Am running hot getting the house ready to put on the market, am finishing up a website for a friend, am reading not enough books and writing not enough deathless prose, and am getting skinnier as a practicing member of the Biggest Losers in the Blogosphere.
Thanks to LeeAnn for the below navel-gazing exercise (which is prolly gonna fall into the category of too much information, but what the hell, it beats being all angstypoof and metaphorical and shit):
Ten Layers Of Me
LAYER ONE
– Name: Kari
– Birth date: May 26
– Birthplace: California
– Current Location: Los Angeles, California
– Eye Color: green
– Hair Color: dirty blonde
– Height: 5’3″
– Righty or Lefty: righty
– Zodiac Sign: Gemini
LAYER TWO:
– Your heritage: Irish, with a splash of accursed Sassenach English and German. Yup – stubborn with a bad temper ;-P
– The shoes you wore today: black leather platform ankle boots
– Your weakness: marshmallow anything, caramel, and footrubs
– Your fears: the sudden stop at the end of a long fall, being parapalegic or stroking out and becoming a head vegetable, not being able to help if someone I love needs me
– Your perfect pizza: deep dish with tomatoes and pineapple
– Goal(s) you’d like to achieve: too many to list here, but includes becoming debt free, winning a Pulitzer (okay, publishing my first, second and third novel to great critical acclaim and increasingly huge advances so I can live somewhere purty with few people and write all day when I’m not having my toenails painted and feet rubbed), being able to do a week-long backpacking trip without needing morphine for my knees
LAYER THREE:
– Your most overused phrase on IM: hee…
– Your thoughts first waking up: “ouch! goddamned knee! just cut the fucking leg off!” usually followed by “wonder how long I can hold it?”
– Your best physical feature: eyes (including eyelashes)
– Your most missed memory: I gotta echo LeeAnn’s comment on this one – “If it’s a memory, then that means I remember it, right? So if I miss it, that means it’s gone so I don’t remember it, so it can’t be a memory…. Do not fuck me around with this Catch-22 bullshit.”
LAYER FOUR:
– Pepsi or Coke: Pepsi unless I’m in the mood for Coke
– McDonald’s or Burger King: McDonald’s only and ever – if you’re gonna eat nasty fast-food, eat the stuff that’s the most horrible for you (might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb)
– Single or group dates: either
– Adidas or Nike: Nike
– Lipton Ice Tea or Nestea: Lipton
– Chocolate or vanilla: again with LeeAnn and her bad self – “vanilla, because you can tart it up with chocolate or caramel sauce” – YES, but it has to be real vanilla, not just some white frozen sugar milk with a vanilla bean waved over it from a distance of twelve miles
– Cappuccino or coffee: whichever is closest to my mouth
LAYER FIVE:
– Smoke: gah ick stinky
– Cuss: way the hell too goddamned mother-fucking cocksucking much (you say that like it’s a bad thing)
– Sing: often at high volume, sometimes even off-key (which hurts me more than it hurts you)
– Take a shower everyday: absolutely
– Do you think you’ve been in love: being in love and thinking don’t usually go together, but oh yeah, I’ve been in head-over-heels-foolish-in-love
– Want to go to college: erm, go back and either finish my BA in Linguistics or switch to somewhere else and get a degree in something useful like Herbaceous Psychology
– Like(d) high school: some parts, like dressing up as a ninja and jumping out of trees in the middle of the night to beat the crap out of the guys in my dojo – but the whole cliquish thing just pissed me right off
– Want to get married: been there, done that, got the bullet holes in the t-shirt
– Believe in yourself: usually and mostly, out of sheer cussedness if not actual credulity
– Get motion sickness: flying level and straight in small planes, or riding in the backseats of small cars
– Think you’re attractive: depends on the makeup and the lighting and how much I’ve had to drink
– Think you’re a health freak: um, no
– Get along with your parent(s): the ones who are alive are great, in their own addled and demented ways
– Like thunderstorms: adore them almost more than anything (except footrubs)
– Play an instrument: at one point, played piano, guitar, clarinet and tuba. no, not all at the same time. I’m talented and can multitask with the best of them, but that’s just silly
LAYER SIX:
In the past month…
– Drank alcohol: different flavors, even
– Smoked: not even second-hand
– Done a drug: does Advil count?
