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A Baker's 100 Things

Posted by Lee Ann on Monday 11 April 2005 23:32 EDT

  1. I was born in 1967 and I am a Gemini.
  2. I am therefore supposed to love ABBA and have a split personality.
  3. The first part of Thing Number 2 is true. The second part, I usually have under control, but only when the other me is being cooperative.
  4. Go ahead, you know you're singing it in your head already. You know all the lyrics to Dancing Queen. Hell, I know the lyrics to every song on ABBA Gold. Hurts to be me.
  5. I have a sister who is nearly two years older than me, is a U.S. Army veteran, and just married one of the nicest women alive.
  6. I have a brother who is a year and a half younger than me, lives in the woods of Maine, and is a sweetie.
  7. Most of my friends in high school were boys.
  8. I was a champion powerlifter in high school.
  9. It was not very hard to be champion in my weight class, considering I was a girl and was five feet tall.
  10. I am still five feet tall, and I'm still a girl.
  11. I consider the height thing to be a gross miscarriage of justice. The girl thing, depends on the day of the month ;-).
  12. But I forgive my mother, who is 4'10.5". The 0.5" is very important. And anyone who raised us three little monsters to be live adults has to be forgiven.
  13. But I don't forgive her for this: I still remember my first haircut. A horrible woman named Nipper Breen came to our house and chopped all my hair off in the worst imitation of Florence Henderson I have ever seen on a five year old. No, Mom, I will not just forget about it.
  14. I didn't weather the in-between bizarreness to grow back my hair until age 33 or so.
  15. At age 33 or so, I realized that I looked so much better with long hair that it had to be either utter blindness or sheer masochism that I spent most of my formative years with bad, short hair.
  16. I was born after the invention of mirrors, so I have no excuse for this.
  17. I spent twelve years of my adult life 40 pounds overweight.
  18. Coincidentally, I also spent those very same twelve years engaged to and then married to the Wrong Person.
  19. I still speak (a generously kind term) to the Wrong Person because we had a daughter together.
  20. I have complete morons masquerading as effective hormones, so I had to have fertility treatment to conceive Twinkletoes. This process took over a year and a half.
  21. The pregnancy was extremely difficult, and Twinkletoes was delivered 9 weeks early to save my life.
  22. Twinkletoes nearly didn't make it either.
  23. Clearly, the Baby Factory is closed. Twinkletoes has an auditory processing disorder and dyscalculia (a math-related learning disability) but is otherwise totally fine, simultaneously sweet and annoying as only a daughter can be.
  24. The Wrong Person thinks the Baby Factory was closed to spite him.
  25. It is an absolute miracle (and occurs solely because Twinkletoes deserves whatever human decency I can show her) that I still speak to the Wrong Person after Thing Number 24.
  26. Sometimes forgiveness for things like Thing Number 24 sucks, but letting totally delusional people take up space in your consciousness, rent-free, sucks worse. And hey, I lost 175 plus 50 pounds. Not bad for a lotta hell.
  27. After all that, I consider myself the luckiest woman alive because I have Twinkletoes and because of Thing Number 28.
  28. My second husband, Spiff, is the person I had been searching for my whole life.
  29. I don't like saying I found him on the internet because it sounds like fodder for that bizarro reality show about internet love. But it's true, we did meet as friends on the internet, so there you go.
  30. We were supposed to meet in person as fellow music fans at a concert, never found each other that night in the crowd, and discovered we had been sitting next to each other the whole time. (Man, was he ever HOT. Did I mention I'm the luckiest woman alive?)
  31. The "sweetest man I never met" is my best friend, the love of my life, my everything, and he can be a total pain in the ass. Nobody's perfect, but he's perfect for me and...Thing Number 28.
  32. I married him after a year and a half of driving back and forth from Boston to Montréal every single weekend, sometimes with kid in tow.
  33. I hate route 89 South in Vermont with a passion because it is the direction going AWAY from Montréal, and leaving Spiff, especially with kid in tow, is just not fun at all.
  34. I'm American, he's French, and we live in Montréal and are both Canadian Permanent Residents. Spiff is about to actually become Canadian. This took A TON of paperwork and a year of waiting for processing for my part of said TON of paperwork.
