I don't know if I invented this meme or if it already exists in some other form,* but I get really worn down trying to read through people's "100 Things" lists, so this is my life in one sentence per year:
1. I was born in Honolulu, where my drafted father was stationed during the Vietnam War.
2. We moved to Dallas.
3. My mom went to work at a bank and I went to preschool at our church which I hated.
4. I got a puppy for Christmas.
5. We lived across the street from a cotton field in a new housing development called "Grand Prairie" where all the yards were clay and all the trees were skinny twigs.
6. We moved to Kansas City into a house with stairs (good for slinkies and sliding down bannisters).
7. A huge ice storm sent Kansas city (including our house) into a blackout for several days.
8. My two best friends and I decided to build our own space ship and become super heroes.
9. Jimmy Carter lost re-election and I was bummed.
10. The day the hostages came home from Iran I was in bed with the flu and I ran outside to tell my mother I heard it on the radio and she yelled at me for being barefoot.
11. I played soccer very badly and the other girls (and the coach) did not keep the truth of this from me.
12. All of my friends came to school early and turned my desk out of the circle theirs were in, with its back facing them.
13. My best friend and I got in big trouble at school when our lost notebook of private notes was found by a teacher and discovered to be full of profanity.
14. My mother handmade me a (far superior to the original) Gunne Sax knock off for the May Day crowning of the Mary statue/8th grade graduation at my school.
15. I met my best friend for the next four years and became completely infatuated with her.
16. I got my period (for the first time) about three weeks after my 16th birthday!
17. I nearly failed Algebra II but got myself tutoring and rebounded to make straight A's on every quiz and test for the last six weeks of class and edged myself up to a C+.
18. My friends and I threw our own alternative prom and I won prom queen by winning "bubble gum, bubble gum, in a dish" against my best friend.
19. I went to a small, Baptist college, thinking it would be politically similar to my progressive Catholic girls' high school but was quite wrong, as it was far more conservative.
20. I got mono but kept my starring role as Irina in our college production of The Three Sisters anyway.
21. I spent a year in Oxford (UK) having the time of my life and travelling the UK and Ireland to avoid all the travel warnings due to the first Gulf War.
22. My then-fiance threw my friends and I a really cool graduation party and we tossed the empty champagne bottles on the college president's lawn, which was highly controversial, because no drinking was allowed at the aforementioned Baptist college.
23. I got married after a year at the seminary with my husband.
24. I took a graduate seminar at Princeton University with Toni Morrison and decided a PhD in American literature, rather than working for the Church was my true calling.
25. I worked for one of the Evil Empire's bookstores and was temporarily disowned by my father.
26. My husband and I moved to Washington, D.C. where I began my PhD program.
27. I fell in unrequited love with a girl and moved out from my husband's apartment.
28. I moved into a group house with some real (but highly loveable) whackos and acquired a cat in spite of my allergies to same.
29. I started dating a woman with a toddler.
30. I designed and ran a writing center at a public high school in D.C.
31. I broke up with the mother of the toddler and had two quick rebound relationships, the second of which never would have lasted past the first month if September 11 hadn't thrown everyone's emotions out of whack.
32. I met Cole and my divorce was finalized.
33. Cole and I got married and decided to adopt right away.
34. I finished my PhD and spent a lot of time paper-chasing for an adoption.
35. Nat came home.
36. Cole and I were legally married in Vanvcouver.
37. Our second daughter, Selina Wells, came home with less than 24 hours notice.
38. The family moved twice in three months and five days after the second move, hosted 17 people for Thanksgiving at which Shannon roasted 17 stuffed Cornish hens.
39. I had a midlife crisis and wrote my first novel in about three months.
I'm not sure who the youngest blogger I know is, but I think Susie is close, so I'll tag her. I think Maria is the oldest blogger I know, so I'll tag her too.
Pick this up if you're interested!
____________
* But even if it does, aren't you proud of how I've moved on from my previous anti-meme snobbery to actually composing my own? Thank you.
