OleopteneA blog for Mara Collins

The Factoid List

August 23rd, 2007

1. The night my husband and I met, he lent me Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language and Dead Can Dance’s Aion.

2. He also made me promise to go get Bantock’s Griffin and Sabine, instead of just lending it to me, which is why we now own two copies.

3. All my parental judgement is completely suspended when my three year old says “Gebause” instead of “because” gebause it is SO freaking cute, and I am not normally susceptible to cute.

4. Backpacking and building trails with the Student Conservation Association in New Hampshire’s White Mountains between my sophomore and junior years of high school the thing I missed most was a dictionary.

5. I nonetheless resented the moniker ‘Walking Dictionary’ given somewhat affectionately by friends in high school.

6. Though they didn’t send a dictionary, my parents did send a Beatles songbook, which was nice for campfires in the evening.

7. Under our roof right now: a piano, a ‘cello, four violins of different sizes, two violas, three electronic keyboards, and I couldn’t tell you how many drums.

8. While living in Prague we ate at McDonald’s, KFC, Pizza Hut, Dunkin’ Donuts, Planet Hollywood and TGI Friday’s more times than I am really comfortable admitting.

9. While living in Portland I have eaten at none of the above.

10. I find jigsaw puzzles soothing.

11. The best tomato soup I ever tasted came out of a thermos while sailing in my uncle’s sunfish in the Cochiti Lake, perfect for its warming contrast with being chilled and wet and wind-whipped, and to this day I cannot taste tomato soup without wishing I could be in a little boat on water between high canyon walls.

12. At 12, I thought Piers Anthony, Robert Asprin and Douglas Adams were this triumvirate pinnacle of wit and great writing.

13. I listen to between seven and ten hours of podcasts a week, most, but not all, of them coming from NPR.

14. Like almost every American woman I know, I struggle with body image, but try never to ask my husband if something makes me look fat.

15. My first son was born in a Czech hospital, my second in an American hospital, my third son in a midwife-run birth center, my fourth at home, in a tub with a midwife attending.

16. I write three pages, longhand, every morning, and struggle with contempt for the omphaloskeptic endeavour of spending all sorts of time and energy, not to mention paper and ink, on just articulating what I am thinking, but it is cheaper than therapy.

17. Eleven and a half years of marriage, ten years of parenting, nine mailing addresses, eight different Apple computers, seven schools we’ve sent kids to, six jobs, five cities, four children, three states, two countries, one email address…

18. I married my first husband at nineteen and at twenty said “I cannot live and thrive in this marriage” even though I couldn’t make anyone around me understand — my survival instinct was so strong that it carried me through standing up for myself and the ensuing tumult and mess.

19. That, fourteen years later, I am intact, happy a lot of the time and in a second marriage that works seems to be the vindication I need, and it is wonderful knowing that, with a full continent between us the first husband is happily living a life with a wife I think I’d really like and three kids of his own.

20. I still revisit the story of what happened and why periodically to try and make sense of it myself because it is part of the story of who I am, and am grateful that time has reduced all guilt and blame.

21. During this hardest part of my life, it was writing that saved me.

22. Or maybe listening to bluegrass, in particular, New Grass Revival’s “When the Storm is Over.”

23. My first best friend was Mandy Murphy in early elementary school, and in third and fourth grades it was Ryl Ashley, who had the same birthday as me and was a year older.

24. Ryl played violin in the school orchestra, and I think that was why I decided to, too.

25. My lifeline through high school, though, was a correspondence friendship with Meg York, who had been my counselor at music camp. She wrote long, funny letters on being the only girl in her rural Los Lunas high school in love with Robert Smith, reading science fiction, and just being different.

26. My favorite ever television show is Freaks and Geeks.

27. I have the best mother-in-law of anyone I know, except possibly my husband.

28. We almost named our oldest son Damiel, after one of the angels in Wim Wender’s Wings of Desire.

29. I was so sure he was going to be a girl because I spent the last two months of my pregnancy reading Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex.

30. I can completely lose track of time while building with legos.

31. In a bookstore, after I glance through new releases in fiction and magazines, I will spend any time I have left before trading turns with my husband watching kids in the children’s section in the architecture and neighborhood design section.

32. My husband and I have a standing monthly date to go play Werewolf, where I think we were both surprised to discover I actually can lie and bluff with the best of them.

33. My greatest challenge cooking is being married to a vegan and being the parent of a child who mostly likes to eat variants of bread and cheese: grilled cheese, quesadillas, pizza…

34. I could live without meat, have lived without meat, but am not a vegetarian.

35. I have worked in a video store, a bakery, a pit orchestra, and an architectural planning office. I learned quickly that the lower the pay, the harder and more unpleasant the work, which makes me skeptical of capitalism.

36. Quitting smoking was hard enough that when I smell cigarette smoke I have pangs of distaste, a longing for the pleasure I remember, and sympathy for the smoker who, no doubt, faces some pressure to quit.

37. I went on two dates with a tow truck driver before I met my husband, and we had nothing in common at all.

38. I was one of three valedictorians at my high school, all with perfect gpa’s, and we pretty much insisted on being treated equally and dividing our valedicory address into three parts, rather than having the school try and rank us by weighing the different classes we had taken or whatever.

39. That was pretty much the pinnacle of my academic achievement.

40. Our cat has only one eye. Her other eye was punctured while we lived in Austin, the costly animal eye doctor we took her to speculated either by a thorn or barbed wire or a b.b., and she hid from us after it happened long enough we weren’t able to save the eye, though we could have spent a lot of money on a glass eye which I don’t think would offer her much comfort.

41. My best birthday present ever was classes in drawing and oil painting when our second son was just a baby. It wasn’t so much about artistic ambition as just being able to go and focus on a single thing for a few hours when life around the house was about always trying to do eight things at once.

42. The stupidest fight my husband and I ever got in was about his not wanting me to wear my black leather biker jacket when I met his parents.

43. Our best fight ever was a food fight.

44. My favorite flower is the daffodil.

45. My favorite color is turquoise.

46. I am by nature a sore loser and have worked REALLY hard on graciousness since having kids. It helps that their father/my husband loves all sorts of games and is not a sore loser, ever.

47. I did my undergraduate honors thesis on metaphor and have dreamed of starting a metaphor company: you send me something you want to describe and I’ll send you a metaphor for it, or your money back. Guaranteed.

48. Little things that make life worth living: kombucha, blueberries, avocado, roasted bell peppers, Israeli couscous, baby spinach, yellow curry, Portland coffee.

49. My perfect date: roller skating, coffee, Powell’s City of Books.

50. I cannot fall asleep without reading.

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