100 Things About Me

I tried to add this self-indulgent list to my main profile page, as I've seen posted on blogs elsewhere, but it went well beyond the established character allotment.

Good thing they don't have a photo limit on this system, eh?

1. My name is Karin.
2. It usually gets misspelled.
3. I’m 35 years old and this still bugs me a little, like someone dialing a wrong number.
4. From all accounts and memories, I was a pretty timid child.
5. Once, while staying overnight at a friend’s house, I played quietly by myself in another room while my friend and the rest of her family watched “CHiPs”—because the car explosions upset me.
6. That same family once took me to see a Blue Angels flight performance; the incredible noise of the aircraft overhead frightened me so much that I went to the parking lot and sat in the car with the windows rolled up for two hours. Alone.
7. That same childhood friend was Chinese and whenever I played at her house I would secretly wish that she would invite me to stay for dinner because her mother made the most delicious, authentic and, to my underexposed palate, mind-blowing Chinese meals.
8. To this day, my favorite foods are Asian in origin: Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, etc.
9. I take half and half and real sugar in my coffee.
10. I don’t drink enough water.
11. I waited for the right guy.
12. I’m thankful every single day that I did.
13. I hardly ever cry.
14. In the late ’90s I cried once for hours and hours after a little boy I knew drowned in a pool. At his Little League end-of-season pool party. It still chokes me up when I think about it.
15. My husband has known me for 11 years and has seen me give birth twice but has never seen me cry. I like to think that he’s a large part of the reason that I don’t need to.
16. It doesn't bother me when other people cry, but I look forward to the time when my children don’t cry so much.
17. The birth of my children represent the two best days of my life.
18. My wedding day is a close third.
19. At our wedding my husband, John, and I provided a keg of Guinness for our guests. We drank the keg’s last pitcher together in our room at the Hotel Laguna (the Bacall suite, named so because Bogart and Bacall used to rendezvous there), immediately after the wedding ended.
20. My married initials are KEG.
21. Finnegan, our son, is named after a book I have never read.
22. Shea, our daughter, is named after a stadium I have never visited.
23. I use Shea butter, however, in unbridled amounts and think the Shea tree of Africa is lovely.
24. I absolutely love both of my kids’ names and think they fit their personalities perfectly.
25. I can’t watch scary or violent movies. Despite hearing repeatedly how great they were, I have never seen Saving Private Ryan, Gladiator, Braveheart, Reservoir Dogs, Platoon, The Deerhunter, Seven, Kill Bill, or Unforgiven.
26. I saw Psycho at age 10 and was shaken for months.
27. I flirted with some OCD-type rituals as a child but gave them up because I found them to be too exhausting to maintain.
28. I have jumped off of more than one pier into the Pacific Ocean.
29. Once I did so at night with a group of my friends, wearing only my panties.
30. That night I was wearing more clothing than most of the other people in the group.
31. I used to prefer salty over sweet, but since I gave birth I prefer sweet over salty.
32. I was accepted to UC Berkeley but attended college at UCLA. I had a great time, learned a lot, and made some lifelong friends, but still sometimes wonder, “What if?”
33. I lived in London for six months after college and worked at Harrods, shucking oysters and serving champagne in the store’s gorgeous, tiled food halls.
34. Handling hundreds of coarse oyster shells each day gradually wore away my fingerprints.
35. They eventually came back.
36. I was standing about 90 feet away from windows that exploded when an IRA bomb, placed in a public trash can outside Harrods, detonated. Thankfully, nobody died. That time.
37. I went to at least one play, museum, or historical building every week while living in London.
38. I think about the city of London almost every single day.
39. My parents have lived in the same house for more than 30 years.
40. When my children visit my parents, they play and sleep in the same little room I called my own for nearly 20 years.
41. I’m not the best housekeeper.
42. I get better at cooking each year.
43. I used to procrastinate but I’ll get to the rest of that story later.
44. I can’t be away from the ocean for too long with getting a little batty.
45. I’d much rather be too hot than too cold.
46. Opening Day of baseball season is my favorite day of the year.
47. While I do love baseball and the romance and lore that surround it as an all-American pastime, it’s mostly because the arrival of Opening Day signals the end of winter and the beginning of warmer weather.
