100 Things About Me

1. I am short. This is something that bothers me only when buying pants.
2. I love stand-up comedy.
3. I could drink Coke 24 hours a day.
4. My favorite book is The Little Prince. I received my first copy when I was 6 years old from a man who worked with my mom. It is the single most important book I have ever read.
5. I am not religious but I am very interested in religion.
6. My eyes are green.
7. My hair is brown but I have to color it now because I started going gray just months after having my first child. No lie.
8. Fall is my favorite season. The colors, the weather, the football, the upcoming holidays - perfection.
9. I love the mountains.
10. I love the beach just slightly more than I love the mountains.
11. I'm pretty absolutely sure I suffer from social anxiety disorder. I'm also fairly positively certain that it is getting worse with age.
12. I've struggled with my weight for as long as I can remember. This is because I love food and it is my drug of choice in happy times, sad times, stressful times..... all the time.
13. My favorite kind of ice cream is Ben & Jerry's Heath Bar Crunch (vanilla, of course). One of the most gratifying moments of my life was when -while digging around in a pint - I found a chunk of chocolate big enough that I could read the word "Heath" on it. Exquisite.
14. What Not to Wear is, in my opinion, the best "reality show" ever created. I cannot stand in a dressing room without hearing Stacey and Clinton in my mind.
15. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are my favorite television shows but I rarely see them anymore because they air at bath time and again after bedtime.
16. Attending Governor's School during the summer of 1990 fundamentally changed who I was. In a good way.
17. My childhood was both happy and deeply troubling.
18. Depression runs in my family. I am part of that legacy.
19. I avoid confrontation at all costs.
20. I love board games and hate card games.
21. My mom's front porch is my favorite place on the planet.
22. Most people don't "get" me.
23. I have nice feet. (But I wouldn't wear sandals in public until I was in my late twenties.)
24. I was valedictorian.
25. I once turned down a full scholarship to UNC - Chapel Hill because it was a teaching fellowship and I didn't want to be a teacher. Instead, I attended UGA as a genetics major. I changed my major to elementary education before the first quarter ended. Doh!
26. I hold two advanced degrees and would like to earn a doctorate before I turn 40  50.
27. Being a student is my dream job but nobody pays you to do that. Except maybe the military and...well....you know. Not gonna happen.
28. Shopping makes me happy.
29. I crave solitude. Eating out, going to a movie, shopping, taking walks - I love to do things by myself.
30. I bite my nails in times of stress. And yes, I know that is gross.
31. My name is just Beth. Not Elizabeth.
32. My brothers are 12 and 14 years older than me. So, I'm the youngest but also kind of an only child.
33. I don't like to travel, although I wish I did.
34. My perfect day involves spa treatments, a fantastic book, good food, and silence.
35. My car is 17 18 years old. I bought it new in college and I love it more than I can explain. While I miss the fancy, sporty little Civic I traded for our family van, I have an affection for the Escort that defies logic. I hope it runs forever. I will always love the Escort, but I am currently so infatuated with my Escape that I cannot feel too sad about moving on from my old car.
36. With only a few exceptions, my best friends have always been male.
37. To me, lyrics are the most important part of a song. If I can't sing along....NOT interested.
38. I cannot sing well but I wish I could.
39. School supplies bring me great joy. Really. A brand new Sharpie marker is one of the most exquisite objects I can imagine.
40. I have an obsession with Birkenstocks. I own more than 2 dozen pairs in every color/style imaginable.
41. I hate my thighs.
42. I believe in ghosts.
43. I am afraid of ghosts.
44. My Ebay rating makes me proud.
45. I get terrible headaches in times of stress or when I'm sleep-deprived.
46. I never liked chocolate until my twenties and now I could eat a boatload of it.
47. I'm extremely liberal. I would not vote at all before I'd vote for a conservative.
48. When I was 2 or 3, I stuffed a pencil eraser so far up my nose that a doctor had to remove it with long tweezers. I distinctly remember watching Captain Kangaroo when I did it and I also remember sitting on my dad's lap for the extraction. Unfortunately, I also remember seeing the slimy little eraser after they took it out. Ew.
49. When I was almost 2, I fell out of our orange VW bus and knocked out my two front teeth. They were gone until I was in 2nd grade.
50. My first pet was a black poodle named Scofield.
51. My second pet was a tabby cat named Toonces.
52. Spiders and bugs do not scare me but a cockroach can bring me to tears.
53. I don't like traditional breakfast foods like french toast, waffles, or pancakes. I prefer to eat the other breakfast foods (eggs, hash browns, etc.) for dinner and have random, dinner foods for breakfast. (I've been known to eat sushi, spaghetti, tacos, Chinese leftovers....)
