Blonde

I've always wanted to go blonde. Not nice natural blonde, but garish obviously faux blonde. Don't ask me why, but it's been a dream long in the making. The time never seemed quite right, i.e. I had to be seen in public by people I hoped would take me at least somewhat seriously. Now here I am in the North Country--far North, without internet access, or human interaction--and finally I could realize the tiny fantasy, the duality of inner darkness with outer light. It took me two tries, two rounds of peroxide saturation, before I got the color I've been after--that hair-murdering negation (or is it, paradoxically, substantiation?) of the true brunette me.

When the Adirondack wind starts up, as it daily does, and whips my face with white-gold snakes, and I catch their glint in my peripheral vision, I feel as if I've misbehaved, but, too, I'm strangely vindicated...

The Shoe Canon

Shoes. I've been thinking about shoes. Such potential for fetishizing, and you know how I love a good object of fetish (oh please, won't I ever shut up about my fetishes?)

I wrote many months ago about my favorite clothes through the years. I thought I'd add an endnote to that post, about the shoes that have held special meaning for me.

Here are the ten seminal pairs of shoes from my personal Shoe Canon:


1. The orthopedic shoes of my childhood. I got to choose every year until I was seven or eight from the three colors available: navy, burgundy, and brown. Simply dreadful. Why orthopedic shoes? I was quite pigeon-toed. And guess what! I still am. I like to think of it as a delightful quirk.

2. My aunt's black suede grommeted platform shoes. She had tiny feet, so I could play dress-up in them without falling over. I think the contrast between my clunky orthopedics and these marvels of glamor made me think that life, or at least shoes, would not always be so drab and defeating...

3. Patent leather tap shoes with wide grosgrain ribbon ties. I adored my tap instructor, George. He was about a million years old and had been in vaudeville, and could still tap the hell out of a floor.



4. Ballet slippers. I remember the excitement of sewing the little pieces of elastic across the instep.

5. Black Capezio character shoes, my first heels. Same now as they were in 1983. Let's be honest, they really don't look all that thrilling, do they? It's hard to imagine what I saw in them, but back then the faux leather and ingenue heel screamed possibility.




6. Macdougal Alley Skimmers. When I just googled them, what did I find? The only reference online seems to be a comment I made ages ago on someone else's blog: "The '80s for me are typified by a quintessentially NYC fashion: the MacDougal Alley Skimmer. Capezio flats in about eighty colors; many girls I knew collected them like girls in the '50s collected cashmere sweaters." My one lone pair was electric blue.

7. Steel-toed motorcycle boots. In college, I thought they made me look tough and sexy. Who knows, maybe they did, but it's up for debate. Though I could certainly kick frat boy ass if I needed to...

8. The hiking boots that I wore every day in Israel, when I wasn't wearing sandals. Those boots took me across deserts and up Masada. I absolutely destroyed them that year.

9. Sarge's army boots: when we first fell in love, he was a drill sergeant in the Army Reserves. Once a month, he'd leave college to do a drill weekend at the nearby Fort. I loved to watch him polish those boots in preparation; he was a brilliant, meticulous, patient, and dextrous polisher. I knew it was a very good sign.

10. Hedgehog's first shoes: Irish linen slippers with a linen button on each. So ridiculously expensive, so difficult to tuck her fat little feet into them properly. So lovely.



I asked you about clothes in my old post, let me ask now about shoes, about the special, meaningful pair in your personal history.

So, nu?

Voice

Here in the North Country, the woods and lakeshore are full of voices, if you know how to listen. The chipmunks, crows, frogs, and even the owls and coyotes all have their say.  Their voices tell their lives in a preordained way, the product of an inexorable pull toward evolutionary fate.

We're not so lucky that our very essence is foretold in this way since birth.  Or are we luckier?  That we are allowed to find our voice or maybe to invent it, and when we lose it to find it again and reinvent it, in as many incarnations, as many times and in as many ways as we please.

Perhaps "invention" is the wrong choice, though, at least for me, for it suggests duplicity, and I am guilty of everything under the sun save untruth.

Since I started writing here, two years ago, here and in the corporeal world I and my voice have been a work-in-progress, and it hasn't always been pretty.  I've been maudlin and quarrelsome, arch and egotistical.  I laugh at my own jokes, too often.  But my voice has always held some form of a truth about myself. 

