Firsts

Firsts

I’m smart enough to understand that there’s no way I can get away with posting anything not baby related this close to my due date – and this far from the last time I posted.  So: I’m still pregnant and baby is doing fine, I’m still on bedrest (and typing while laying down still sucks), I’m still surrounded by half open boxes from the move (the only room in the house entirely unpacked and put away is the bathroom – perhaps that shows where my priorities are), I’m still behind on all my homework, and I still have zero attention span so instead of a real post, I’m putting up a meme that requires a whole lot less concentration and mental acuity.

1. Who was your FIRST prom date?

Ben Pollen, Junior Year

2. Do you still talk to your FIRST love?

I completely lost track of him.  He was a nice guy, I hope he’s having a good life.

3. What was your FIRST alcoholic drink?

Champagne, of course – at New Years and at my cousin’s wedding but I’m not sure which came first

4. What was your FIRST job?

A little kitchen shop in Palmer, AK, called Kitchen’s N Things.  Sold kitchen gear, of course, and antiques, but the real bread and butter was selling gourmet whole coffee beans – and this was long before anyone had heard of Starbucks.

5. What was your FIRST car?

a copper and plum colored Oldsmobile Omega – great little car till I drove it off the side of Lazy Mountain.

6. Who was the FIRST person to text you today?

Don’t text much – doesn’t work well with my calling plan

7. Who is the FIRST person you thought of this morning?

the baby – I woke up having to pee and having a contraction at the same time.  The two were fueling each other in a cruel circus of intensity and urgency, but the contraction made it difficult to get out of bed.

8. Who was your FIRST grade teacher?

I went to a horrid little private christian school that had 1st through 12th grade all in the same room. Instead of being taught lessons, we had little workbooks we worked in (yes all the way up through high school did workbooks) and instead of teachers we had monitors to make sure we kept our heads down and our eyes on our workbooks.  I have no idea what the names of any of the monitors were, but the Principle was Mrs. Stokes (I know that because I was always in trouble) and she wore a scary amount of makeup that looked like a mask and had helmet hair that didn’t move even when she touched it.

9. Where did you go on your FIRST ride on an airplane?

I was a baby, less than a year old. I think we were going to my grandparent’s place in Alaska.

10. Who was your FIRST best friend & do you still talk?

her name was Christy or Crissy and we lived on Kodiak Island.  This was pre-kindergarten and her birthday was the day before mine, but unlike me, she also got to celebrate her half-birthday and got presents for that too.  We lost track when I moved to the mainland to live with Grandma and Grandpa and go to Kindergarten.

11. Where was your FIRST sleep over?

I suspect the first was at Marie Von Gunten’s when they still had the bunkbeds downstairs while they were building the house.

12. Who was the FIRST person you talked to today?

My husband

13. Whose wedding were you in the FIRST time?

Not sure which came first, but I think it might have been my brother’s wedding.

14. What was the FIRST thing you did this morning?

Get out of bed and waddle to the bathroom.  You have no idea what an accomplishment that was.

15. What was the FIRST concert you ever went to?

Bon Jovi

16. FIRST tattoo?

no tats

17. FIRST piercing?

Ears – when I was 13

18. FIRST foreign country you visited?

Canada.  I have no idea how many times I’ve been to Canada, but when it comes between the state you live in and the rest of the country, you tend to make your way through it a time or two.

19. FIRST movie you remember seeing?

We didn’t watch movies in theaters much when I was a kid, but I remember in the late 70s or early 80s we got a VCR and the three movies we watched over and over (and over) again were The Sound of Music, South Pacific, and CONDORMAN. I still love all three.

20. When was your FIRST detention?

we didn’t get detention, we got spankings. I cant remember which offense came first, I was always doing something bad.  I would double up on undies and tights for extra padding.

21. What was the FIRST state you lived in?

I was born in Oregon, but we moved to Alaska when I was three

22. Who was your FIRST roommate?

Karen, Darlene and Kim – at college.  Karen was cool – but Kim was an RA and Mormon (which is fine unless you’re expecting me to live up to your religious edicts), and Darlene was a little scary crazy and they were both a little too nosy and into my business and stuff, so I moved out at the Christmas break and moved in with Awesome roommates Tara, Monica and Karen (a different Karen, but still cool).

23. If you had one wish. What would it be?

A healthy baby

24. What is something you would learn if you had the chance?

Oh my goodness, there are so many things that I want to learn – how to write well, how to manage my finances, how to take care of a baby, I’m really itching to learn more web design stuff, especially designing wordpress themes, oh, and of course, how to get rich quick with no effort on my part – I’m sure if I come up with enough money, someone would be willing to teach me that ;-).