– Made Out: yay!
– Gone on a date: kinda, sorta, technically if you want to call it that
– Gone to the mall?: yes
– Eaten an entire box of Oreos?: nope, much to my shock and dismay
– Eaten sushi: yup, and gonna do it again tonight
– Been on stage: several times – don’t ask
– Been dumped: if you count my soon-to-be-ex-husband asking for a divorce then yes, I guess I have
– Gone skating: ice and roller
– Made homemade cookies: and in the approved fashion, ate half the dough raw… hee
– Gone skinny dipping: whenever I get the chance – life is too short to wear clothes all the damned time!
– Dyed your hair: I look great as a redhead (sassy!) or a platinum blonde (ice queen)
– Stolen anything: Post-Its from work… um, not the current job, mind you
– You sound boring: you’ve been smoking dogshit again, haven’t you?
LAYER SEVEN
Ever…
– Played a game that required removal of clothing: mais oui
– If so, was it mixed company: always – I love to make the boys blush
– Been trashed or extremely intoxicated: about once for every ten years of life, except for that last time which I have decided to regard as advance planning and/or stocking up for my next decade
– Been caught “doing something”: by my mother, the third time EVER!
– Been called a tease: often, but they just didn’t know me well enough to know that I always deliver
– Gotten beaten up: if they lost more blood then I did, does that count?
– Shoplifted: nail polish in 6th grade
– Changed who you were to fit in: yes, back in 5-6th grade I stopped saying please, thank you and pardon me because all the other kids made fun of me
LAYER EIGHT:–
–Age you hope to be married: 23 – that was then, but I’m better now
– Numbers and Names of Children: got a cockatiel I’ve recently rechristened Reverend Jim (hey, it was that or Murdoch and only one critter in the house needs to be fascinated with explosives and trash bags at any given time and I already called it)
– Describe your Dream Wedding: one that leaves me single on a beach in Tahiti with a couple of hotties rubbing various parts of my body and bringing me fruity alcoholic drinks (you know, the healthy kind with vitamins and fiber)
– How do you want to die: no thank you, I really want to know what comes next – y’all do some fascinating shit with each other and the planet
– Where you want to go to college: Columbia J-School, or maybe somewhere with a beach so as to facilitate the above-mentioned eye candy
– What do you want to be when you grow up: a best-selling, Pulitzer-prize winning author
– What country would you most like to visit: all of them, but at the moment Thailand is looking neato, as is Iraq.
LAYER NINE -
–Opposite sex (or the same?) sure, make me an offer I can’t refuse
– Best eye color? turquoise blue is the most unique I’ve ever seen on a man, but warm brown eyes are incredible
– Best hair color? dark to black
– Short or long hair: short enough to look neat, long enough to grab onto when appropriate
– Best Height? medium to tall
– Best weight: for me 120 lbs., for a man whatever works and he’s comfortable at
– Best articles of clothing: jeans and velvet or silk anything
– Best first date location: museum – I can tell a lot about a person by what moves him or her
– Best first kiss location: the beach on a stormy day
LAYER TEN:
– Number of drugs taken illegally: so?
– Number of people I could trust with my life: 6 offhand, including my parents, and a couple of others who I’d trust but can rarely get ahold of
– Number of CDs that I own: 60-70? maybe? somewhere?
– Number of piercings: five (all in my ears – I’m much more of a sadist than a masochist)
– Number of tattoos: none yet, one planned.
– Number of times my name has appeared in the newspaper?: 5 or 6, between my wedding announcement and a coupl’a various civic/volunteer banquet/award things and/or the child prodigy thing from way back when
– Number of scars on my body: way too many, but I have the Chinese character for “no” carved on my lower belly from various surgeries over the last 12 years – not on purpose, it just happened that way
– Number of things in my past that I regret: oh crapola, lots and not too many, considering how many times I’ve been incredibly stupid and/or thoughtless to people who actually cared enough about me that I could hurt them