100 Things Part I (as per pantalones)

1. I am a sucker for sweet and sour chicken.
2. Those crab puffs too, even though they're really mostly just cream cheese stuffed fried wontons.
3. But I'd love to eat actual Chinese food one day. In China. I like trying authentic foods.
4. I still can't believe I'm a homeowner. Still seems like a weird dream.
5. One of my hard and fast deal-breakers for the house was thatit had to have a gas stove. That and no HOA. I was flexible on most everything else.
6. My favorite color is blue. I abhor pink and try to keep it out of my wardrobe as much as possible, which isn't easy as manufacturers seem to think that all girls love pink. I never have.
7. I was a tomboy as a little girl. I was the girl who was always playing with the boys. I played kickball and soccer with the best of them.
8. In dresses. I loved wearing skirts and dresses and still do. They're way cooler than pants in the summer, a fact I discovered while working in an un-air-conditioned warehouse one summer.
9. I have a whipped cream problem. I'll fill a bowl with the stuff from the can and eat it straight. Sometimes I put hot fudge or chocolate shavings on it, but mostly I like it plain. And it has to be the canned stuff too. I love fresh whipped cream but the canned stuff is just,mmmm.
10. I don't eat as many veggies and fruits as I should. I just don't really like them all that much. I love apples, broccoli, spinach, and strawberries. The others are all just meh.
11. I really hate peas. Really really. I also hate bananas.
12. I have a texture thing with food. If I don't like the texture of something, I can't eat it. This is why I can't eat shrimp. I don't mind the taste but the texture is all weird to me. I would actually eat tripe if it didn't have that weird texture.
13. I am a highly visual learner. I have to write it down or read it to really understand it.
14. If you tell me your name, and I don't write it down, I won't remember it. Even if you just told me a minute ago.
15. Same goes for errands and tasks. I have to write it down. Remind me to write it down if you have to. Just asking won't make a difference. If it's not on my grocery list, I will forget it, even if it's an important ingredient.
16. The boy and I met in Barcelona. In a youth hostel. On Christmas.
17. He was actually intended to be the one and only one night-stand I could ever bring myself to have. That obviously didn't happen.
18. We bonded over mutual love for the New England Patriots, which is a rare thing for a Texas boy. Well, that and great sex.
19. I'm a planner. I like to plan things. I have schedules and routines all planned and mapped out. I already have my weekend errand trip planned out that way.
20. I even organize my grocery list by aisle of the store. I can be in and out of the store in under half an hour.
21. But my actual house and things are a complete mess. I'm so disorganized that way. I'm a clutter bug.
22. I HATE when other people try to organize my stuff for me. I can never find what I'm looking for as I have my own system, which doesn't work for anyone else. I know it's weird, it's just the way I am.
23. I'm a Francophile, but not as obsessed as you'd think I'd be. I tend to defend the French for their thinking because they always get blamed for things, even though they just have a weirdly different mindset.
24. I speak fluent French, some Spanish, and a bit of Italian. My Spanish is improving and my Italian still sounds a lot like Spanish.
25. Living in France for a year was one of the best experiences of my life. I'd move back in a second if I could, though not to Paris. I want to live in a smaller town. Valenciennes, the town I lived in, was ideal. It was big but not big enough so that you couldn't walk everywhere,yet it also had a great bus system. Plus it was close to major cities.
26. I had a pretty normal childhood. No dysfunctional family at all really.
27. My uncle is gay but he's still closeted. We all know but he will never admit it. We're not exactly sure why. He's not a very good person though.
28. My other uncle is an alcoholic. Last we heard, which was years and years ago, he was living in a bar somewhere and had lost an eye. We think he's still alive, as my dad is listed as next of kin and we haven'tbeen notified of a death. This uncle is actually a good guy with serious problems.
29. On my mom's side of the family, I have a mentally disabled aunt. The doctor was blind drunk at her birth and she didn't get enough oxygen and was brain damaged. Thus she will be forever 5ish.
30. My aunt and I used to fight over Barbies. It was weird fighting with a 30something over Barbies, now that I think about it, but back then I just wanted to play.
31. My grandma was a really cool person. I get my independent, wanderlust streak from her. She moved away from home, at a time when it was considered horrific for unmarried girls to do so. She didn't care.
32. I never really got to know my paternal grandparents. Mygrandfather died before I was born and my grandmother died when I was 5. All I remember is visiting her in the hospital and having Eggos and Danishes atthe gathering after the funeral.
33. Nana was very Italian though and I'm told I get my cooking streak from her. She never really liked my mom as no one was ever good enough for her boys.
34. Funnily enough, out of those 3 boys, my dad turned out the best. (Not just saying this because he's my dad either.) He's the only one to have his life together.
35. My dad is retired at age 54. He was a Corrections Officer. He never went to college.
36. The year after he retired, my brother became a Corrections Officer. He graduated college in May 2005. He really wants to be a police officer.
37. I am a nerd and a voracious bookworm.
38. I love Monty Python and The Search for the Holy Grail is my all-time favorite movie.
39. It was my British neighbor who introduced me to British comedy. I used to baby-sit his kids every other Saturday night. Easiest job there was, except for the nights when Mary learned to take her diaper off. (Duct tape is an effective solution for that.) He also introduced me to Douglas Adams and Harry Potter.
40. I got extremely good grades all my life, so much that I graduated 5th in my high school class. In elementary school, the only thing that kept me from straight A's all the time was penmanship. My handwritingis still comparable to chicken scratch.
41. I was a goody-two shoes in high school, and my rebellious streak consisted of sneaking off with my boyfriend to fool around. We spenta lot of time at the "coffee shop".
42. I never got detention but the principal knew me well. Of course it was for good things. I was pretty well known by all the teachers and administrators.
43. Somehow we managed to convince the administration to let us use our National Honor Society cards as Hall Passes. We roamed freely around the school and could go where we pleased during study hall, though not off campus. We were a closed campus. But I still went wherever I wanted in the school. No one really asked me for the pass though. They always figured I had a reason to be out and about.
44. I never really drank in high school. Never really had the opportunity either though. My friends were also goody two shoes types. I could have drank when I went on an exchange in 10th grade but no, I didn't want to. The one time I did was when we were on a school trip to Quebec and I was 18 already so I could legally buy booze there. I bought for our little group and we drank wine coolers. I didn't get drunk though.
45. We always had a sort of parent chaperone when at each others' houses, especially when both boys and girls were present, even in senior year. Our parents wouldn't have let us go otherwise. Didn't matter what kind of gathering it was, a parent had to be home if a boy was going to be there. Of course that didn't stop the sex from happening, but they tried.
46. My parents were extremely overprotective, which is a good and a bad thing.
47. Good thing meant that they knew what I was doing most of the time and thus protected me from doing stupid things.
48. Bad thing was that I didn't do a lot of stupid things then and did them as I got older, which wasn't always the best time for it all.
49. I need 8 hours of sleep function properly. I've always been that way, and was probably one of the few high schoolers who didn't mind going to bed by 10pm.
50. I never really got into late night TV as I was never awake. I still don't watch it as I'm still in bed by 10 pm.