My sister can't even look at this journal, for her horror at my utter lack of propriety; a dear friend who does read this says that I conceal more than I reveal; and Sarge said the other day, fondly or so I imagine, "Leah, you really are just a little bit of an exhibitionist, aren't you."  I suppose he's not wrong, in a way.  Then again, neither is my friend.  But somewhere in that vast and comprehensive region between exhibition and concealment may be found all the ever-changing bits and pieces that make up my voice, and there I am.

"Yukon Raven," by Gavatron, courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons

Written by Hand

click pic to make larger

A Number of Unimportant Things about Me

So I was tagged by Marianna and Candie to list "6 Unimportant Things about Me." As I was tagged twice, I will list 12 things. Anyone who's been here more than twice knows that 1. I love to talk about myself and 2. I love lists.


1. I find grumpy, misanthropic, churlish animals to be hilarious. Note the hostile grizzly bear above. He's old, he's furious, he's sick of his vegetables, and he wants to eat you up. I love him.

2. I'm one of those weird grown-up ladies who loves dolls. I have an enormous Barbie collection, now housed sensibly in storage boxes and Hedgie's room, but let's be frank: I'm the one who bought them all. For myself. Hey, if Sarge tolerates it, so can you.

3. I hate overhead lighting. I like to be lamplit.

4. I enjoy the very worst sitcoms ever made. We're talking "Full House" level. Sarge is incredulous. He says they're not only soulless, but actually soul-sucking. I say, soullessness can be restful, as it requires no emotional effort.

5. When I took art classes in college I discovered a talent for mixing paint colors. Not for painting, you understand, but for mixing the colors.

6. I am a yarn snob, a coffee snob, an intellectual snob...but not a food snob.

7. I love science fiction as a genre. I've never understood the stigma against it.

8. I can honestly say I'm not that interested in celebrities.

9. I am shocked, amazed, that people in NYC seem to have forgotten about this. As a result of this complacency, the city is returning, slowly, to its former early-90s crappy state. But with still-inflated real-estate prices

10. I actually learned something in Gradual School.

11. I was a strict vegetarian for many, many years. Tuna salad was the siren song that called me back to meat-y reality.

12. I love to play video games.

Edited: I tag anyone who wants to play along!

Just a Housewife, Part 2: The Rabbi that Wasn't

From the time I was twelve years old, studying for my Bat Mitzvah, I imagined that I would grow up to become a Rabbi. I consider myself lucky to have been born into a Reform Jewish family where this was even an option. But with the goal in mind, I lived a double life, one foot in my permissive, forward-thinking day school, where my friends were, nearly every single one of them, atheistic or at least staunchly agnostic, whose parents, by definite choice, didn't really "do" religion with them; one foot in our local synagogue, deeply involved in worship, youth group, community service, Hebrew and Judaic studies. It was a weird dichotomy, and I didn't always feel comfortable with my Jewishness in settings outside the synagogue. But I persisted.

In college, I decided to rectify my lack of understanding of other religions, and majored in Religion with a specialty of Formative Christianity. I read the Christian Bible, studied ancient Greek, and had a grand time trekking through the heretofore unknown terrain. I found it quite alluring. Not to mention, I met a man, Sarge, who is Roman Catholic, fell totally in love, and threw my lot in with his. Through all this, though, my desire to join the Rabbinate persisted.

In my final year of college, I went through the arduous application process to rabbinical school, which included a battery of psycho-social testing (IQ, Rorschach, etc. etc.--I think that all these revealed was that I was smart and nervous, no staggering surprise) as well as a round-table interview, ten, ten, rabbis questioning me at great length about my beliefs, my personal history, my intentions...intense for a college senior who was, for all purposes, still adolescent!

I "passed," and was accepted, and made my way to the Year-in-Israel that began the five year program, leaving Sarge behind in a tumultuous move to Jerusalem. I loved living there (and only heard gunfire once; compared to NYC in the early '90s, Jerusalem was peaceful), I studied Hebrew and Aramaic and practiced my homiletics, kept kosher, kept Shabbat, and wrangled with my concept of God and spirituality, accomplishing all that they intended in that year.