25. Who do you think will be the next person to post this?

I don’t know, are any of you game?

25 Random Things About CoffeeJitters

  1. I collect teapots but I’ve never been a big tea drinker.
  2. I just realized that when my as-of-yet-unborn daughter reaches my current age, I will be 76.
  3. This makes me want to grow very old.
  4. I can wiggle my nose.
  5. One of my earliest memories is catching my Dad putting sugar on his breakfast cereal.  This was strictly verboten in our home.
  6. I realized my Dad was a mere mortal rather than a super hero when I was about 9.  I went to visit him at his office and discovered that while he rendered his drawings with a regular no. 2 pencil (he was an architect), he used an electric eraser for erasing things.
  7. Once when I was six my grandfather let me hold the wheel in his Cessna while we were flying over the Butte.  He didn’t even let go of the wheel, but you will never convince me that I was not actually flying that plane.
  8. I have been face to face with a bear in the wilderness.  Luckily he just brushed right on past me as though I would be a waste of his time.
  9. I tend to notice things that others walk on by.  Sometimes this makes me incredibly lucky.  Often this makes me easily distracted.
  10. I crave quiet so much that I rarely listen to music.
  11. I’m a mess.  My house is a mess.  It doesn’t matter what day you are reading this.
  12. I suck at small talk.  I can unwittingly offend someone just by talking about the weather.
  13. I’m a rebel.
  14. What I’m rebelling against varies from day to day but usually involves someone who sees everything in binary terms.
  15. I am an introvert.  It takes a lot of effort and courage for me to reach out and interact with others.
  16. I love to cook.
  17. Someday I would like to write a cookbook, but I seldom measure and never cook the same dish exactly the same way twice.
  18. My husband waited till two weeks after our wedding to start learning to play the bagpipes.
  19. My husband is the most fascinating person I have ever met and it completely turns me on that he can speak in Spanish, Tajik, Farsi, and Arabic (ever seen A Fish Called Wanda?)
  20. I’m simultaneously overjoyed and terrified about becoming a mom.
  21. I am related to President McKinley.
  22. Now that I’m back in school and spending 6+ hours a day reading, I miss reading for enjoyment.
  23. I love old fashioned homemade chocolate chip cookies.
  24. I get annoyed when old fashioned homemade chocolate chip cookies have too many chocolate chips.  Why would I utter such blasphemy?  There is a balance.  I love chocolate, but chocolate chips are relatively easy to come by.  But the cookie part, the subtlety of the combination of butter, brown sugar and vanilla is magic and can easily be overpowered by all the chocolate.
  25. I appreciate subtlety.
A Writers’ Meme

A Writers’ Meme

This writers’ meme was stolen from Write on Wednesday.

What’s your favorite genre of writing?

creative non-fiction, essays, I want to be Erma Bombeck when I grow up

How often do you get writer’s block?

often, I have a tendency to feel like I have nothing of value to say, and when I do have something to say, that what I have to offer will be offensive to those that I care about

How do you fix it?

I write it in my journal or I just swallow what ever it is that I’m most passionate about and then I do a meme or post pictures in my blog instead of being brave (note: I definitely do not recommend this to others)

Do you type or write by hand?

both, the more emotional the topic the better it is to write by hand, but technical writing is always composed right on the computer

Do you save everything you write?

not everything, but a pretty big percentage, I like to come back to it later, even the junk, and see if it inspires something else later on

Do you ever go back to an old idea long after you abandoned it?

see above.  I go back all the time, it’s amazing what I find that I hadn’t noticed before

Do you have a  constructive critic?

unfortunately no.  I’d really like to find that.  I have plenty of critics and I have lavish praisers, but no constructive feedback

Did you ever write a novel?

not yet, one of these days.

What genre would you love to write but haven’t?

science fiction

What’s one genre you have never written, and probably never will?

horror, I don’t like reading it, so I doubt I would write it

How many writing projects are you working on right now?

no idea, 2 or 3 that i actively work on, but there are thousands of projects on my harddrives just waiting for me to come back and finish

Do you write for a living? Do you want to?

I would love to make a living from writing, but it’s not paying the rent yet

Have you ever written something for a magazine or newspaper?

not yet

Have you ever won an award for your writing?

some blog awards, I don’t know if that counts

What are your five favorite words?

hope, silly, assiduous, engage, lounge

Do you ever write based on your dreams?

absolutely, maybe not the entire dream, but there’s a kernel in there that gets the ball rolling

Do you favor happy endings, sad endings, or cliff-hangers?bird-4

I’m a sucker for happy endings, I read to escape, I like reading to make me feel better, not worse

Have you ever written based on an artwork you’ve seen?

I haven’t tried that yet but it sounds like a good way to battle writer’s block