Fifty Things

1.    I got married really young (not quite 21).

2.    I've had two pregnancies and three children.

3.    I've  lived in the same house for 21 years.

4.    I belong to the Presbyterian Church.

5.    I left out Number 5, which is so typical.

6.    I love daffodils.

7.    I'm a sometimes avid and usually mediocre birder.

8.    I have a terrible time keeping track of pretty much everything.

9.    I prefer early morning to any other time of day.

10.  I went to summer camps in North Carolina, Michigan, and Minnesota.

11.  I once worked in an employment agency for all of about two months.

12.  I've pretty much always had at least one cat or dog, usually both and usually more than one.

13.  I met my husband when I was working at a summer resort as a waitress.

14.  I went to boarding school in Ohio and Massachusetts.

15.  I am a total packrat, but I'm working on it.

16.  I've been backpacking in Glacier National Park (Montana) and on Isle Royale (Michigan).

17.  My best life bird is probably the elegant trogon -- actually a family of trogons, parents feeding the young, in southeast Arizona.

 (http://www.southwestbirders.com/digiscope.htm)  

18.  I went to three colleges, two in Massachusetts and one in Rhode Island.

19.  My back yard has a statue of Saint Francis in it.  The blue jays like it and the dog barks at it.

20.  I have one living brother, one deceased brother, three stepsisters, four stepbrothers, and one half-brother.

21.  I went to ONE law school.

22.  I was John Lennon is a sixth grade PTA talent show.

23.  One of my childhood dreams was to become a doctor.

24.  Another one was to have naturally curly hair, change my name to Peggy, and sing on the Lawrence Welk show. 

25.  When I was in seventh grade, I played the youngest Von Trapp Family son Kurt in a school  production of The Sound of Music.

26.  When I was much, much older, I played the mother in a church production of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.

27.  My friends and I used to sneak out of our boarding school dorm in the middle of the night to meet boys.

28. My first summer job was as a mother's helper on Cape Cod, caring for four children whose parents both worked.

29.  I can't sing a note.

30.  I got a A in calculus by memorizing the textbook. 

31.  I have hitchhiked across the state of Massachusetts, from the Connecticut River Valley to Provincetown.

32.  I teach in an Orthodox Jewish school.

33.  The first Presidential candidate I voted for was George McGovern.

34.  My brothers and I used to catch snakes in the creeks.

35.  I saw the Rolling Stones perform at Boston Gardens.

36.  I was an attorney for a railroad company.

37.  The first writing I ever had published was a short essay about my children.

38.  I have photographed two births and been a doula at two.

39.  I watched my sons' births by c-section but forgot all about watching when my daughter arrived in the more usual way.

40.  My best teaching experience has been in an inner-city community college.

41.  I've been parasailing.

42.  I used to serve as a guardian ad litem for children in custody cases and in neglect cases.

43.  The last Presidential candidate I voted for was John Kerry.

44.  I did vote for a Republican once, in a  local election about 30 years ago.

45.  The last time I went to a restaurant was when a friend and I went out for Margaritas after a chuch event a couple of weeks ago raised a lot of Issues.

46.  My group of women friends has gone away for a week-end together more years than not.

47.  The friend I have known the longest here is someone I met on the first day of law school in 1976.  She is moving away this summer.

48.  One of the friends I have known the longest in my life, since we were four or five, lost her mother on the same week-end last month that my stepmother died, so I went to two sets of funeral events within minutes of each other.

49.   I am hoping to go back to France this summer.

50.  I found my binoculars but I can't find my camera.

(Walked 4 miles today -- which makes 21 for the week.  Yippee!  This morning I set out with the dog at 5:45, wearing jeans and a t-shirt.  By evening I needed tights under my jeans, a wool coat , hat, scarf, and gloves!  From muggy humidity to the bitter winds of November in 12 hours.)