In the end, though, I didn't make it through. Not that I wasn't excelling academically. I just couldn't, somehow, put myself and Sarge through so much trouble, as I feared I would if I took on the rabbinate and all that that would entail--we would be under a great deal of scrutiny, as an interfaith couple, and I just couldn't keep apologizing for something that I didn't believe was wrong. And perhaps, too, I wasn't quite ready to assume the mantle of Rabbi--after all, I was so young and still not formed entirely. I came home, to Brooklyn, drinking Bloody Marys and smoking and fretting in the back of the quiet plane. I believed that I was choosing love over a career and a calling.

But I wonder sometimes about it--had I been older, more secure, with better ego integrity, could I have weathered criticism and difficulty in pursuit of my dream, years in the making.

All of this solipsizing has come about because in cleaning up a box of old papers this morning, I came across an essay I wrote, oh my gosh over 15 years ago. I think it may have been one of my Rabbinical School admissions papers, but I'm not sure.

Here it is; I'm not sure about the question I was answering, but can easily guess. Just one of those general admissions essay questions, open-ended. Although the essay itself is not especially well written, I'm amazed at how much I relate to it even now. Things, feelings, haven't really changed for me in relation to my Jewish self-definition. For whatever the reason, I feel compelled to copy it out here:



Niggunim*


Sitting in my Yiddish class the third week of semester, I listened to my professor sing a niggun for us, the light, sorrowful melody echoed somewhere far in the darkness of my unconscious, where inchoate shapes of my past took on shadows for an instant and became words, forms, and memories: the soft barrel shape of my grandma Eva, perenially encased in her stiff girdles and orthopedic shoes; mornings at the little kitchen table in upstate New York, struggling over my script alef-bet (then so encrypted that it would take years for me to absorb fully their mysterious rolls and loops); the secret sounds of Yiddish that flew up to the high ceilings of the Brooklyn kitchen where my sister and I ate slices of cream cheese and listened puzzled to my grandparents' private conversations.

I was haunted in later life by the fact that I had grown up in a house where Yiddish was spoken constantly and yet remained utterly without the ability to speak it myself, beyond a vocabulary of about twenty words.

This past year, my sister and I studied the language in two classrooms halfway across the country from each other, but of the same mind. It was a startling experience for me: the language of emotion and sound became one of system, syntax, and words. The Yiddish of my childhood ran together in a wordless tune, the Yiddish of my adulthood formed itself into sentence and meaning; the niggunim my grandma hummed to me as I lay awake at night, a rotund childish body in a great white sinking mattress, held an inarticulate solace which is only now given coherence.

The Judaism my grandma taught me is like these niggunim--the essential value was always there in all my senses, and it was powerful, sad, soothing, yet also veiled in mystery and confusion. Maybe that's a symptom of childhood, that there are no words yet for what moves you most (I don't know whether that's a liability or whether it gives you the ability to form more honest responses). But more than that, I think my grandma gave me this essence--the sight, sound, touch and taste of Judaism--and in her own way, guided me towards my own path and pace.

Hopefully, the learning of words and the articulation of meaning will never end; but I want it to develop naturally, and honestly, as my grandmother intended it should.

Knowing my grandma for so many years, and outliving her, broke my heart. It also taught that memory is the single most powerful aspect of my life and my Judaism. I believe in the abiding power of memory as the thread that holds me to my Jewish past. My Judaism is a complexity of images, songs, stories, the voices and fork-clinkings and throat-clearings and arguments of those who once sat at my Pesach table, of those who sat rustling beside me at temple, now dead, of the tiny questions of those still living but changed and grown.

How many times, crosslegged on the scratchy Persian rug in my grandma's bedroom, did I listen to tales of my great-great-grandfather, a rabbi in Russia, a solemn, unsentimental, yet liberated man, who came to America and insisted my grandmother be bat mitzvahed under his auspices at a time when that was almost unheard of? Or my paternal great-grandfather, the Brooklyn tailor, pious and a little odd? All of this intrigued me, compelled me, drew me deeper into my identification as a Jew--after all, I was part of these worlds too, born a little late maybe, but connected nonetheless.


So... Just a Housewife, not a Rabbi, but Jewish anyway, and still remembering and trying ceaselessly to find ways to keep my Judaism alive. I always tell myself that my story isn't yet fully told.




*wordless Hebrew melodies, often, but not always, prayerlike or mournful

Clothes Horse: A Brief History

I love clothes, for the way they costume, disguise, transmogrify, inspire, keep me warm...I love clothes, and the little bits of things, earrings, lace scarves, shoes, that come with...

