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100 random things about me

This is a list of random things about me. I will keep adding to it until it reaches 100 things.

1. I'm a Scorpio, born on the "Day of the Borderline".
2. I was born in the "Year of the Rat".
3. I was due to be born the day Nixon was elected but wasn't born until the next day, my mom said I didn't want to have anything to do with that day.
4. All of my siblings and I (except the first, who was a month premature) were born on a Wednesday.
5. I am the third child in a family of six children.
6. I have three sisters and two brothers.
7. My older brother is married to a woman from Japan and they have two daughters.
8. My younger sister and her partner have a son and a baby on the way.
9. I don't plan to have children but I tend to think I may adopt some day.
10. My parents have never been divorced, though during my teen years, I wished they would, but now I'm glad they didn't.
11. My mother smoked while she was pregnant with me.
12. I took my first non-secondhand puff when I was eleven, it was a half smoked clove cigarette stolen from my mom's ashtray.
13. My first favorite song was "Celebration" by Kool & the Gang. I was seven when I first heard it on the radio, and got excited and danced around every time it came on. The rest of my family didn't share in this joy.
14. When I was a teen, I decided age 7 was the best year I had yet lived. I no longer remember why, or what was so good about being 7, but it's probably still true.
15. While growing up my parents were very conservative, even voted republican until Bush Senior started bombing the hell out of Iraq.
16. My parents forced me to wear long skirts to school every day until 4th grade. I was then allowed to wear pants once a week.
17. I wasn't allowed to have bangs until about 5th grade.
18. Most of my hair cuts where performed by either my mom or grandmother, and they were always crooked. Maybe this is where my fear of other people cutting my hair came from.
19. I've only been to a hair cutter three times in over ten years.
20. The first thing I wanted to be when I grew up (that I remember) was a fiction Writer. Then it was Architect (I took 2 years of drafting in high school), then Psychologist (high school, and junior college). Then I stopped wanting to be things.
21. Except I've always secretly wanted to be a musician, and have never gotten over that one.
22. My first music class was when I was 5 with a lady who taught my group how to play xylophones or to make puppets. I was in the xylophone group. I was her youngest student since she normally didn't take children that young but thought I had a great sense of rhythm. At the end of the program we put on a puppet show: Jack and the Beanstalk. I was part of the live soundtrack.
23. I've had pets most of my life, both family pets and personal pets. My first personal pet was a cat I found when I was about 9 years old and named him Boots AKA Parrot (he liked to sit on my shoulder) AKA Mustache-man (he had a little black half mustache).
24. I have one old cat who I found about 15 years ago and named Gypsy because of her Gypsy nature. After she got older, I changed her name to Gypsophila, Gypsy for short. She's starting to act crazy and old but I still love her. We understand each other better than anyone. I taught her to shake my hand. She's very smart.
25. I had one other cat who I found when I was 18 and my boyfriend (first husband to be), the self-taught laser physicist, named him Carl Swartzchild after the scientist who discovered black holes. I had to have him put to sleep in 1998 and I miss him (the cat not the ex-husband or the scientist).
26. For 13 months I lived in Paradise, that's the actual name of the town. Only a few hundred humans live in the area. There are many more trees though, lots of wild animals too, so it really is a sort of paradise. The house is on Lake Superior and has beautiful views. It's for sale so if you have money and want to live in an amazing place, you could live there too.
27. Before that, for 19 months I lived in a big house in suburban Santa Rosa with my husband, our cat, our ball python, my younger sister, her boyfriend, their baby, and their two cats.
28. We gave our ball python away before driving across the country to live in the Michigan Upper Peninsula.
29. I've been married twice. I've had three other boyfriends who wanted to marry me, would have married me, but I didn't want to. That's not something I'm proud of, rather, I look at it as a fault of mine, but I'm not going to explain why. Just take my word for it.
30. I did not take my first husbands last name, even though it was a cool one from Spain.
31. He and I were never married legally, nor did we have witnesses, just a private ceremony which meant marriage to us. At least we thought it did at the time, but in hindsight I've decided my family, our friends, and maybe even ourselves, didn't take it seriously enough.
32. My current husband is a Scorpio, like me, but born four years later.
33. Sometimes it's a little weird being older than him, not because of differences in maturity, but because he was even more sheltered than I was, so doesn't know all the 80's pop culture crap that I know.