48. The first song I taught my son to sing was “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”
49. My least favorite day of the year is when the clocks are turned back for Daylight Savings.
50. Not so coincidentally, this usually falls around the same time as the World Series, thus marking the end of baseball season—and the beginning of colder weather.
51. I could never live (happily) somewhere where it snows.
52. I know; I’m a huge wimp.
53. I’m allergic to cats.
54. Although I like cats, I’m glad I’m allergic because I wouldn’t ever want to have one of my own.
55. One day, I’d like to have a dog.
56. After driving a series of used cars for 14 years, I bought myself my first new car at the age of 30.
57. Even though it’s a Chrysler, it felt like it was a Ferrari.
58. On the way home from the dealership I played Cheap Trick’s “Surrender” as loud as it would go. And for the first time in my personal driving experience the speakers didn’t distort.
59. I have been to no fewer than 150 concerts, large and small.
60. Remarkably, I still have fantastic hearing.
61. I’ve seen Beck in concert seven times; the second time I saw him, he opened for Johnny Cash.
62. The first album I knew intimately from start to finish was John Denver’s “Poems, Prayers & Promises.” Although he dabbled in cheese later in his career, I still find this early album to be earnest and beautiful, and the title song can make me a little misty if it catches me in the right mood.
63. I owned a metallic blue 1975 Cadillac Coupe de Ville de Elegance for about two years while I was still single. I bought it for $450, which I figured came out to about 10 cents a pound. It had five ash trays in it and sailed like a dream.
64. I read magazines from front to back, without exception.
65. John reads the obituaries department in Time magazine first.
66. The only thing I really miss about having a corporate job is the paycheck.
67. I’m perfectly happy with two children and don’t want any more.
68. When I imagine my life without kids I imagine myself pining for my kids.
69. I’ve needed my Mom more in my thirties than I did during my twenties.
70. I talk to my grandmother about once a week. She’s one of my favorite people. Ever.
71. As frustrating and blood-boiling as it is when my son is willful and defiant, a little part of me is secretly relieved that he isn’t as timid as I was.
72. It wasn’t until I had children that I felt I had anything to write about; I never felt close enough to the subject matter.
73. If I was given two hours to nap or read, it would be a tough choice deciding which to do.
74. I’d like to visit Japan.
75. John and I often talk about retiring in Hawaii.
76. Good writing quickens my heart rate.
77. I made most of the best friends I have today in Junior High. That was really the only good thing about Junior High.
78. When I was in seventh grade, a vapid rockabilly girl mistook me for a boy. I was wearing a grey crew-neck sweater, cords, and a bowl-cut hairdo. The next day before school, after I put on a skirt and blouse, my mom curled my hair for me.
79. In eighth grade, while eating the lunch my Mom packed for me, I unwrapped the aluminum foil from what I thought was a soda can and discovered it was a can of Coors. I giggled about it with my friends and threw it in the trashcan.
80. My Mom was mortified when I told her what she had done.
81. I cannot draw to save my life.
82. My brother was an art major.
83. I’m starting to get gray hair.
84. I don’t want to start coloring my hair. Yet.
85. John has sexy salt and pepper sideburns. I don’t think there’s anything sexy about my grays but he doesn’t seem to mind.
86. I love how John, one of those strong, silent types, will begin four separate sentences at the same time when excitedly trying to tell a story.
87. Sometimes, when he’s sleepy, he’ll begin a sentence and then just end it before completing his
88. When things are too hard to learn I give up more often than I’d like to admit.
89. I wish I had more perseverance.
90. As a girl I loved Julie Andrews and Carol Burnett.
91. It makes me sad that they’ve now both had so much plastic surgery that they’re hard to recognize until they speak.
92. The two hardest classes I’ve ever taken were Chemistry and Geology.
93. My friend Michelle is a getting her master’s degree in chemical geology, or something like that. Her talents boggle me.
94. I love destination aquariums.
95. The desert bores me.
96. I have a low threshold for personal drama.
97. I hate ironing.
98. I miss having time to read.
99. I miss having time to do crafts.
100. I know when my children get bigger I will have time to do these things again and I’ll miss the days when my children were little. I’m just that way.