20 Facts About Me

I'm doing the #100factsaboutme meme on Twitter, so I thought I'd post them here, as well, and go into a bit more detail than I can squeeze into the 140-character Twitter limit. Here are the first twenty (A couple of these will be no surprise to those of you who've been reading this blog for awhile, but most of them may be new to you.):

1. Thanks to having my front teeth knocked out when I was four and going without them for four years, I cannot whistle. I actually learned to whistle quite well while my teeth were still missing. After my adult teeth grew in when I was eight years old, I lost the ability.

2. I could eat salad every day of the week and never get tired of it. This is particularly true when I make the salad myself as opposed to ordering it in a restaurant, because I can put exactly what I like into it. Usually that's a base of baby spinach, some shredded carrot, shredded cabbage or broccoli slaw or micro greens or sprouts or some combination thereof, baby tomatoes, plus a bit of shredded cheese, sunflower seeds, sesame sticks, and raisins. And honey mustard dressing. YUM.

3. I do not know how to swim and refuse to put my face under water. I had a near-drowning experience in a hotel pool in Bangkok when I was four years old. It ended in my mother diving in to save me and nearly being pulled under by me, and both of us being rescued by my dad and older brother. It scarred me for life.

4. I have a small, heart-shaped birthmark on my left forearm.

5. I have a bad habit of staying up way too late for my own good. Like right now, for example. It's 11:19 p.m. and I'm compiling this post instead of going to bed.

6. I do a mean karaoke version of Pat Benatar's Hit Me With Your Best Shot.

7. It was difficult for me to become a vegetarian because I couldn't stand vegetables. I've learned to love (some of) them.

8. I almost died after tasting a raw pepper when I was three years old. Steve and I were playing outside our apartment in Hong Kong and found what we thought was a "carrot tree." In reality, it was some sort of shrub with shiny little red peppers growing on it. We each plucked one off and tasted it. I almost immediately went into anaphylactic shock. Four-year-old Steve was quick-thinking enough to run inside and get my parents, who rushed me to the emergency room. Turns out I'm severely allergic to raw peppers. I can eat them if they're cooked, but can't even touch a raw one without gloves.

9. I am the queen of freak accidents. Example: When I was sixteen or seventeen, I was walking down a small flight of stairs outside my church's fellowship hall. On the top step, my boot slipped and I flew through the air and landed on my butt at the bottom of the steps. On top of a scorpion. Which stung me.

10. I have rheumatoid arthritis.

11. My first-ever crush was on Shaun Cassidy. "Da doo ron ron ron da doo ron ron" -- what does that even MEAN? I have no idea, but I sang that song non-stop when I was seven years old and spent hours staring at a magazine photo of Shaun Cassidy.

12. David Foster Wallace and Wilkie Collins are my favorite authors.

13. I was named after my maternal grandmother, who died before I was born. She was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 37 and died a few years later, when my mom was nineteen.

14. I have lived in Illinois, Hong Kong, Canada (Moose Jaw, Sask.), and Texas. I was born in Chicago, moved to Hong Kong when I was a year old, moved to Collinsville, Illinois when I was four, moved to Moose Jaw when I was five, and moved to Austin just before my tenth birthday. I have surprisingly vivid and detailed memories of our time in Hong Kong despite being so young when we lived there.

15. I can tie a cherry stem into a knot with my tongue. After Audrey Horne did it on Twin Peaks, I went out and bought a huge jar of cherries and practiced until I had it down pat.

16. I would rather go to the dentist than to the eye doctor. I have good teeth and no problems at the dentist, but the eye doctor gives me migraines thanks to my incredibly light-sensitive eyes.

17. I hate talking on the phone. To anyone. Friends and family included. If I call you, it's probably an emergency. The one exception was talking to Steve. We talked on the phone nearly every day.

18. The first concert I ever went to was The Stray Cats. I was in eighth grade.

19. I have a wrist surgery scar that looks exactly like one of those stick figures from The Blair Witch Project.

20. I have five tattoos - three on my ankles, one above and one below my navel. Two are in memory of Steve.

Happy Birthday, Steve

If you were here, I would have called you this morning and when you said, "Hello?" I would have said simply, "The answer is 42." And you would have known exactly what I meant.

Steve and me, December 1991

My Project 50/50 encounter

Several months ago, my friend Darediva on Twitter posted a photo of a gorgeous young woman with a beautiful dog, posing in front of an old pick-up truck. Curious, I followed the link to the woman's Twitter page, and from there to her blog, and was immediately fascinated by her story. The woman was Shay Kelley, and her Twitter handle was Project5050. Shay was spending the year living in her truck with her dog, Zuzu. Together they were traveling to all 50 states in 50 weeks, and in each city they visited, Shay would go door to door collecting canned goods, clothing, hygiene products, and whatever else people were willing to give. Then she'd visit local homeless shelters and camps to distribute the items, also stopping to help individuals she encountered along the way. Shay was doing this all on her own, just because she could.

Now, I've been known to hand out homemade breakfast tacos to homeless people on my way to work in the morning, and to purchase bags of groceries for the homeless folks I see regularly on my drive to and from the office, and I always keep at least a five-dollar bill handy in the car to give to panhandlers, but Shay's project was something else.

This year she is doing it all over again with her new husband, Shane Patrick, at her side. I was fortunate enough to meet them yesterday when they swung through Austin. When I saw that they were coming to town, I started collecting items for them in the hopes of filling up their truck for them. I didn't quite achieve that goal, but did manage to amass a pretty good-sized pile of stuff for them, including clothing, food, toiletries, and first aid items. The final pile looked like this:


I had a little help in the way of donations from friends, family, and co-workers. Shay and Shane were pressed for time in Austin, but managed to stop by my office briefly to pick up the goods. I helped them load up the truck and got a chance to say hi to Zuzu in the process.

Here is Jethro the truck, with Zuzu lying in the shade underneath (she's hard to spot in this photo, but she's there!):



And here's what Jethro looked like after we added my donation pile to the back:



Shay and Shane immediately assembled the donations into 35 hygiene/first aid kits and food bags and then gave them all away at the park and the library. It just amazes me that as quickly as you can donate to their project, they can just as quickly turn around and find someone in need. I was honored to be a small part of their journey this year and hope to do the same if they come back again next year. In the meanwhile, I'm going to put together a couple of care packages of my own each week for the homeless people I encounter on a daily basis.

I didn't get to spend much time with Shay and Shane, as they had to hurry out of Austin for a speaking engagement at a church in Temple that evening, but they left a strong impression on me nonetheless. I've been captivated by their story as they've shared it online, but meeting them and chatting with them in person was even better. They are truly beautiful human beings, full of love and generosity, who literally will give the shirts off their backs if they find someone who needs those shirts more than they do.

I encourage you to visit the Project 50/50 website to read about their journey, and if you are so inclined, please click on the "donate" button at the bottom left of the page to help support their work. Spread the love.