34. I got my first gun when I turned 18, given to me by my father. It's a 380 auto, a semi-automatic handgun which holds 6 rounds, 5 in the clip and 1 in the chamber (380 ammunition is as fat as 38 but not as long), it was made by Acutec.
35. I got my second gun from my father just a few years ago. It's a Remington .22 one shot rifle (short, long, or long-rifle ammo).
36. I have at least a dozen different knifes, mostly given to me or purchased through my father. Most of them are illegal to conceal.
37. He's also given me pepper spray a couple times. I've never needed to use any of it.
38. The first time I left the USA was to fly to Bali, Indonesia. It took 22 hours to get there but was the most beautiful place I've ever seen.
39. I think the Balinese must be the most friendly people on the planet. They smiled at me and I smiled back.
40. Since then I've been to Canada twice. Vancouver, Vancouver Island, and Lasquiti Island (British Columbia) and Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.
41. I could see the Canadian side of Whitefish Bay, Lake Superior from my window in Paradise, even though it was about 20 miles away.
42. I loved to watch the freight ships pull into our bay to wait out storms.
43. Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario was only about an hour drive (around the bay) from where I lived.
44. My first driving experience (other than games) was with a tractor in my parent's field with my older brother helping me learn the clutch when I was 11 or 12.
45. My first car was a 1973 VW Beetle. It was the gold exterior, brown corduroy and vinyl interior, sun roof , special edition, California Sun Bug. It wasn't in very good shape by the time it got to me and was in worse shape when I gave it back to my parents.
46. The car I have now is a 2001 Honda Civic. It's a golden yellow color that people either love or think is ugly. It gets incredible gas mileage, the average over the years is almost 34 MPG, but on some tanks of gas it's gotten almost 42 MPG.
47. I like to keep track of things like that. I have great organizational skills but only use them for a few things in my life in order to keep it from being a full time job. I have had jobs where organizing things was my main duty. I was really good at those jobs, but I hated them. Except the one where I had to organize beer.
48. I like to make art. Any kind. All kinds. Life is art.
49. I like to read fiction from many different genres. I'll even read kids books and romance-type novels, if they are good. Good romance does exist. Okay, maybe entertaining and good, are not the same things when speaking of literature.
50. Some of my favorite authors are Kurt Vonnegut, Chuck Palahniuk, Tom Robbins, Lemony Snicket, Isabel Allende, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Edgar Allan Poe....
51. I believe comic books are one of the most perfect art forms.
52. I love magazines.
53. I read magazines from back to front.
54. I drink a lot of water.
55. I don't like drinking water from cups or glasses because I can see dust get stuck in the surface tension of the water.
56. For years I never used a glass. I used a small empty water bottle and re-filled it. Now, I'm worried about what all that plastic was doing to me, so I'm using glasses again. But if I see dust on the surface I give it to my cat or plants.
57. Contrary to popular opinion, I am not a hypochondriac. Those who accuse me of such are ignorant of the real meaning of the term.
58. I may be obsessive and compulsive.
59. Except for the dust thing, I believe my compulsions are scientifically founded.
60. I love sciences.
61. My favorite way to read about science is from writers, such as Lyal Watson, who go beyond science, look at the phenomenon of nature and supernature, and see connections.
62. My favorite way to read about history is from researchers, like the Holy Blood, Holy Grail authors, who investigate and uncover evidence that things did not necessarily happen the way we've been told.
63. My parents were living in San Francisco when they met—my mom was from the Los Angeles area and my dad from the Seattle area.
64. At the time, my mom was working on a Masters at the San Francisco Art Institute.
65. My father was a recently homeless beatnik spiritual seeker who owned and lived in a music and electronics repair shop.
66. I am 1/4 German, 7/16 Irish, 1/16 Chickasaw, and 1/4 ?... my mom was adopted and doesn't have any information on her natural father.
67. I figured out the above fractions when learning about fractions in elementary school... I've always liked math.
68. I was 4 when I entered kindergarten and remember having a very hard time learning to write the alphabet. My teacher made me sit and finish the lesson while the rest of the class got to gather around for story time.
69. What she didn't figure out, and what no teacher or parent has noticed, is that I'm a little bit dyslexic.
70. I've never learned to write in cursive.