  35. Spiff never thought in a million years that he would (a) get married or (b) date an American woman.
  36. This is the one and only time I have ever been glad that Murphy was right.
  37. In order to stay happily married, however, I have a paladin on World of Warcraft, an online role-playing video game which takes up A LOT of his time.
  38. I loved reading about elves as a kid, so I wanted to be a Druid Elf who knits. Since Druids can shapeshift, I could conceivably be the very first knitting sabertooth tiger. But I ended up liking pounding monsters over the head with heavy weaponry instead. Go figure.
  39. I learned to knit when I was in college, during January term at Mount Holyoke College, a women's Ivy League College.
  40. Yeah, okay, I'm smart, but Spiff still doesn't believe me when I tell him what my IQ is.
  41. I'm not telling you what it is.
  42. A high IQ does not a common sensical person make.
  43. Trust me on this one. I have the smoke stains on the stove hood from forgetting to turn off the oven to prove it.
  44. Despite the smoke stains, I am passionate about food and I'm very good at making it. In fact, some of those smoke stains are from various food items "flambé." Yes, on purpose. Don't tell my landlord.
  45. I absolutely HATE it when people say, "You're working too hard in the kitchen..." and get really offended when people say, "You shouldn't have."
  46. I am sorely tempted to take back the plate and say, "Okay, fine, I won't. More leftovers for me."
  47. People who eat what I have given them never again say, "You shouldn't have."
  48. That said, it's only because Spiff and Twinkletoes get to be my test kitchen. This is not always a good thing. Nobody's perfect.
  49. But they usually don't mind eating my mistakes.
  50. I have perfected the bittersweet fondant au chocolat (that's a lava cake, Mom), and could eat it every single day for dessert except I do not want to look like a five-foot-tall house.
  51. I could eat Indian food every single day of the rest of my life and never get sick of it.
  52. I once learned how to make beautiful sushi rolls.
  53. I regularly let someone else make beautiful sushi rolls for me instead, because the preparation takes too bloody long and I only think of making sushi when I'm already too hungry.
  54. The first time I ever ate sushi was the first date with Spiff, and the first piece was a sea urchin and quail's egg handroll.
  55. I have since learned that this was a major test of my endurance, my tolerance, my ability to not get egg on my face, and my future as the love of Spiff's life.
  56. I passed with flying colours. (Although skydiving on the fourth date really sealed the deal. It is exactly as incredible as it sounds and I'd do it again in a heartbeat.)
  57. I make passable fries, but Spiff does them better, and he is undisputably le Roi de la mayonnaise.
  58. Our favourite meal besides sushi is steak tartare with fries and homemade mayonnaise.
  59. This freaks the hell out of my very American, very frightened of salmonella and other microbial terrorists, but still very sweet mother.
  60. I will never, ever make a Klaralund. Guaranteed. I'm not a stick, and I would look pregnant in that thing. See Thing Number 24. It ain't gonna happen.
  61. I might make a capelet, though, but it has to be beautifully shaped.
  62. Therefore, I have to get much better at figuring out how to be decorative with increases and decreases, because I want the star of the show to be the shaping, not the yarn. Heck, I might even want it in lace. Maybe.
  63. I hate variegated yarn.
  64. Except the hand-dyed stuff from people like Sweet Georgiaand Axelle. That's not variegated, that's hand-dyed. Big difference, right? Right. I know what I mean, anyway...
  65. I do not have a favourite colour, because black is "not a colour." However, I am enamoured with bright red and periwinkle blue, and I am a Clear Spring, for all you Colour-Me-Beautiful types. My most unfavourite, in fact my gag-me-before-I-ever-knit-with-it colour, is teal. "Mallard Green" in L.L.Bean-speak. Mainers, you know what I mean. GACK.
  66. I hate sweet wine, but will serve it if it's the right thing with food. But I love a good solid, oaky bordeaux. Red, please.
  67. I love Guinness. And Celtic music. And dancing combined with the first two things.
  68. I am passionate about music, love a zillion kinds, and play the clarinet. I'm learning to play the guitar and the piano.