I've had some memorable bits of sartorial flotsam and jetsam in my past...

My earliest truly adored outfit was a lavender wool suit my mother bought me especially to wear to her Doctoral graduation day.  It had a special blouse to go with, lace and silk and pearl buttons.  I remember mom in her doctoral robes and hood and funny puffy hat, I beaming at her side, a vision in lavender and pride.

In the the '80s, when I was in high school, I had a favorite outfit, my party uniform.  It was a perfect black cocktail dress that had been my Aunt Abby's in the early '60s.  I liked my dresses short, so modified it a bit with an ad hoc hem.  It zippered up the side and was of some sort of rayon.  I do shudder to think how I paired that dress with neon green fishnet stockings, purchased in a rash moment at Canal Jeans (a NYC icon of bygone days), and sometimes turquoise satin sharp-toed, spike-heeled pumps.  Dear God.  Yet, I still think fondly of it.

Also from that era, a brown suede coat, which I liked to think of as Blonde-on-Blonde Bob Dylan.  Especially meaningful because one night a boy I crushed on, Jonathan was his name, he had a wild mane of curly golden-brown and was quite unintelligent really, except maybe in the maths...anyway, one night at an outdoor after-party under the Brooklyn Bridge, he borrowed it and wore it.  I still have a clear picture of him, perched up on the guardrail over the East River, wind ruffling his curls; the jacket that was snug across my breasts hung loose on his skinny frame... when he gave it back, it was as if it had alchemized, that's how much, in the privacy of my room, I stared at it and sniffed it and caressed it in lieu of sniffing and caressing the boy himself...

My wardrobe from that era was a mixture of vintage dresses from stores in the Village (there were so many vintage dresses to be had then, a plague of vintage dresses),  wonderful clothes from my mom's college years (two suede jackets come to mind, one russet red, the other olive green, both brass-buttoned), things plundered from closets in our attic (a veritable silk-and-wool history of the women in my family) and then secreted away in the depths of my enormous Victorian mahogany wardrobe...

In college, some of these things persisted, but my freshman favorite outfit was much less fanciful: a pair of jeans, motorcycle boots, a snug t-shirt, and an enormous black cardigan, sterling silver hoop earrings, and a sizable silver skull ring a la Keith Richards.  When I moved into an apartment off-campus with two girlfriends (we called it "The Cathouse" if that gives any indication of the flavor of the place), we were all roughly the same size and shape and pooled our clothes.  I mean that literally--our clothes were kept in a sort of communal heap in the livingroom.  My favorite Cathouse dress belonged to my roommate, and it was so short and wispy that I can't believe now that I wore it in public.  This I paired with borrowed six-hole Doc Martens (at the time I imagined I was being insouciant--it was the '90s after all).  And is it really any wonder that I didn't get to my papers and readings till the last minute...I was too busy tugging at my short skirts, adjusting my stockings, staring into mirrors, and reapplying lipstick...

Over these last years, the vintage dresses have receded into the background, the hems frayed past the point of no return, the buttons hanging by threads, most retired and some given a hero's farewell...they still turn up now and again when we're clearing out a closet, and I feel a fond little feeling and smile a fond little smile as they slip through my fingers...

More recently, I think lovingly of my wedding outfit. I spent 108 dollars on the dress, a creamy gold lace shirtwaisty formitted-bodice thing that I purchased on a whim in a little boutique in Soho. My mother was chagrined that she wasn't in on the decision--but as we were married by a judge at the courthouse, the dress was never fated to be anything more elaborate, expensive, or thrilling to choose. I walked in, tried it on, and bought it. I think it was charming. The shoes were cream colored satin kitten-heeled mary-janes, with little satin-covered buttons at the sides. Perfect for a courthouse wedding, and the dress is now stored all crumpled up in a shoebox, that's just the sort of dress it is.

I also dearly loved one very peculiar accessory: a snood (yes, snood) that I bought when I lived in Jerusalem, inspired by the pretty Modern Orthodox ladies I saw everywhere. It was a perfect blue, and I thought I looked quite fetching in it. When I arrived back in the States, wearing it right off the plane, Sarge took one look at me and laughed. Laughed! "A snood," he shook his head at me. "A snood!" And laughed again as he gently pulled it right off my hair. That was the last word on that.

And now I must ask, if you're willing to share, what is your favorite piece of clothing, past or present? I really really do want to know.

