1. I have two girls: Rachel (5/2001) and Hannah (10/2003)
2. and one husband.
3. I met him when I was 18. That was almost 18 years ago.
4. Actually, he was in my freshman humanities class. I think I was 17. But I don’t think we ever talked to each other in that class.
5. He had long hair. So did I.
6. I have three nieces and a nephew that are around 17 (actually 15, 15,17, anf 18) on my husbands side of the family; when I met them they were babies and I was a teenager. Now as teenagers, they are playing with my babies. I point this out to them ad nauseum.
7. When I met my husband at 18 he had short hair. He was really hot. Still is.
8. I used to watch him play soccer from my dorm room window.
9 I didn’t know this at the time, but he saw me watching him.
10. I think I knew he might be the one for me because he laughed at my jokes. He still does.
11. I have a really bizarre sense of humor and in college I looked like a wholesome farm girl. No one knew I was joking half the time.
12. Right after we started our relationship I started travelling the world. He did some exploring of his own.
13. We wrote a lot of letters.
14. I tried to sort through them a few months ago, but it was completely overwhelming. The letters have been sent back to their storage boxes.
15. I have two sisters.
16. This is why I was so happy to have two girls–not because of the pink and frilly stuff, but because every girl needs a sister, in my opinion. And girls are what I know. I’m used to that “argue, cry and then make-up” culture that baffles many husbands with sister-in-laws.
17. I have six nieces and three nephews.
18. I love being an aunt, but I don’t get to see my nieces and nephews enough.
18 1/2. There is a constant battle going on in my head between the sensible part of me that thinks two kids would be just grand, and the wild part of me that wants one more.
18 3/4. Wouldn’t care if the third was a boy or girl.
19. I was born in New York City
20. I was also married there.
21. My father died there.
22. In the time in between these major events, I lived in many other great cities: Jerusalem, Kyoto, St. Andrews, Berlin.
I am now living near another fun city but I’m not going to tell you what it is because I promised my husband I’d keep my full identity private. Most of my college/graduate school years were spent in the midwest.
23. There are a lot of stories I could tell about my husband, but I probably won’t tell too many of them because he is private and I respect that. That’s one of the good things about a long marriage. You learn things over the years, like how to shut up occasionally.
24. My parents dedicated their lives to working for world peace.
25. No, really.
26. My mother still does; my father died almost ten years ago.
27. They were influenced by the Catholic worker movement.
28. My parents had a great marriage.
29. We had little money.
30. Until I was about 14, we lived in an inner-city apartment building owned cooperatively by an ecletic group of families interested in social justice/world peace.
31. I was on of the few white girls in my class from Kindergarten thru third grade. I got beat-up a few times. It was character building, but I am not choosing that option for my own kids.
32. From 4th through 6th grade I was the only poor kid in a private school in a wealthy neighborhood.
33. I went to a lot of rallies in Washington as a kid, but my real political awakening came under George W. I think the occupation of Iraq is a moral outrage.
34. I am worried about what our current administration is doing to the fabric of our Democracy and our place in the world.
35. I am also deeply saddened about all of the innocent lives lost in this war, American and otherwise.
36. On a lighter note…I got married when I was 23. (How’s that for awkward segways)
37. My husband and I moved to Scotland immediately afterward.
38. We were both graduate students.
39. We both have doctorates in history….but the doctorates came many years later.
40. Currently, neither of us are working in the field of history, but we wouldn’t give up those years for anything.
41. I am a stay-at-home mother right now.
42. I finished my doctorate right before my oldest daughter was born.
43. I decided to take a part-time job at a local history museum, rather than pursuing tenure-track.
44. I loved the job. It involved working with a lot of “old-timers” who knew how to put me in my place, but also take care of me when I was pregnant.
45. When Hannah was born, I decided to stay at home.
46. I love that too.
47. Eventually, I would like to work as a special collections archivist.
48. Yes, I get excited reading letters written by dead people.
49. Becoming an archivist will entail taking some more classes. I hope to start that sometime next year.
50. I have never been fired from a job and hope my husband doesn’t fire me for writing this blog.
51. The only job I quit on the first day was a foot-messenger job in New York City.
52. In Scotland I worked for four months as a chamber maid at a hotel. I was the only non-local working at that level.
53. I won Employee of the month there and I’m not sure why. I think it was because I saved the hotel from burning down.
54. This blog isn’t going to be particulary witty or cool.
55. See, I am so uncool, that I use the word cool.
57. I’m not sure what a “blogger friend” is but I don’t think I have any yet.
58. I have a lot of “real-life” friends.
59. I didn’t know what a blog was until election night 2004.
60. And then I stopped listening to main stream news and started going to websites like this.
61. I even wrote a letter to editors of major news organizations that started out “I am not a blogger.”
62. I don’t know whether I love the blogosphere or am frightened by it.
63. I think it is a little creepy to have people I don’t know reading my stuff.
64. But at the same time, I want people to come visit me and read what I write.
65. When I was younger I wanted to be a writer but had no writing going on in my head.
66. Now I write in my head constantly, but don’t care about being published.
66 1/2. I blog because it’s the only thing that gets me writing regularly.
67. So far, this blog has been mostly about my kids.
68. Because I am a SAHM.
69. And because they are magic to me.
70. I do have other interesting things that occupy my mind. If I start getting some more sleep, maybe I’ll write about this other stuff sometime.
71. It is very late right now.
72. I am extremely anal about getting my kids down at the proper nap and bed times.
73. I am extremely bad at getting myself to bed on time.
74. I have a very strong personal faith, but am not very religious.
75. I would be if I found a church that spoke to me the way the Catholic worker movement spoke to my parents. I am hoping for a revitalization of the social gospel movement within our churches.
76. My husband is Jewish. Well, actually, he was raised in an interfaith family and gravitated towards Judaism after college.
77. We are teaching our children about both faiths.
78. I love being a mother more than anything else I’ve done.
79. It’s a blast.
80. I’m not very good at focusing on many things at once.
81. That’s why I decided not to pursue a tenure-track position.
82. I don’t miss teaching
83. I do miss having hours and hours of time to myself to do research.
84. The sad thing is, if I took that time, I think I would spend a lot of the time thinking about my kids.
85. That’s pretty pitiful.
86. Sigh.
87. My first year of being a Mom it took me a long time to find friends that I could really talk to.
88. I agonized a lot about whether to drop the academic path that year.
89. I don’t agonize about that any more.
90. I have a good network of mom friends now: all different.
91. I always thought I would grey late in life, since my mom didn’t start gettint gray hair until her 50s.
92. That didn’t happen. I’m getting gray hair.
93. I started getting highlights last year. I feel so much younger!
94. I’m trying to lose 30 pounds, so I can weight what I did when I was married.
95. Ten down. Twenty to go. (Due to the fact that I joined Weight Watchers 6 weeks ago).
96. I exercise on a treadmill pretty regularly. I’m a hiker, not a runner, so I go high incline, moderate pace.
97. I don’t wear very much make-up on an average day, and often none at all.
98. I do, very occasionally, treat myself to a manicure and pedicure.
99. I actually feel more attractive than I did when I was a cute young thing. As much as I hated pregnancy, it taught me to respect myself.
100. I am going to be so tired tomorrow.