  69. I look like Twinkletoes. Or she looks like me. Or something like that.
  70. She has a will of iron, a heart of gold, and a sense of humour that cracks me up. Especially when she doesn't know she's being funny.
  71. I speak two languages, French and English, with Twinkletoes. She knows a few words in Hebrew because her father is an Orthodox Jew. I can sing the Veyahavta (and, in fact, the Torah and the Haftarah) in trope but I choose never to do so, ever again.
  72. I might try to learn Arabic with her because I believe in karmic balance.
  73. I am so NOT religious. I started as a Wordsworth-loving Unitarian, converted to Judaism for my first marriage, and converted back to my own brand of Spiritual Scientific Nothingness before I divorced my first husband. I fully believe in Darwin, Stephen Hawking, and Steven Wright.
  74. I am a writer, an editor, and a poet.
  75. Writing and editing pays the bills. Poetry does not.
  76. I've been writing poetry since I was nine years old.
  77. I've been reading it since I was three and taught myself to read.
  78. My favourite poet of all time is William Matthews. My favourite poet who is not considered a poet is Hubert Reeves, the astrophysicist. Richard Feynman runs a close second. But Feynman would be comedic poetry ;-)
  79. I have poems published in small literary journals.
  80. I'm working on a book of poems, but I work slowly, so this manuscript is taking longer than I'd like it to.
  81. I knit slowly too, and I wish I worked faster, in knitting and in writing.
  82. I'm extremely sappy about Spiff, to the point that I embarrass him in public.
  83. Luckily, Spiff is pretty impermeable to public embarrassment (jesus, he's French, he ought to be).
  84. Spiff is the skinniest man I know. And yes, he not only eats but thinks that making crêpes is just as basic a skill as boiling water. No, you can't have him.
  85. To me, skinniness does not mean wimpiness. Intellectual weakness is what makes a wimp. Therefore, Spiff is not only NOT a wimp, he's freaking HOT.
  86. Besides, I can wrap my arms ALL the way round Spiff very tightly, and do, often. Hugs are extremely important to me.
  87. I'm getting used to the two-cheek kiss, too. And French people actually kiss cheeks, not air. This is not Miami, baby...
  88. However, I try not to linger too long at the cheeks and I especially try not to hug French men other than Spiff because they will freak out. Or be very pleased. Or both. In any case, Spiff will not be amused.
  89. Trouble is, my affection etiquette sucks and I end up hugging everyone anyway. While Spiff expects this of a clueless American, he is still not amused.
  90. I'm glad I don't live in the States anymore. But I still vote there.
  91. I vote Democrat because there really isn't a Socialist option in the States. But I hate politics.
  92. I support stuff like equal access to healthcare and daycare. Somehow, this makes me a liberal, rather than just a decent person. If communism worked in the real world, I'd be a pinko, as my dad says...
  93. I cry in public, too. I'd rather cry in public when it's normal to cry, than hide it and have an ulcer.
  94. My mother raised me to believe that everyone needs a bit of gentleness in their lives, and I still believe this, wholeheartedly.
  95. My grandfather, who was the funniest person I ever met, was worried about me being too nice, not to mention soft as a grape despite my supposed intelligence.
  96. I have, however, occasionally been known to manage the art of being a sarcastic bitch.
  97. But I would like to be bitchier, because it would be useful in bad traffic.
  98. Spiff says I'm the nicest person in the universe. And I suck at being bitchy in bad traffic.
  99. He also says I'm going to end up burning the house down with this stupid tendency to leave the stove on.
  100. I would not be here if it were not for Spiff. Here, meaning the blog, because damn, this guy is talented.... Here, meaning in the world, because damn, this guy is IT, and if I didn't find IT soon, I was not going to last in this world for long. And child, there ain't no more to say.
  101. I'm a writer. There is ALWAYS more to say. Spiff, roses are red, violets are blue, all my base are belong to you. Don't ever leave. But if you do, please turn the oven off first.
 

Posted by Lee Ann on Monday 11 April 2005 23:32 EDT

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