54. I slept with my mother until I was 10 years old. I still do not like to sleep alone.
55. My boys sleep usually end up in my bed before daylight. They slept with me all night from the day I brought them home from the hospital until just last summer (2009). They still do. And no, I do not care to discuss it with you.
56. The sounds of cardboard being scraped or cut and wet shoelaces being tied make my teeth hurt.
57. I have a long list of regrets but I still believe things almost always end up working out.
58. I once fainted at an Indigo Girls concert in college because of heat and claustrophobia. (And because Michael Stipe was there and it was more than I could bear.)
59. I dropped my genetics major in the first quarter of college because I hated chemistry just that much.
60. I like geometry. I love a proof so much it makes me smile just to think of one.
61. I am a perfectionist, but a very lazy one indeed. If it can't be perfect then I'd rather just take a nap and pretend it doesn't exist.
62. I do not handle criticism well - even the constructive kind.
63. I laugh at inappropriate times and find humor in extremely dark situations.
64. I can read music and play the piano a little, but I have absolutely no innate musical ability whatsoever.
65. I am really good at Trivial Pursuit and Jeopardy. I used to be better but I think dementia is setting in. I blame the kids.
66. I am an old soul. My brothers are fond of saying, "Beth was never a child."
67. I have wanted to be a teacher for as long as I can remember.
68. Making small talk is pure torture for me.
69. I am very perceptive. (This is probably why small talk is so difficult. I am constantly analyzing everything I say in my head.)
70. When I was little, I wanted to work at a cheese factory because I saw one on Mr. Rogers. It looked like A LOT OF FUN to stir the big vats of milky stuff with the paddles.
71. I prefer all my linens be plain white because I have a bleach fetish. Well, not a fetish exactly but I do love my towels, sheets, pillowcases, etc. to smell like bleach.
72. I eat one thing at a time on my plate. I start by making a once around and trying everything, prioritizing what I like least to what I like most, and then I eat in that order saving the best for last. I read somewhere that this is an indicator of a compulsive eating disorder. Well, yeah.
73. I never had my own copy of picture pages (Bill Cosby on Captain Kangaroo) and I still feel sad about that sometimes.
74. January, February, and March are the worst months of the year for me. It's all I can do to drag myself out of bed each day. This probably means that I have some S.A.D. I think Vitamin D helps a little though.
75. Real Simple is my favorite magazine. It makes me happy just to see it in the mailbox.
76. I believe everything should have a label.
77. I am not at all prissy and I've never been a girly-girl. However, I love clothes and could look through catalogs all day long.
78. I have my eyebrows waxed about once a month. I wish I could afford to have it done twice a month because they always look shabby for about a week or ten days before I go back. I know. TMI.
79. I don't go crazy over babies. I loved my babies beyond reason but I have no desire to hold other people's babies. I think I'm missing a gene.
80. Being woken up by the bright sunshine streaming in through white curtains is one of the most amazing feelings in the world.
81. I wish I could sew.
82. I hate running but I wish I loved it. I want so badly to be "a runner".
83. Sometimes, I feel like the universe is conspiring against me and other times, I feel like I am just about the luckiest person on the planet. I guess that's normal.
84. I am proud of how fast I can type.
85. Daisies are my favorite flowers, but not those weird technicolor ones they've invented in the last few years.
86. I feed birds in the winter because I feel sorry for them and like to watch them in my backyard.
87. I do not feed birds in the warm months because I kind of have a bird-phobia and fear having them swarming my yard when I'm out there. Also, it seems to disrupt the natural order of things.
88. Rodents disgust me - except for squirrels. Unlike most bird-feeding people, I find myself pulling for the squirrels as they figure out how to manipulate the bird feeders to their advantage.
89. I believe in evolution, natural selection, and global climate change.
90. I find it odd that many of the people who don't believe in the things listed above do believe in things I find irrational and implausible. To me, it's like not believing in gravity but embracing the tooth fairy as legit.
91. My grandfather used to say, "There are enough ways in the world for everyone to have one." I think he was a genius for this and a thousand other reasons.
92. My grandfather taught me to ride a bike.
93. My boys are the most amazing people I have ever met and I love them beyond reason.
94. My mom is my best friend. I call her nearly every day and I miss her terribly on the days when I don't talk to her.
95. Photography is a hobby of mine but I am not very good at it.
96. I wish I had a basement.
97. I wish I had a professional gardener/landscaper because I love the outside but hate to work in the yard. I'd like my surroundings to be lovely without any effort on my part.
98. I loathe housework but love a clean house. Unfortunate.
99. Blogging keeps me sane. Really.
100. I can't believe I just made a list of 100 things about me and still have more I'd like to add. Should I change the name of the blog to something more appropriate like, "Wallowing in My Own Vanity"?