throughout my childhood.
28. Now my favorite sport to watch is UCONN Huskies basketball.
29. I lived in the same town Hilton Armstrong is from.
30. I don’t know him.
31. I saw Richard Gere, Joan Rivers, Harrison Ford, and Kevin Bacon in Manhattan, but not at the same time.
32. I wish I had Carrie Bradshaw’s wardrobe. And hair.
33. I have subscriptions to Real Simple, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Creative Non-Fiction, and River Teeth.
34. I was born in a blizzard. I used to say I was a “lizard baby.”
35. Jonathan Safran Foer, Italo Calvino, James Salter, and A.S. Byatt are some of my favorite writers.
36. I didn’t get my BA degree until I was 28.
37. I taught college-level English in a maximum-security women’s prison for two semesters.
38. I count a dog as one of my best friends. The other dog is more like a child to me.
39. I have 13 nieces and nephews, but five of them are from my ex’s side of the family. But I still consider them my nieces and nephews.
40. I’m friends with my ex-husband. I still think he’s an amazing person.
41. The beach is one of my favorite places to be.
42. When I’m angry I cry.
43. That makes me even angrier.
44. I learned how to spin in the fall and bought a wheel of my own.
45. I want to raise alpacas some day.
46. I write about the same things over and over, but in different stories.
47. I learned to ride horses as a means to meet Prince Philip.
48. The plan didn’t really make sense as I lived in CT and he in London.
49. I like to be prepared.
50. I act really tough the first few weeks of the semester to try and get some students to drop.
51. After that I’m a soft touch.
52. I went to Australia when I was 19.
53. When I was in 4th grade my best friend, Denise, moved to MA. It seemed really far away.
54. I still miss her sometimes.
55. I’m tired of living alone.
56. Sometimes I really like living alone.
57. I was 14 before I had my own room.
58. I was a synchronized swimmer for three years as a pre-teen.
59. My first boyfriend gave me Of Human Bondage as a gift. It became one of my favorite books.
60. Even though D.H. Lawrence’s novels sometimes seem over the top, they are among my favorites.
61. I’m a better baker than I am a cook.
62. Bread is my favorite thing to bake.
63. I used to talk to a squirrel I would see as I walked between the train and work. He was missing his tail, so I knew it was the same one.
64. My cat Norman died when I was 12. It was my first experience with death.
65. New York City makes me happy.
66. I understood line after seeing a Sol LeWitt exhibit.
67. I like to mess around with watercolors.
68. My friend Linda Jean Fisher believes that we were once the same person. I believe her.
69. She taught me how to mix paint.
70. She also taught me to believe in myself as a writer.
71. I used to have a recurring dream in which these people, not merfolks, though, who lived underwater would urge me to join them. It was beautiful.
72. It makes me believe I will die by drowning.
73. That doesn’t stop me from swimming.
74. When in CT I walk the dogs by a beaver pond. It’s one my favorite places to be.
75. I have three tattoos.
76. One of them covers a Chinese symbol that was supposed to mean student.
77. I learned it meant Saturday.
78. I thought that was funny, but I covered it anyway.
79. Chewing ice makes me happy.
80. Sometimes I feel obsessive about it.
81. I don’t think I’ll ever have children.
82. I’m afraid everything bad that runs in my family would emerge in my children.
83. But then I think that everything good that runs in my family could exist in my non-existent kids.
84. That’s the most I’ve thought about children in months.
85. I made a lot of quilts between 1992 and 2000. Then I moved to a small apartment and didn’t have room to keep my sewing machine up.
86. The last quilt I made was for Julia, the daughter of a dear friend.
87. I’m learning to embroider.
88. Sometimes I like working with fiber and fabrics better than with words.
89. Mostly words make me happier than anything else, though.
90. Except my boyfriend, family, and friends.
91. My SnB group has kept me sane during the last two semesters.
92. I love to teach.
93. I cheated on my yarn fast.
94. But not as much as I thought I would.
95. I would like to have a little writing house, a room of my own as it were, some day soon.
96. I want to get married again.
97. If I could go anywhere in the world right now, I’d pick Iceland.
98. My parents always told me to do what would make me happy, and I love them for that.
99. The Artist’s Way changed my life.
100. I have a new blog: www.wbnm.typepad.com/pomogo. I’ll be posting there from now on, so change your blogrolls, my dear readers.