More Questions for Me to Answer: New Year's Meme

God, I love to talk about myself. Any excuse at all. Here's the latest excuse, via our Bob:

1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before?

Heard the Pogues live. Woo-hoo!


2. Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions and will you make more for next year?

No resolutions, ever.


3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Two dear friends! You know who you are, girls.


4. Did anyone close to you die?

No.


5. What countries did you visit?

Canada, does that count as another country?


6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?

A doctorate. And another child.


7. What date from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

September 11th, as every year since 2001.


8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Letting go a little of my smothering parenting habits...


9. What was your biggest failure?

Letting the ball drop on our finances! Where did all that damn money go?


10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Worst bout of influenza of my life. Sidelined me for months. It was frightening.


11. What was the best thing you bought?

Hands down, private school for Hedgehog. And her Tae Kwon Do lessons.


12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

Mine, at times.


13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

Mine at times.


14. Where did most of your money go?

Food. And a pair of really nice boots. Just kidding. Food and utilities and credit card bills and tuition and car maintenance and dentist appointments and doctor's appointments and and and...


15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

The book I'm writing. I'm really, really, really excited about it.


16. What song will always remind you of 2008?

"Dirty Old Town."


17. Compared to this time last year, are you: Happier or sadder? Thinner or fatter? Richer or poorer?

Sadder, much thinner, richer.


18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

My God-damned dissertation.


19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Scolding Hedgehog. Although she totally deserved it!


20. How will you be spending Christmas?

I spent Christmas fantasizing about Krampus.


21. Did you meet/date anyone special in 2008?

Sarge, for the 18th time in 18 years.


22. How many one-night stands?

Just one, with a jar of Nutella. I'm so ashamed.


23. . What was your favorite TV program?

Monk.


24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

Oprah Winfrey. Well, let's just say that my hatred grew stronger in 2008.


25. What was the best book you read?

"World War Z" and "The Difference Engine."


26. What was your greatest musical discovery?

My sister.


28. What did you want and get?

A more rock and roll body.


28. What did you want and not get?

A new car. I know that's shallow, but it's true.


29. What was your favorite film of this year?

"Velvet Goldmine." It's my favorite film of this and any other year.


30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I turned 38. And honestly, I don't remember what I did.


31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Freeing myself from the tyranny of grad school.


32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?

In my imagination? Severus' Innocently Gothic Mistress. In real life? Housewife with a Twist.


33. What kept you sane?

Pills. And lots of 'em.


34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Need I even answer this?


35. What political issue stirred you the most?

That this country didn't have the testicles to elect our first woman president.


36. Who was the best new person you met?

The parents of Hedgehog's friend.


37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008.

Quit yer whining and get to work on your dissertation, motherfucker. Do you see a certain theme here?...


38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

"Coyness is nice, and
Coyness can stop you
From doing all the things in
Life you want to


So, if there’s something you’d like to try
If there’s something you’d like to try
Ask me - I won’t say "no" - how could I?"

Me Too (or is that "I, as Well?")

Just Bob has invented a brilliant reciprocal meme whereby we solicit random questions from readers, and then answer them. Half the fun of this is in the questions--but it's been honestly interesting to read what people answer. I think people in general are quite fascinating; those you meet in this odd way are somewhat of an enigma, so doubly interesting. It's fun to know more.

So far, we have Reciprocal Meme Works-in-Progress from Sir Hunter, Kylie, Megan, and Zack over at Inner Voices.

Well, unfortunately I can't resist either, and I'm throwing in. I love to interview, and I love to be interviewed, and so here I am, hoping very much that anyone who stops by will ask me a question or two or three. As many as you like, of any sort. You needn't censor yourself.

100 Things about Me

Well, this is pretty long-winded and self-centered, but here goes. I'm hoping more folks will do this. I love to find things out about people!!!

100 Things about Me:

1. I believe in God

2. I believe that when my father died, he went to a beautiful house in a snowy woods that was one room big, made of ornate teak, with windows all around and a wonderful library of books and a cozy easy chair. There was a pub just a short walk away that my dad could stop at to chat with very interesting people and have a drink. I believe this was his stop-over to get him used to being dead, before he went to heaven. I saw all this in a vision.

3. I believe strongly in heaven, but not in hell.

4. I still am close, and always will be, with the wonderful girl I have known since we were born (that’s you, AKPW-K!). Our mothers became friends when we were in utero, and we were born three weeks apart.

