Number thingy ganked from firecat

[serene]

Ten random facts about yourself
1. I was born with deformed feet and legs
2. I got my first stitches when I was a year and change old; my most recent stitches were in 2009.
3. I have pretty severe food-safety neuroses
4. Being out in deep water feels like church to me, and I'm sad that being stung by a stingray in 2002 made me too afraid to go out in the ocean
5. I get excited and peppy and physically alert when it rains, kind of the opposite of Seasonal Affective Disorder
6. When I was young, I was so terrified of dying that I would spend massive amounts of time thinking about it. (Someone attempted to murder me once, and I've had cancer three times, and now I'm really not afraid of death.)
7. There are people in my blood family that I don't love, and I think that's perfectly okay
8. It is surprising me how dark this list is, because I usually put pretty positive stuff in these surveys
9. I am in love with two people, and they are both fine with it
10. Both of my maternal grandparents and all of their parents immigrated to the US in steerage in the early 20th century

Nine things you do every day
1. Take medications and/or hormones (my thyroid pill is a six-day-a-week thing)
2. Tell my family I love them
3. Wash my face
4. Wear my ring
5. Spend time on a computer
6. Eat and drink
7. Deal with chronic pain
8. Laugh
9. Sing

Eight things that annoy you
[Note: I'm guessing most of these will be things that annoy me partly because they're things that annoy me about myself, even if they annoy me more in others]
1. Know-it-alls (see note)
2. When other people bicker
3. Clutter (see note)
4. My sensitivity to fragrances
5. The way medical stuff causes other medical stuff and the whole thing dominoes
6. Poor use of language in print (in speech, I don't care, so long as the message gets across)
7. When people apologize a lot when they didn't even do anything really wrong (see note)
8. How much *styrofoam* people in San Diego use! I was spoiled in Berkeley.


Seven fears/phobias
I am so not going to sit here and list everything I'm afraid of. It's not that many things, but it feels weird to hand the whole internet a list.

Six songs that you’re addicted to
1. Right now, the opening number for the 2013 Tonys
In general, the songs I sing in the shower include:
2. "Everything," Barbra Streisand
3. "Diamonds and Rust," Joan Baez
4. Every song on the "Solitude Standing" album, Suzanne Vega
5. "Mountains of Things," Tracy Chapman
6. "Flying Red Horse" and several other John Gorka songs

Five things you can’t live without
(Quoting firecat: I'll add "...without feeling like life is very empty.")
1. My partners
2. Some downtime every day
3. Feeling useful
4. Music
5. (literally) My thyroid pills (I don't have a thyroid gland, so I'd die without them)

Four memories you won’t forget
This phrasing made me laugh. The second I forget something, it's not a memory any more, but hey, I know what they meant.
1. Hearing my parents breaking up when I was 13
2. When I made a quiet joke at a party where Nalo Hopkinson was (she's one of my fave authors and I have a crush on her) and she was the only one in the room who heard me, and she caught my eye, raised her eyebrow, and laughed.
3. So many things with my partners, but especially the first date with Guy and the second kiss with James
4. The rush of joy I had the first time I had a poem accepted for publication

Three words you can’t go a day without
Again, quoting firecat: "Since one of my favorite things to do is spend the whole day without talking to anyone, there aren't any words I can't go a day without." However, Please and Thank you are really frequent words for me, and I get annoyed when others don't use them. I don't rag on them for it, but inside, I'm irritated.

Two things you wish you could do
1. Sing really, really well
2. Speak more languages fluently

One person you can trust
firecat taught me back in the longago that this question isn't meaningful for the way I think. The sentence isn't complete. I can trust different people for different things, but there's no one I trust completely, and I don't mind that. This goes hand-in-hand with my annoyance (which I believe jae shares) over the defining of friends as people who will come pick you up in the middle of the night if your car breaks down. I pay people to do that. I am more interested in defining friendship around people's human connections, and not what practical help they can be to each other, because I don't really need much practical help in my day-to-day life; I'm pretty self-sufficient, and what I can't do myself, I generally pay other people to do.

Comments

[jae]

which I believe jae shares

Yes!

-J

[withagreatlove]

Surviving cancer thrice plus a murder attempt? Wow. I'd love to read some of your perspectives on overcoming your fear of death.

And Tracy Chapman is awesome at any given moment. 'Mountains of Things' is a stunning song.

[snippy]

I want everything, everything.

I'm also one who limits trust "to do what?"

[hitchhiker]

you are indeed the only person i know with worse food safety neuroses than i have :)

[serene]

:-) Poor James has to live with it. He says he can think of worse things to be overly cautious about, but it must be tiresome.

[metaphortunate]

This is a lot more interesting than most of these lists I see!

But I too would not hand the internet a list of the things that scare me.