16 Things

Year 2, Day 303. Everyone is doing it. Here is my list of 16 things:

1. I was going to be a nun after high school--even had my trunk packed and my plane ticket in hand before it was suggested I wait 6 months to be sure. By the time the six months had passed, I had changed my mind.

3. My distant Scottish relative palled around with Robert the Bruce. The family motto "I mak sikker" (“I make sure”) comes from the fact that our relative went back into a castle to stab a John "The Red" Comyn again just to make sure he was really dead. The family crest shows a hand holding a bloody dagger.

4. Despite Scottish ancestry, I can't even THINK about eating haggis.

5. I speak a smattering of French and an even smaller smattering of Portuguese.

6. Probably half of my best friends are people I met on the Internet.

7. My TV is often on 24 hrs a day. It helps me sleep.

8. I love working on-line jigsaw puzzles.

9. I probably could live as a hermit, as long as I had internet access.

10. My first job was washing test tubes and specimen dishes for a medical laboratory. It was not an easy job because I was much more squeamish then than I am now.

11. I gave birth to five children naturally, with no drugs at all.

12. My sister was murdered in 1971 by her female partner. She was 24. I was pregnant with our fifth child at the time. That child was killed in an auto accident when he was 24.

13. I hate shoes and will wear one pair of comfortable shoes for years...sometimes decades...before buying a new pair.

14. I have written an on-line diary entry every single day for nearly 9 years, missing only days when I had no access to a computer.

15. I don't like full-length operas, though there are parts of operas that I like very much.

16. I have been dieting, off and on, since 1953, when I was 10 years old.