5. I don’t support the NRA particularly, but I agree with their interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. Sarge said this and it perfectly expresses my feelings about guns and gun ownership.

6. I believe in our right to have guns with which to protect ourselves. I think it is a fundamental of American society.

7. I’ve always had a thing for a man in uniform.

8. I am scared of the police, even though I don’t tend to break the law.

9. I’ve never been really drunk.

10. I love hamsters.

11. When people I love died, I thought of an unusual but not too uncommon thing that, when I saw it, would remind me of them. For my grandma, it was white butterflies. I still think of her when I see a white butterfly. For my dad, it was a refracted rainbow, because in the moments after he died, the crystals hanging in his window cast rainbows on his face. But I think of him all the time anyway, so I don’t need to be reminded.

12. I was in love with a girl once. But it was really romance and not lust, and nothing ever came of it.

13. I’ve always had very vividly characterized imaginary boyfriends, even when I’ve had actual real boyfriends.

14. My first “boyfriends” were Kirk and Spock.

15. My current one is Severus Snape.

16. I have a cleaning lady once a week, which, though entitled and somewhat embarrassing, is the fulfillment of a bourgeois dream…

17. Although I used to be out loud and proud in the workforce, I really have no greater ambition for myself than to raise children and keep house. I don’t think my mother, who has a doctorate and a fabulous career, is totally on board with this concept.

18. I use sugar in my coffee. Not Splenda, not Sweet-n’-low. Sugar. And nothing weaker than 2% milk.

19. Is there anything much more delicious than an ice-cold Coke through a straw?

20. Hedgie is gifted, to a point that scares me sometimes, and I think that can be hard on a child. I’m working every day to make it okay and give her the right environment to nurture it but still let her be a kid for as long as possible.

21. Despite all my complaining, and my many many mistakes, I secretly think I’m doing an overall bang-up job as a parent.

22. I am deeply ashamed of my rampant materialism.

23. In 18 years together, I’ve never come close to cheating on Sarge (well, except with Severus). I have a near-pathological belief in the vows we took.

24. I’m a gossip.

25. When I was little, I used to borrow my cousin’s bra and wear it around stuffed with cotton balls. Now I regret that I didn’t relish my flat-chestedness a little more while I could…

26. My boobs are the absolute bane of my existence.

27. I’ve never been a pants-wearer. I’ve always liked skirts and dresses.

28. I love reading true crime, but have a moral and ethical aversion to my own prurience.

29. I love television.

30. I love yarn with a love that borders on obsession.

31. I love very scary movies, especially Japanese and Korean horror.

32. I also love Japanese and Korean Kawaii. Hmm.

33. I get all shy and groupie-ish around people from England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.

34. I used to be a Second Soprano; now I’m an Alto.

35. I was very active in my Hebrew school youth group, all through high school.

36. Although I’m a practicing Jew myself, I’ve only once dated a Jew.

37. I never wore my glasses in high school, even though I needed them, and as a result think that I missed a lot of the nuance.

38. I love tiny little things in tiny little boxes.

39. I was raised well, but Sarge even better. His worldliness and class sometimes intimidate me.

40. I define myself as politically conservative in many ways, and so was surprised to find that I fell into the libertarian-left quadrant of the Political Compass.org survey.

41. I miss my grandma’s cooking, although it wasn’t really very good.

42. I don’t really like to cook, but I’m pretty good at it.

43. I make really delicious pot roast.

44. I don’t wear my engagement ring; it’s in my jewelry box. It makes me nervous. Instead I wear a ruby ring of my grandma’s. For some reason, that doesn’t make me nervous.

45. I loved high school. I hated college, yet I met the love of my life there.

46. I am not a prude. In fact, sometimes I think I’m as far from a prude as one can be.

47. But I hate when Hedgie and I pass people on the street and they’re cursing viciously to one another as people do in our time. I want to cover her ears.

48. We really try not to curse around Hedgie. When she’s not around, we curse.

49. I am very uncomfortable taking the Lord’s name in vain. But I do it quite often. I’m trying not to. Seriously.

50. I HATE when people crack their gum. It drives me insane.

51. Pizza is my favorite food. I haven’t had a slice in months. Damn.

52. I’m not that crazy about fruit pie.

53. I adore canned ravioli. But who eats that? It seems almost decadent. Maybe for my birthday I’ll buy one can for myself.

54. I adore canned chicken spread.

55. I adore Taco Bell.

56. I have White Trash in me from my dad’s side. I embrace it.

57. I’m a bit of a coffee snob, and I become secretly irked when I’m served weak coffee at someone’s house.

58. My mother was at Hedgie’s birth, even though she didn’t think she would be. She dropped in to say hi, and ended up staying. She was incredibly wonderful to have at my side. She even cheered and took photos. And she brought me iced cranberry juice when it was all over. Oh my, was I thirsty.

59. Sarge was at Hedgie’s birth too, and was also wonderful, but I don’t think I’d force him to be at the second one. I’m starting to think that childbirth is really only ladies’ business.

60. The best moment of my life was the moment I pushed Hedgie out. Who knows, maybe it was the endorphin rush…

61. I am pro-choice, but sickened by partial-birth abortions.

62. I like to tell about myself, but I’m also a very private person.

63. I have frequent dreams about flying, and frequent anxiety dreams, both.

64. I enjoy getting worked up about big issues.

65. I love to read slash fic, the more descriptive the better.

66. I always thought that I would be a rabbi when I grew up.

67. I dropped out of rabbinical school at 24.

68. I still believe that someday I might return to it.

69. When I was 16 I dated a much older hardcore heroin addict, and I enjoyed watching him shoot up. Now to that younger self I say: eeeew.

70. I told my parents way too much about my activities when I was a teen. They were always non-judgmental (why?).

71. I’m scared of toddlers; I think they’re a bit sociopathic.

72. I love snoods.

73. I love prescription tranquilizers.

74. I think the greatest love story ever told is the courtship of Laura Ingalls and Almanzo Wilder.

75. Orange is my favorite color.

76. One of my best memories of adolescence is hanging out at a local diner with my best friends, eating tuna melts and French fries, drinking cup after cup of sweet milky coffee, smoking, and gossiping.

77. That diner is gone, replaced by a more upscale restaurant where I still sometimes go with a friend, but I liked the greasy spoon way better.

78. I once considered a career in law enforcement.

79. I’m wildly impressed by Sarge’s army career. It’s what first drew me to him in college—he’d come back from his reserve weekends in uniform, and I thought it was sexy.

80. I’ve never been in a physical fight, but I firmly believe that no one should tangle with me; they won’t easily win.

81. I’m street smart.

82. I use my fancy Kitchen-Aid mixer all the time.

83. My dissertation is tormenting me. I don’t want to finish it.

84. I get road rage; I just don’t act on it.

85. I love being the driver.

86. I’m not that into Thanksgiving.

87. I get all funny and sad when the days grow shorter. My favorite day of the year is the Winter Solstice, although it’s the shortest, because I know that after that, the days get longer, even if only a minute at a time.

88. I own the entire Sweet Valley Senior Year series, and I’ve read them all three times (I might add that one of my best friends is my partner in crime in this, but I’ll never name names…).

89. Sarge, Hedgie, and I value books above all other possessions. We own thousands of them, and are collecting more all the time. I wouldn’t feel at home in a house that wasn’t crammed full of books.

90. My lipstick color in high school was “Matte Claret.”

91. I’ve only ever used Macintosh computers. I’m a Mac snob.

92. I can hardly see without my glasses. If you stood a few feet away from me, I wouldn’t recognize you.

93. In museums, I prefer to sit in one or two spots near things I like to look at than to walk around.

94. I’m good at math, but was very lazy when I studied it in high school, so it didn’t become apparent till grad school…

95. Although I complain a lot, most of the time I’m content and glad to be alive.

96. I’m not afraid of death, but I’m afraid of dying.

97. I like to think about how the universe is materially finite.

98. I love clothes and shoes and wish I could spend thousands of dollars on them.

99. I love to give gifts to people, especially to make things for them.

100. I like to apply very expensive scented lotion to my decolletage.

101. I am so glad that I’m a woman.

Solipsistic Ramblings...

I must confess my activities over the last half hour: I've been compiling my list of 100 Things About Me, that massive narcissistic undertaking I've seen on several other blogs. I've really really enjoyed reading the bits and pieces of others' lives, histories, and characters, and thought I'd try it. Well, it's a little frightening how very very much fun I'm having, and how easy it is to write. Perhaps I'll even post it, with the caveat that no one has to or even should read it!